Andy Burnham now looks almost certain to take over as Labour leader – and UK prime minister – after Keir Starmer announced his resignation. In a speech in Downing Street, Starmer said his colleagues had persuaded him that he could no longer continue in the role and it’s believed that even allies had privately advised him to step aside. Burnham’s return to parliament only ramped the pressure up further.
But how can this have happened just two years after Labour’s huge win in the 2024 general election? Politics is a difficult – and different – game these days. As Starmer has discovered, personality, trust and likeability are just as important for governments and leaders as promises and delivery. In this sense, Starmer’s fate was sealed when it became clear to Labour MPs just how unpopular he was on doorsteps.
When Starmer led Labour into the election in 2024, he was facing down the party’s traditional rivals in the Conservatives. This was a failing party, and in government it had been unable to respond to the country’s desire for change.
And so Starmer won a landslide. But with two thirds of voters backing a party other than Labour, and many more people not voting at all (it was the second lowest turnout of the post-war period), it really did prove to be a “loveless landslide”.
Starmer was unable to unite the 412 MPs he entered office with, and use that huge majority to trailblaze a strong policy platform with decisiveness. Instead, he U-turned on key choices and then was tarnished by the appointment of Peter Mandleson as US ambassador when the extent of Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein became apparent.
The Burnham buzz
Burnham, prime ministerial hopeful and new MP for Makerfield, does not have those disastrous moves attached to his public image. If he were to become leader of the Labour party and therefore the UK’s next prime minister, he would come into office on a different kind of high to the weak support that Starmer had. Right now, there is a buzz of excitement attached to the “king of the north”, and Burnham has been vocal in claiming success in turning Manchester around.
Yet he will face many of the same problems that Starmer leaves behind. Now the key political challengers are Reform UK, and to a lesser extent the Green party. Labour has fallen to a dismal 19% in the polls, level-pegging with the Conservatives and a few points ahead of the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Nigel Farage’s Reform party, still finding its feet in 2024, currently tops the polls at 24%.
In the English local elections in May, the “national equivalent vote”, which estimates how each party would have fared if every area of the country had voted, had Labour doing even worse on just 15%. To get back to the vote share it won in the 2024 general election, whoever leads the Labour party next needs to improve it by 14-18%. The new leader could get most of the way to this figure by wooing undecided voters. Currently, 13% of people tell pollsters that they do not know how they will vote if a general election was held tomorrow.
One thing that triggered Starmer’s decision to step aside was the scale of Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield byelection, a seat that was vacated for him specifically to challenge for the Labour leadership. Winning more than half of all votes cast – and more than Reform UK and its rivals on the right, Restore Britain, combined – was touted as Burnham’s ability to take on the challenger parties and win.
But it’s important to remember that he did so in just one seat, in his own patch in Greater Manchester. Just a few months ago the Greens also won a seat in Greater Manchester. Burnham, blocked by the Labour party from running in that byelection, had campaigned for the Labour candidate there. But the Burnham effect proved not to be enough on that occasion.
Early signs are that Burnham’s win in Makerfield came from uniting the left of politics. It’s likely the scale of his win owes much to his success in persuading those who might have leant towards the Greens or Liberal Democrats to back him instead. That wouldn’t be nearly as easy in a general election where those parties will want to be campaigning hard.
But it may also be that Reform has hit its ceiling. The party could perform well locally and not replicate that on the national stage in a general election. It also faces its own set of rightwing challengers, the new Restore Britain party as well as the Conservatives, whose leader Kemi Badenoch is rising in popularity and who managed to take a seat from the dominant SNP in a recent Scottish byelection.
But if Burnham can hold on to his likeability factor, his best asset might be the ability to unite a set of tactical voters who would do anything to block a Farage-led Reform government. It’s hardly a resounding vote of confidence, but it could be the only path forward for a successful Labour party right now.
Hannah Bunting receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).