{"id":66172,"date":"2026-06-19T03:55:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/66172\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T03:55:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T03:55:12","slug":"andy-burnham-wins-makerfield-by-election-poised-to-challenge-britains-pm-keir-starmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/66172\/","title":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham wins Makerfield by-election, poised to challenge Britain’s PM Keir Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

In most elections, interest rests on a simple question: who won? However, when it comes to Makerfield, the results have been trumped for many onlookers by something else: what happens next?<\/p>\n

For the first time in a long time \u2014 perhaps ever \u2014 Britain’s political spotlight has been trained on this constituency of metro-fringe communities and former mining towns in north-west England.<\/p>\n

A fiercely contested by-election in the seat culminated early Friday morning, local time, when Andy Burnham, the mayor of nearby Manchester, claimed a thumping victory.<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham enjoys a high profile and immense personal popularity, but his campaign was complicated by the fact he was running for the country’s widely loathed Labour government.<\/p>\n

Walking a political tightrope, the 56-year-old attempted to allay concerns among constituents with an unusual promise: elect me, and I will try to oust the prime minister.<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham won Makerfield with 24,927 votes, which was 9,231 ahead of his nearest challenger, but many believe a much bigger prize is now within his reach: Britain’s top job.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Voters in Makerfield were making a local choice that will likely have national implications. (ABC News: Daniel Pannett)<\/p>\n

It is not yet clear when Mr Burnham plans to challenge the PM, Sir Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n

Any Labour leadership contest would require several procedural steps to be cleared first. Sir Keir, and at least one other MP, have also pledged to stand.<\/p>\n

“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working. Everyone can feel the country isn’t where it should be,” Mr Burnham said on stage at the official counting centre in Wigan, just after 3am Friday, local time (12pm AEST).<\/p>\n

“Tonight could, just could be the turning point. From here on I will give everything I have got to make it so, to ensure the name Makerfield is synonymous with the change this country needs.”<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham is well-known. He previously served as a Labour MP for almost 16 years and became a minister in Gordon Brown’s government in 2008.<\/p>\n

He stood unsuccessfully in the party’s 2015 leadership election and resigned in 2017 to run for mayor of Manchester.<\/p>\n

Now the man some call the “king of the north” is planning a move down to London. He has already picked out a house: 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s official residence.<\/p>\n

His main opponent in Makerfield was Robert Kenyon, who was running for the right-wing, populist Reform UK, a party that shares abundant similarities with Australia’s One Nation.<\/p>\n

Its leader, Nigel Farage, has been unleashing a firehose of anti-immigration, anti-woke grievances on the country. Opinion polls indicate many people agree with him.<\/p>\n

During the campaign, Mr Kenyon, a local councillor and tradesman, said he did not expect to win, but given Reform’s surging support, some analysts are chalking his defeat up as another missed opportunity for the party.<\/p>\n

Mr Farage is a divisive figure in the UK and has spent decades in politics. Despite his notoriety, Reform has only eight out of 650 MPs in the House of Commons \u2014 Britain’s lower chamber of parliament, where the biggest decisions are made.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Reform UK supporters make their voices heard in Ashton-in-Makerfield on Thursday. (ABC News: Riley Stuart)<\/p>\n

In February, Reform UK had fancied itself a chance to win a separate by-election in Gorton and Denton, a suburban Manchester constituency some 40 kilometres to Makerfield’s east.<\/p>\n

However, the party was humbled by local plumber Hannah Spencer, who stood for the Green Party and won more than 40 per cent of the vote.<\/p>\n

In that contest, Reform’s decision to preselect a dapper former academic who had never lived in the working-class seat was widely branded a mistake.<\/p>\n

Three months later, Mr Kenyon’s candidacy represented a significant strategic shift for the party, but one that did not pay off.<\/p>\n

“I think Kenyon was a cynical choice to be honest. I don’t think Reform vetted him particularly well and it backfired,” one analyst told the ABC.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Labour is on the nose nationally in the UK, but Andy Burnham proved to be a game-changer. (ABC News: Riley Stuart)<\/p>\n

‘It’s been a circus’\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opponents attempted to paint Mr Burnham as conceited and suspiciously ambitious, claiming he would use Makerfield as a mere stepping stone en route to the world stage.<\/p>\n

“The residents will never see him again,” Reform MP Richard Tice told the ABC on Thursday.<\/p>\n

While Mr Burnham has been quick to point out he grew up nearby and sends his children to local schools, there was some truth to the attack line.<\/p>\n

This by-election took place only because previous MP Josh Simons resigned less than two years into the job to allow the Labour luminary a path to re-enter parliament and challenge Sir Keir.<\/p>\n

Mr Kenyon, meanwhile, had his campaign weighed down early on when several past social media posts of his emerged in the press. The 41-year-old struggled to explain them away.<\/p>\n

“I’m sexist, sorry but I am,” one from the 2010s read.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Nigel Farage (left) and Robert Kenyon campaign in the constituency on Thursday. (AP: Jon Super)<\/p>\n

Over the past few weeks, the world’s media has descended on the area, which has backed Labour for 120 years and is considered one of the party’s safest strongholds.<\/p>\n

“It’s been a circus,” Stuart, a frustrated retiree who lives in the constituency, told the ABC this week. He planned to vote Reform.<\/p>\n

Despite election fatigue among residents, many people in Makerfield were happy to use their newfound platform to share views on the state of British politics.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think Keir Starmer is a bad man. I think his heart is in the right place. But he’s shown himself to have poor judgement on a number of occasions, particularly with Peter Mandelson,” said Philip, a 63-year-old local musician, referring to the PM’s decision to make a friend of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein the UK’s ambassador in Washington DC last year.<\/p>\n

On election day, thousands of volunteers were on Makerfield’s streets, mostly for Reform and Labour, in a last-ditch attempt to convince people of who to support.<\/p>\n

“To me, Andy Burnham seems like a decent bloke,” said Philippa, a woman who has lived in the area for decades.<\/p>\n

“I think he’d make a good prime minister, and I think a lot of people in the north feel that way. But one man can’t just change the world.”<\/p>\n

On Thursday, jubilant Reform UK disciples lined a central intersection in the constituency’s largest community, Ashton-in-Makerfield.<\/p>\n

They drew regular cheers and honks of approval from passing traffic, but turning that support into national representation is proving difficult.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Makerfield is considered among the safest Labour strongholds in Britain. (ABC News: Riley Stuart)<\/p>\n

Voting is not compulsory in the UK and the country uses a first-past-the-post system, rather than Australia’s preferential style.<\/p>\n

The slightly confusingly named Restore Britain \u2014 a splinter party founded by former Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe \u2014 finished third in Makerfield with 3,111 votes and was criticised for splitting right-wingers.<\/p>\n

Mr Burnham managed to style himself as an anti-establishment candidate, despite having a CV that reads like that of a rusted-on Labour member.<\/p>\n

He joined the party aged 15 and worked for several of its politicians before becoming an MP aged 31, then a minister, then a mayor.<\/p>\n

All these years later, he’s back in the Commons. Next stop, Number 10?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In most elections, interest rests on a simple question: who won? However, when it comes to Makerfield, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[7786,13,24760,94,20231,95,408],"class_list":["post-66172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-andy-burnham","tag-britain","tag-by-election","tag-keir-starmer","tag-makerfield","tag-nigel-farage","tag-reform-uk"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116774759680147437","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}