In the little-known constituency of Makerfield in northern England, the leadership of the United Kingdom for the next three years could soon be decided, because a win for the Labour candidate could decide the leadership of the Labour Party, which currently governs the country with a large parliamentary majority.
Makerfield is a byelection, a one-off local election on 18 June triggered by the resignation of the sitting local Labour MP, who is standing down so that the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, can run to be the MP instead. Burnham wants to lead the Labour Party and therefore the country, and he has a lot of support, but he needs to be a Member of Parliament to do so.
The UK only recently held local elections in which Labour did so badly (losing almost 1,500 councillors) that it all but rendered Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer a lame duck, in office but not in power. Voters paved the way for huge advances for the smaller parties, notably the left-wing Greens and the right-wing nationalist party Reform UK, while the traditional ‘big two’ (Labour and the Conservatives) were roundly rejected in what felt like a political changing of the guard.
After decades of dominance there, Wales ditched Labour in favour of nationalist party Plaid Cymru. In Scotland, the nationalist SNP held onto power despite a long and troubled hegemony. In Makerfield, where most residents voted to leave the European Union a decade ago, every single ward went Reform’s way. Makerfield would once have been considered Labour’s heartland. In short, this is no walk in the park for either Burnham or Labour.
A safe pair of hands
The local elections threw Labour into something resembling civil war and appears to have fatally wounded prime minister. This is new territory for Labour; defenestrating leaders while in office has hitherto been a strictly Tory tradition. Starmer has occupied No.10 Downing Street for less than two years after being elected with a landslide, proving to be a safe pair of hands.
‘Abundance of caution’ could have been his motto, yet from the outset his government of shown a lack of it. Self-inflicted problems have included freebies donations, countless U-turns, and anaemic national growth. Starmer’s critics accuse him of a lacklustre performance, with poor communication skills. Yet it is his judgement that has been most called into question, not least when it came to his choice of Ambassador to the United States.
Lord Mandelson was already a known associate of the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when Starmer asked him to be the UK’s man in Washington, but the closeness of the Epstein-Mandelson relationship has since been revealed by the release of files. For a time, the whole Epstein scandal leapt over the Atlantic.
In the aftermath of the local elections, there was gossip about Starmer’s ability to survive, so he gave a speech to make-or-break his premiership, yet many thought it was flaccid, containing barely any new policy. The vultures began circling, but not until the King had delivered his speech outlining the next parliament’s agenda (in Britain, even the vultures respect constitutional decorum).
Ministers were asked whether they still supported the prime minister on their way into the next cabinet meeting. The studios were soon abuzz with excitable chatter about ‘stalking horses’ and ‘runners and riders.’ Starmer’s Labour government could be described as centre-left or soft-left, so pundits began analysing the policies of would-be leadership contenders.
It was left to former newspaper editor Andrew Neil to call this a new reductio ad absurdum of British politics and to protest that we are all caught up in the byzantine coils of the ruling party’s bureaucracy. He has a point, because the Labour party’s methods for conducting civil war are frighteningly complex.
And they’re off
Soon, the Minister for Health Wes Streeting made his move by resigning, foreshadowed by the resignations of his allies. But although he criticised Starmer and acknowledged that he had leadership ambitions, he did not launch a formal challenge. To do so, he would need the backing of around 80 members of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP). Some suggested that Streeting did not have the numbers. Streeting suggested that he was holding off to let Burnham stand.
To stand, Burnham has to be an MP, which meant finding a constituency, which meant asking a current Labour MP to stand down. Finally, after several days, he found Josh Simons in Makerfield. Simons had been a junior minister in Starmer’s government until March, when he had to step down after he was revealed to have ordered an investigation into journalists’ private lives. Some think this may be payback.
