london —
Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, is set to challenge British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the premiership after he returned to parliament after winning a by-election in Makerfield, north-west England.
Thursday’s election, the US equivalent of a special election, paved the way for Burnham to join Downing Street.
Despite being one of the country’s most popular politicians, he was previously unable to challenge Starmer for leadership of the ruling Labor Party and the country because he is not a sitting Member of Parliament (MP).
But two years after Labor’s landslide general election victory, Mr Starmer’s popularity and authority have eroded, while Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing party Reform UK and the populist left-wing Green Party have soared in the polls.
Allies said Mr Burnham was the only one who could halt the party’s electoral decline in a way that the highly unpopular Mr Starmer could not.
And Burnham’s sweeping victory over the Reform Party, just weeks after Labor was defeated in local elections, has also given him a huge boost.
Already on Friday, some Labor MPs repeated calls for Starmer to resign, although Mr Burnham himself avoided explicitly mentioning his leadership ambitions.
After the results were announced, Burnham said, “Everyone knows that politics isn’t working.” “Everyone feels this country is not where it should be. Tonight could be the tipping point.”
There is a growing sense of crisis within the Labor Party, with Mr Starmer vowing to fight any leadership challenge.
Over the past few years, Burnham has quietly become one of the country’s most popular politicians. His charismatic persona has managed to mask the contradictions in his public image, including his insistence that he is a Westminster outsider despite becoming a parliamentary investigator at 24, a special assistant at 28 and a first-time MP at 31.
During his 16 years as an MP, he served in both Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s governments, eventually rising to the post of health secretary, before making two unsuccessful bids for the Labor leadership in 2010 and 2015. In its second leadership election, it was defeated by Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran socialist whose victory shifted the party to the left.
Mr Burnham initially served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, but his appointment as Manchester mayor in 2017 allowed him to largely sideline the factional wars that consumed Labor during and immediately after Corbyn’s government.
So while many on the Labor left despise Starmer for his role in moving the party towards the center and forcing Corbyn out of the party, Burnham has little connection to this era.
And as mayor of Manchester, he proved capable of standing up to Westminster on a case that encapsulated the long-standing north-south divide in British politics, honing his outsider status and earning him the nickname “King of the North.”
During his tenure, Greater Manchester’s economy grew rapidly, and he oversaw improvements to the public transport network as well as the launch of a major housebuilding program.
His deputy mayor, Kate Green, told CNN that he had “clear ambitions for Greater Manchester: economic success, social inclusion and the ability for everyone to live a prosperous life in the city”.
“He has also been very focused on making a difference in people’s everyday lives.”
Other key promises, such as an ambitious pledge to end homelessness in Manchester by 2020, have not been delivered, and critics argue that much of the foundation for Mr Burnham’s major achievements was already laid when he took power.
Still, as the face of Manchester’s revitalization, Burnham assumed the profile of a US governor-style regional leader.
There’s an old joke in Labor circles that pokes fun at Burnham’s chameleon-like ability to fit in with whatever ideas are current on the left at the time. There’s a joke: “Blairites, Brownites and Corbynites are coming to the pub.” “The bartender says, ‘Andy, what are you drinking?’
Lotte Hargrave, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, said Mr Burnham has taken on many guises but is more broadly “linked to the ‘soft left’ of the Labor Party”. “Maybe a little further to the left than Starmer, but definitely to the right of someone like Corbyn.”
Burnham then became associated, at least in the media, with “Manchesterism”, a term referring to his time as mayor of Manchester.
For Burnham, “Manchesterism” means, as he said in his campaign launch video, “business-friendly socialism” or “the end of neoliberalism, the end of trickle-down economics that excluded places like Makerfield.”
Most importantly, for Matthew Lawrence, founder of the Commonwealth Think Tank, who is seen as one of the intellectual voices behind Burnham, Manchesterism requires “better management of essential services such as housing, water, energy and transport, which are systematically outsourced, deregulated and privatized”.
Other pillars of Manchesterism, Lawrence said, include the devolution of power from Westminster to other towns and cities across the country and a “pro-business culture… but trying to do it on terms that directly benefit working people”.
The plan is not that different from some of the policies already being pursued by the current Labor government. A public investment company, Great British Energy, was established to help finance clean power, and Great British Railway was established to bring the rail network under stronger public control.
“There are some real similarities and continuities in the discussion,” Lawrence acknowledged. “It’s not necessarily a fundamental change, but it’s a big acceleration.”
With Burnham back on the political scene, a leadership battle seems all but inevitable. Labor has been teetering on the brink of a vote for weeks after a disastrous local election result, and only Mr Burnham’s failure to run so far seems to have delayed it.
As Labor’s popularity wanes over its two years in power, the party is beginning to splinter as it tries to establish a diagnosis and remedy for the country’s many problems. Adding further urgency to that effort is the need to prevent a Reform Britain from winning a general election.
And a potential Burnham policy platform would face the same spending and political constraints as Starmer. Britain has little money to spend, while the domestic political situation is becoming increasingly unstable.
If Mr Burnham moves too far to the right on issues such as immigration, he risks losing Labour’s progressive graduate base in urban areas to the populist left-wing Green Party, but if he moves too far to the left he risks alienating his traditional working-class base.
During the campaign, Burnham tiptoed around these fault lines, aligning his positions more closely with those of Makerfield’s working-class voters.
On immigration issues, he has maintained a position close to that of the current government, backing Home Minister Shabana Mahmoud’s plan to abolish permanent refugee status and backtracking on previous calls to allow immigrants without permanent status to claim benefits.
Similarly, some turmoil in financial markets has led him to tone down his criticism of fiscal rules, self-imposed constraints that require governments to spend less than they borrow. Regarding Brexit, he has distanced himself from comments he made in September when he said he wanted to see Britain rejoin the EU in his lifetime.
He will take his seat in the National Assembly with the eyes of the nation watching his every move.
