The long-lost feeling of progressive hope that swept through Makerfield on Friday morning came with an immediate political thunderclap: Keir Starmer will not go quietly.
Andy Burnham’s emphatic victory in the byelection – a seat Reform UK should have won at a canter – has triggered an open leadership crisis. Reform finished second there in the 2024 election and had recently won all the council seats. Its candidate, Robert Kenyon, would be heading to Westminster if he had faced any other Labour opponent, Neal Lawson, director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass, argued. But Burnham, the former Manchester mayor, held the seat. The result, Lawson wrote, “has made it inevitable: it’s now time for Keir Starmer to step aside.”
“Starmer vows to challenge Burnham for Labour leadership after Burnham's emphatic Makerfield by-election victory over Reform UK.”
Yet on Friday morning, Starmer congratulated Burnham on his victory – and then made clear he intends to fight any contest for the Labour leadership. Speaking after the result, the prime minister insisted he will not stand down and will challenge Burnham in a leadership contest, according to a report in City A.M.
The clash sets up a battle that Lawson says the party had been heading towards for months. He noted that Starmer’s “disastrous decision to block Burnham from standing in the Gorton and Denton byelection”, combined with Labour’s meltdown in May’s local elections in England, Wales and Scotland, had led the party to an “inevitable conclusion: Burnham must lead it”.
Lawson urged a “dignified and orderly transition in September”, allowing Starmer to embed his legacy and Burnham to prepare for the “mighty” challenges ahead. But Starmer’s defiance suggests a messy fight is more likely.
For Labour, the Makerfield win was a lifeline – but not a cure. “Labour would have been in total despair had it lost this byelection – and that bears witness to the existential crisis the party is in,” Lawson wrote. “That situation will not change after this remarkable win.”
Burnham, he argued, is “probably the only Labour candidate who could have held Makerfield” and “the only candidate for the party’s leadership who can defeat Reform”. Whether Starmer will give way – or force a contest that could deepen the party’s wounds – remains the defining question of British politics this summer.