Keir Starmer’s premiership is hanging by a thread this weekend as he talks to his cabinet, his staff and Labour MPs after Andy Burnham’s blowout victory in Makerfield. The by-election result has delivered hope to Labour MPs who were despondent about their future – Reform, they now believe, no longer looks unassailable. But for Starmer, the win has triggered calls to resign, with Burnham and his allies saying they are giving the Prime Minister time to consider his future. Starmer publicly insists he is not going to stand down, adding that any potential successor must challenge and defeat him. Both sides now look to the cabinet to play a crucial role: either to extend or cut short Starmer’s leadership.
The drama echoes a television series from exactly fifty years ago. In the summer of 1976, ITV broadcast Bill Brand, a drama written by Trevor Griffiths that uncannily anticipated real events – a Labour prime minister replaced amid a debt crisis. The series begins with a by-election in a fictional Greater Manchester constituency, “Leighley”, that might as well be Makerfield, and culminates in a Labour leadership contest where Britain’s creditors take a close interest. The issues of 2026 – nationalisation, government borrowing, the party system itself, raised recently by Burnham – gripped a claimed audience of ten million across its 11 episodes. Played by Jack Shepherd, Bill is a former polytechnic lecturer whose victory translates him to Westminster as a backbencher contemptuous of the struggling Labour government. The ailing prime minister, played by Arthur Lowe, is a schemer called “Arthur Watson” – a cipher for Harold Wilson, who stepped down in March 1976 – and the fictional left’s challenger is identifiable as Michael Foot. But the candidate Brand most respects, representing the party’s future, comes from the centre.
“Keir Starmer's premiership hangs by a thread after Andy Burnham's blowout Makerfield win, echoing a 1976 TV series.”
Now, fifty years later, the real-life parallel is unfolding. Burns’s victory has thrown Labour into turmoil, and the uneasy standoff leaves the party waiting for the cabinet’s next move. Will they extend Starmer’s tenure or cut it short?