A Crucial Test in Makerfield: Win or Lose, the Gig’s Up for Keir Starmer

Never, in the era of mass democracy, has so much hinged on the results of a single by-election and the performance of one man. But on Thursday, the voters of Makerfield, a constituency in Greater Manchester, could elect the next British prime minister. Whether or not they elect Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, they will be the nail in the coffin of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership for very different reasons.

For the last few weeks, the residents of Wigan, a town in the traditional Labour heartland, have been at the heart of the British political universe. Burnham has been selected by the Labour Party to stand in the by-election, after Labour MP Josh Simons announced his resignation. Burnham, a two-time leadership candidate, will hope that his potential return to Westminster on Thursday, will make his planned third crack at leadership the charm.

In the last few months, Sir Keir has faced a test to his political career akin to the churn that pushed out three consecutive Tory premiers. Burnham had faced a previously stiff challenge from the Reform Party candidate Robert Kenyon who ran for the Makerfield constituency in 2024, narrowly losing to Simons. According to The Standard’s aggregation of polls taken in the constituency, Burnham leads Kenyon with 46.6% of the vote, to Kenyon’s 39.3%, suggesting a narrow but clear lead for Burnham leading into Thursday’s election. Despite a cacophony of scandal plaguing Kenyon, Reform has remained within striking distance of Burnham.  

For Sir Keir, this poses a unique challenge, and a two-fold threat. If Burnham is returned to parliament on Thursday, the clock is set for a Labour leadership contest, one for which Burnham has effectively started campaigning, saying during a BBC Question Time special that he intended to join the burgeoning leadership contest, should voters send him to Westminster later this week.

If he loses, narrowly or comprehensively, the question Sir Keir will face on Friday will be what Labour’s response is to losing a constituency it has held since the 1980s, in the party’s traditional heartland. Much will be written about Sir Keir himself, but perhaps most important will be the confluence of events that make this Makerfield by-election the perfect storm that it is. Makerfield voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and Reform’s sweeping victories in the wards that make up the Makerfield constituency. Were they to upset Burnham on Thursday, they would be known as the party that slayed the King of the North. Yet, all of this will be laid at the feet of Sir Keir Starmer, something that Number 10 hopeful Wes Streeting, whose resignation as Health Secretary in May, set in motion the series of events that might deliver Andy Burnham to Downing Street, will undoubtably seek to leverage.

The consequences, either way, are a dire crisis for Sir Keir’s premiership. If Burnham wins, the voters of Makerfield will return to parliament someone whom Politico Europe reports is already rounding out the potential shape of his premiership. The Guardian has reported that members of the Parliamentary Labour Party are already jostling for jobs in his nascent, and still hypothetical, cabinet. Given that Burnham has yet to be elected, this is a remarkable signal of where Labour’s zeitgeist has moved, as well as the stakes for voters in Wigan, Ashton-in-Makerfield, and Hindley as they weigh their options.

Should Burnham lose, which polls suggest is unlikely, the consequences for Sir Keir are equally dire. Makerfield is a constituency the Labour and Co-operative Party have held since its creation in 1983, and should Reform flip it, it would force Labour to ask itself what has gone so wrong during Sir Keir’s premiership, that voters who have always backed Labour felt a need to repudiate the party.

That is what makes the Makerfield by-election so unusual. Throughout British history, there have been many by-elections that have, in retrospect, heralded the beginning of the end of a premiership, but in Makerfield, constituents are not voting one way or another based on local issues. They are fully aware that if they send Andy Burnham, the King of the North, to Westminster, they would be electing a man, who is expected to be Britain’s sixth premier in a decade. Burnham would perhaps gain a new honorific should he win: Conqueror of Westminster.