One thing seems clear from the result in Makerfield: Andy Burnham, not Labour, won this by-election. While national polls show the party is down around 20 points on the 2024 vote, Burnham improved on the previous Makerfield result. For all the speculation that a surge in support for the far-right Restore Party could hand Burnham a win by splitting the right, the combined total for Reform, Restore and the Conservatives – remember them? – would still have fallen short of Burnham’s voteshare.
Elected as Labour MP for Makerfield, his rapid ascent to No 10 now seems all but guaranteed. If it wasn’t already the case, this result means he could waltz blindfolded through a leadership contest, which in turn means there may not need to be one. Keir Starmer has already indicated he will stand in a leadership contest, but there will be serious attempts to persuade him against this, particularly due to the scale of Burnham’s victory. If Starmer doesn’t stand, other would-be challengers like Wes Streeting will likely conclude their careers are better served seeking a good job in Burnham’s cabinet than trying to take him on in a contest.
That this outcome would save the Labour Party and its MPs from any number of indignities – not least the poor loyalists who’d be press-ganged onto Starmer’s campaign – makes it more likely. That many Labour MPs are pathologically inclined toward self-defeating drama and bloody-minded factionalism, however, shifts the odds significantly in the other direction, so it’s a toss up.
There’s also the small matter of a Manchester mayoral by-election to wade through – thoughts and prayers to the region’s beleaguered activists – which could delay things further. This will take place on 30 July and will likely be a much tighter contest than Makerfield – the Green Party has been quietly working on a campaign which will launch in the coming days. Starmer has already called for the party’s focus to be there in the wake of this by-election, which is understandable, given the alternative is to focus on dragging him out of No10 as soon as possible.
And there are conflicting reports on Burham’s plans: earlier this week ‘allies’ told the FT that Burnham will give Starmer “space” to resign, and separately told The Times that he could use his acceptance speech to challenge the PM directly. He stopped just short of that, and at time of writing on Friday morning Burnham was yet to announce his next move. It is a question of when, not if.
Either way, then, Burnham is highly likely to be prime minister when he arrives at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool in September, or at the latest, in its immediate aftermath. He’ll then be afforded a period of good grace, both by his party and by the country. The former’s goodwill will be longer than the latter’s, but neither will last especially lengthy – perhaps a few months. And what happens next will largely depend on what Burnhamism, or Manchesterism, looks like when applied at the national level.
Looking from the outside, as mayor of a northern city region, Burnham was cast as a political upstart, defined against capital-W Westminster. He has tapped into a sense shared across not just the north but basically everywhere outside a few pockets of London and the south-east, that Britain is ruled by an elite that does not care or really even think about the rest of the country.
In political terms, this translates to a sense that Burnham wants to rebalance power and control of the economy in the UK, geographically away from London and, in terms of control, toward the public.
His high-profile move to bring Greater Manchester’s bus network into public control has rightly been praised, and he has spoken throughout the campaign about the need for similar programmes at a national level, as well as a broader programme of bringing public assets and services under public control – though he has not set out plans for public ownership of these assets as anything more than a long-term ambition, if at all.
As prime minister, Burnham will have an entirely different relationship to the centre of power than during his mayoralty. And if his dominion becomes Great Britain, rather than Greater Manchester, he may see the City of London’s role to the rest of the country in the same way he saw that of central Manchester to the rest of the region.
In Greater Manchester, the city centre has been supercharged hand-in-hand with private capital, which has driven growth for the region as a whole; masking the ongoing trend of decline in the suburban, deindustrialising peripheries with private developer-led growth in the urban core. Viewed in this light, Manchesterism looks less like the end of the neoliberal status quo – as Burnham has described it – and more like a continuation, as an end would surely require some form of a break with private finance and mass-rentierism.
This would seem in a major respect to situate his approach to the economy pretty closely to that of the current administration, of which a partnership with big finance,and the commensurate policies of derisking and deregulating to attract international capital, have been underappreciated and consistent aspects.
Economist Daniela Gabor described Starmer’s approach as letting BlackRock rebuild Britain. Looking to Manchester, where the private equity giant has recently partnered with the regional pension fund to invest £1bn in NHS property, and where much of the city’s towering skyline was funded by the sector, would suggest that Burnham will let them carry on the job.
