A supporter of Britain’s departure from the European Union, at right, holds a placard up in front of supporters of remaining in the EU, including Stop Brexit Man, Steve Bray, with his foghorn, outside Parliament in London, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019.

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Business Secretary Peter Kyle said he had a “thoughtful conversation” with the Prime Minister on Friday in which Starmer asked for his view on what his next steps should be.

Speaking on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg this morning, Kyle also said that he was not going to be “delusional” about the situation Starmer is in, admitting that he did not know “full fact” what the next few days would bring. 

Kyle said that the conversation he had had with the PM on Friday was “very thoughtful” and “professional”: “[Starmer] led through a conversation about the challenges our country faces, about the political issues which are unfolding at the moment, and asked my views.”

The cabinet minister did not deny that Starmer could agree to stand down.

Asked by Kuenssberg if it was still the case that Starmer would fight any leadership challenge, as he insisted on Friday, Kyle said the PM was “fighting for our country”.

“He’s also making time this weekend to try and reflect on the political challenges that he faces, our country faces, our party faces.

Asked again if the PM would fight a leadership challenge, Kyle said: “These are decisions for Keir to make, and that’s why I said that he is taking the time, as well as dealing with all the issues that a Prime Minister deals with over a weekend, a very busy weekend, he’s also taking the time to think through what the political realities are today compared to last week, the week before.”

The Observer has reported that Starmer will announce a resignation plan on Monday amid growing pressure from Labour MPs.

The PM has repeatedly insisted he would fight any challenge against his leadership.

However, Andy Burnham’s landslide victory in the Makerfield by-election on Thursday has put greater pressure on Starmer’s position, with large numbers of Labour MPs pushing for Burnham to take over.

Sky News reported this morning that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had told Starmer to stand down. Several cabinet ministers, including former Labour leader Ed Miliband, are also reported to have encouraged Starmer to set out a resignation timetable.

Former minister Jess Phillips told Kuenssberg that it felt like “we have come to the end of the road”.

However, while some in Labour would like to see Burnham become leader unchallenged, PoliticsHome reported on Friday that there are some who remain loyal to Starmer who would put forward their own candidate and trigger a leadership contest if that PM did not stand. 

Burnham, who must resign as Manchester mayor now that he is an MP, will arrive in Westminster on Monday and is expected to meet with Labour MPs as part of his push for No 10.

Former defence secretary and Labour peer Lord Hutton told Kuenssberg that it would be important for Starmer’s successor to have a proper plan in place, warning that “personality politics will get you to the end of the day but not to the end of a five-year government.”

Hutton said that Burnham needed to “map out” clearly how he would tackle the issues facing the country, as “the challenges would be the same”.

He also admitted that it would be “a challenge” for Burnham to replace Starmer without going to the polls for a general election.

 

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Governments rarely increase their vote share in by-elections. Turnout is usually well below that of a general election, and the stakes are lower. The Makerfield by-election was by all metrics unusual. Commentators speak of voters ‘sending a message’ to an incumbent government through the by-election ballot box. In Makerfield, the message they wished to send seems to be that they were happy to have Andy Burnham not only as their representative, but to effect change in the country’s leadership.

In local elections held in the Makerfield area just a few weeks ago, Reform had won half of the votes cast, and the seat would be high on any target list for the party at a general election (Makerfield is 29th on a list of the most marginal seats where Reform was in second place in 2024). But on Thursday, the party managed only a small increase on its 2024 share – a disappointing result when Reform’s national polling has doubled in the intervening period.

Reform was quick to suggest that the Burnham campaign had capitalised precisely on the ‘anti-Starmer’ sentiment that it had mobilised effectively in the local elections. Polling from Convergent Opinion for Persuasion UK suggests that Reform retained most of its 2024 voters and also won over around 1 in 10 2024 Labour voters.

But it faced two issues that resulted in its performance being below expectations.

Firstly, for the first time, Reform faced a significant challenge on its ‘right’. The newly formed Restore Britain, led by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe and whose key policy is the deportation of immigrants, contested its first election outside of Lowe’s home turf in Great Yarmouth.

It was able to secure almost 7 per cent of the vote, drawn almost exclusively from those who had previously voted for Reform. Not sufficient in this instance to cast them as ‘spoilers’, the combined Reform plus Restore vote would still be 10 percentage points short of that won by Labour, but a sign that it could cause problems for Reform where the margins are tighter.

That they [Tory voters] might be willing to vote for Labour in some circumstances is an important yet overlooked factor in an evolving party system

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A second – and possibly more important – factor for the prospects of Reform at a general election is that it was unable to gobble up the Conservative vote in its entirety.

Polling suggests around half of the 2024 Conservative vote went to Reform on Thursday, but a small group of Conservative voters were willing to vote for Labour. Data from the British Election Study immediately after the 2024 election showed that around 15 per cent of those who had voted Tory would ‘vote against’ Reform. That they might be willing to vote for Labour in some circumstances is an important yet overlooked factor in an evolving party system.

Analyses of contests at all levels since 2024 have highlighted a ‘block’ structure to voting: Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party forming a ‘left’ block, and the Conservatives and Reform on the ‘right’.

Those in the ‘left’ block, veterans of tactical voting campaigns, have been comfortable moving between these parties to deny Reform high-profile victories in key by-elections such as Caerphilly and Gorton & Denton. This was again evident in Makerfield, with both the Lib Dem and Green shares of the vote collapsing and costing the parties their deposit.

However, for the time being, the ‘right’ block remains less willing to consolidate around a single party.

And key to the shape of future contests is what happens to the remaining Conservative vote – if it continues to fragment along multiple lines, the smaller fragments (those willing to vote Labour, Lib Dem, Green or simply stay home) will be crucial in shaping the competition between ‘blocks’.

Critically, Reform now faces precisely the same sort of dilemma the Conservatives and Labour have wrestled with in a multi-party system: how to hold on to voters on one flank without losing them on the other. Perhaps an even more thorny problem for a party unable to lean into a unifying position on economic issues.

Often, the significance of a by-election for the direction of politics is only obvious with hindsight. Chesham & Amersham on a similar June day in 2021, revealed key trends in anti-Conservative voting that proved critical to the 2024 election.

While the significance of Makerfield may not need the benefit of hindsight, the lesson to be learned may be that in multi-party politics, there are no easy answers for any political party with ambitions to form a majority government.   

 

Paula Surridge is deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe

5 min read18 min

Though embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised “change”, recent events are probably not what he had in mind. With the victory of Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, we face the prospect of a seventh prime minister in 10 years.

We know that British political volatility is partly the result of deeper currents. Across Europe, the grand old parties of right and left cede ground to upstart rivals. In the UK, the tectonic plates of politics have been grinding away at the two-party dominance of Conservatives and Labour for decades. In the last 20 years, we have seen the resultant volcanic eruptions: SNP and Plaid Cymru governments, Brexit, and surges for Reform and the Green Party.

We also know, though, that it takes a lot for either of the two main parties to be replaced in Britain, due not least to the voting system. It is nonetheless a live possibility today because of the bungled responses of the Tories and Labour to these challenges.

Why have they got it so wrong? To misquote Tolstoy, each unhappy political party is unhappy in its own way.

Labour’s problem is that long-term changes in its voting base now sit very awkwardly with its sense of collective identity. The party’s activist and elected official class cling to an entrenched historical mythology of Labour as the political wing of the industrial working class. As the Instagram of Al Carns MP recently declared: “Labour was chiselled out of the mines, hammered out of the shipyards, forged in the factories.”

In their heart of hearts, therefore, many Labour figures would prefer a different electorate to the one they have. “We are in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people,” Angela Rayner recently warned. She’s right to worry: both Reform and the Greens are performing more strongly among economically insecure voters than Labour. Crucially, however, the relatively poor of Britain are not homogenous.

Because of this hangup, Labour has reacted to the loss of voters in post-industrial towns by trying to fend off the Reform challenge. These were ‘hero voters’ for Labour strategists in the 2024 election, an attitude that helps us understand the party’s authoritarian turn on immigration in office. The problem, as political scientists have been screaming at Labour for some time, is that these electors have not voted Labour for ages, if ever in many cases, and showed no evidence (even in 2024) of turning to the party in large numbers.

Meanwhile, and predictably, the upshot of Starmer’s hero voter strategy has been a huge loss of liberal-leaning voters in the left bloc – including, crucially, economically precarious workers in the cities – to the Greens. The solution is not as simple as ‘pivot left’: voters are not that coherent. Still, Labour’s internal political culture suffers from hangovers about who the party is ‘of’ as well as ‘for’, and these have prevented a clear analysis of viable electoral strategies.

To misquote Tolstoy, each unhappy political party is unhappy in its own way

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The Conservatives have their own fetishes from their past. A certain handbag-wielding prime minister looms large. But theirs are quite different. If Labour is the party that struggles with power, the Conservatives were, at least historically, the party of statecraft par excellence. Power, above all, is key for the Tories, and flexibility to obtain power is no bad thing.

The problem, however, is that this strong will to power, when not checked by other impulses, can prove destructive in the long run. Since the 2010s, the Conservatives have pursued Brexit, much lower immigration and culture war politics with increasing vigour. This was partly due to internal party management issues, but also clearly an attempt to retain power by seeing off the threat from Nigel Farage’s Ukip.

This instinct led to several successful elections, particularly 2015 and 2019. But the choices made in the process (a referendum on EU membership, a hard Brexit) have also gradually alienated large parts of the Conservatives’ electorate: the English middle classes.

The Conservatives in the 20th century drew support from a patchwork of social groups, from backwoodsmen to industrialists. The cliché may have been that the Anglican Church was the Tory party at prayer, but Thatcher’s Chancellor Geoffrey Howe used to quip that the Tories were the National Farmers’ Union at prayer.

Still, it was heavily dependent on clerks, senior civil servants, and the traditional professions. It is therefore surprising just how unconcerned Kemi Badenoch’s party appears to be about its catastrophic losses of the comfortable, southern English middle-classes. In the local elections, Richmond-upon-Thames became a one-party state for the Liberal Democrats, the most dramatic example of the risks of adopting short-term tactics that harm long-term political health.

Both parties, then, have distinct pathologies that have hindered their ability to navigate the treacherous ground of fragmented British politics. But there is one failing that they share: quality of government. Liz Truss was only the extreme example of a wider trend. In the decade since the Brexit referendum, the UK has not only cycled between prime ministers but also supposedly era-defining agendas (‘Levelling Up’, ‘Change’) that were manifestly incoherent and collapsed under pressure. Perhaps relatedly, the quality of legislative scrutiny in parliament appears to have declined.

Post-2008 stagnation, the shocks of the pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are the dominant explanations for the wicked policy challenges facing UK politics. But here, too, the once-dominant parties of Britain might want to look in the mirror.

Dr Colm Murphy is a senior lecturer in British politics at Queen Mary University of London

This really is the most extraordinary statement.

The short version is “We’re going to keep breaking the law every day while we think about whether we want it to apply to us or not”.

And the really depressing thing is that that’s very much par for the course in the world of the Scottish establishment. We already knew that if you’re powerful and/or rich, you can publicly admit a crime and the police and Crown Office will just look the other way.

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We knew that the aforementioned Crown Office can preside over a malicious prosecution costing the country tens of millions of pounds and absolutely nobody will face any consequences for it, with those responsible simply carrying on until they walk off into retirement.

We knew that the head of the Crown Office can be found to have maliciously prosecuted someone, yet that person can have no legal redress whatsoever under the Scottish judicial system – a state of affairs which openly breaches European human rights law – and rather than accept a judge’s ruling and fix the law so that the Lord Advocate is no longer above it, the Scottish Government will appeal it to a friendlier judge so that Scotland can remain in breach of European law and justice can be denied.

We knew that the head of the Civil Service can conduct a grotesquely crooked and unfair persecution against an innocent man and not only face no sanctions but have her contract extended.

We knew that those well-connected to the Scottish Government can commit even the most flagrant level of demonstrable, indisputable perjury in a serious criminal trial and see the matter quietly kicked into the long grass indefinitely, even though there is only a single fact to investigate, and it’s already known what the truth of that fact is because it was established in open court.

And we’ve known for many years now that none of this can be challenged because the Crown Office is legally answerable to no-one and its head can simply do whatever the hell he or she likes, because even if they hacked the First Minister to death with an axe live on national television, all anyone could do would be report it to the police who would then pass on the decision about whether to prosecute to… the Crown Office.

But even knowing all THAT, there’s something breathtaking about the Scottish Prison Service being the subject of an excoriating, unequivocal judgment that it is breaking the law, and then breezily announcing that “Sure, judge, like that’s YOUR opinion or whatever, but to be quite frank we’re just going to carry on doing the unlawful thing for as long as we want because who’s gonna stop us? The government? LOLZ! The whole thing was their idea!”

And why wouldn’t they? The Scottish Government has after all spent years, vast amounts of legislative energy and millions and millions of pounds on its policy of putting male rapists in women’s prisons. It’s clearly still committed to that policy, since it fought this case, despite the fact that it was blindingly obvious in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment that it would lose – yet again – to For Women Scotland, who it continues to refuse even the basic courtesy of a discussion despite pledging to do so more than a year and a quarter ago.

Meanwhile it continues to hurl large sums of public money at organisations who spend that money on openly urging people and organisations to break the same law that the Scottish Prison Service has just been found in breach of.

So what are the chances that it’s going to call in the Scottish Prison Service and say “Look, we’ve had a lot of fun but you should probably do what the Supreme Court says now”?

That’s a rhetorical question, obviously.

Our country has been stolen by arrogant gangsters and there appears to be nothing we can do about it.

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Our courts are a blunt knife. They’ve got all the guns AND all the badges.

The news that Andy Burnham would stand as the MP for Makerfield was received with some surprise. In the throes of Labour’s May 2026 crisis, following the disastrous local and devolved parliament elections, commentators questioned his choice of constituency. 

Burnham’s ambition, of course, was never in doubt – nor was the national executive committee’s rapid capitulation. The Greater Manchester mayor was blocked ahead of the February 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election on the grounds that his selection would unleash a new wave of Westminster psychodrama. At the second time of asking, Starmer’s resistance – and his political capital – was spent. 

But the circumstances that delivered Burnham’s Makerfield vacancy invited scrutiny. It was Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together, who sailed to the rescue of Labour’s prince across the water. Simons’ abdication could well be rewarded with a central position in the Burnham court.

The second curiosity concerned the character of the Makerfield constituency. Simons’ 5,399-vote majority was the fifth lowest of the 27 Greater Manchester constituencies in 2024. The seat also carried a significant Reform presence. The party’s 2024 candidate, Robert Kenyon, polled 12,803 votes (31.8%), finishing second. Some two years later, in the weeks before Simons’ resignation, Reform secured 24 out of the 25 seats up for grabs on Wigan Borough Council.

In truth, it was necessity – as opposed to calculation and strategy – that carved Burnham’s path to power. He was left with limited options as Greater Manchester Labour MPs successively ruled out imposing a by-election on their constituents. Political circumstance conspired to produce a proof-of-concept contest for the man many cast as Labour’s antidote to Reform.

Burnham’s victory this week was remarkable on two counts therefore: for its margin – a majority of 9,231 with 54.8% of the vote – and for its narrative power.

Burnham’s campaign in Makerfield was constructed around a series of familiar rallying cries. But it was their convergence on a single candidate that defined the by-election’s novel nature. Burnham was simultaneously the “change” candidate, the “stop Reform” candidate and the “Get Starmer out” candidate. This same succession of slogans powered the Green Party’s victory in Gorton and Denton. But in Makerfield, they formed the rhetorical reserve of the candidate with the red rosette – in a historically Labour-voting constituency. 

Not every slogan was featured on Burnham’s “For Us” literature. But there could be no mistaking the subtext of Burnham’s “bring change to Westminster” message. In Makerfield, the electorate endorsed Burnham and the central, irresistible implication of his candidacy: regicide. 

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Against this backdrop, Burnham’s landslide conforms to recent electoral trends. Voters want change and do not expect Starmer to deliver it. Makerfield represented another opportunity for voters to send a version of the same message they have sent to Westminster for some years now. 

For weeks, Makerfield was styled as a stepping stone on Burnham’s path to power. But Burnham’s campaign would be mistaken to see itself as the driver of events. Voters used him to send a message to Westminster – not the other way round.

Burnham still has considerable cause for optimism this weekend. Reform’s limited pool of candidates is continuing to cause problems; Robert Kenyon marked the party’s second candidate blunder in as many by-elections. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, appears increasingly uneasy in the role of permanent political actor; the prospect of becoming prime minister is weighing on British politics’ perennial outsider. Over the coming months, his fragmenting right flank will pose a series of tricky purity tests that risk pulling Reform’s centre of gravity further from the median voter.

Burnham will now reap the political spoils of his Makerfield conquest. His immediate achievement lies in injecting a popular element into what had hitherto been an elite-dominated power struggle. Burnham was endorsed as his party’s saviour in a Reform target seat by voters Labour must win to survive as a national force. A great deal was left unsaid during the campaign. But Burnham’s implicit message to Labour MPs was simple: if I can win Makerfield, I can win the country. 

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Politicians, of whatever rank or party affiliation, trade in stories. The original sin of the Starmer premiership was its almost dogmatic aversion to narrative. Burnham’s victory simultaneously strikes the heart of the story Starmer told Labour MPs in opposition: that ideological self-flagellation was a condition of victory. Burnham’s message is that Labour can be truer to its historic instincts (more left-wing) and still win the country. 

Today, in the wake of Makerfield, Burnham’s principal problem is that all which was left unsaid during the campaign must now be articulated. 

The mythical power of the prince across the water is derived from their perfect isolation. Burnham’s relative detachment in recent years has obscured his political outline. As such, leading figures from every Labour faction have projected their political aspirations onto the Greater Manchester mayor. Burnham’s power base is found among the soft left, and his emerging leadership operation is staffed by figures drawn from the upper reaches of the relaunched Tribune Group. But elements of the traditional Labour right, the Socialist Campaign Group, Blue Labour and the Red Wall Caucus have all found common cause with Burnham in recent months. 

The rival claims on Burnham were thrown into sharp relief in the early hours of Friday morning. Both Josh Simons and John McDonnell celebrated when the returning officer declared Burnham’s victory. The former was situated by Burnham’s side at the Makerfield count; the latter shed a tear live on LBC Radio. 

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Labour MPs’ conceptions of what Andy Burnham means, politically, will now be pitted against each other. Every faction that rallied to Burnham’s ambiguous standard will want to see itself represented, ideologically at least, in the settlement that follows.

The extent to which Burnham’s factional coalition is a marriage of convenience – or of delusion – will soon be revealed.

The big strategic dilemma facing camp Burnham is whether they choose to define their man before or after challenging Starmer. The route of least resistance would be to land in Westminster on Monday with the roster of 81 regicides required under Labour’s leadership rules. A contest would begin in earnest, and Starmer and Wes Streeting could melt away. But this approach would store up problems for Burnham in Downing Street.

There is also the matter of unseating Starmer, whose public pronouncements indicate a stubborn resolution to remain in power. The prime minister is protected by Labour’s strict leadership election procedures, which do not provide for a simple “no-confidence” motion, and he senses that subjecting Labour’s saviour to finer scrutiny could see some of the sheen come off. 

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In any case, it is time for Labour MPs to reconcile themselves to the consequences of their rebellion and Burnham’s Makerfield victory. The demand for an “orderly” succession will soon reveal its oxymoronic character. There is no such thing as a bloodless coup in British politics. Even if a contest is avoided, Burnham will need to succeed where previous prime ministers have failed in constructing a sense of political order from the rubble of regicide.

If the real meaning of Makerfield lay in the campaign subtext, its fallout will be defined by the clarity Burnham can no longer defer.

And if he does not deliver, if chaos reigns, Labour’s latest MP will learn that the public’s patience is perilously thin.

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