Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has secured a landslide victory in a tense northern England by-election, gaining the momentum to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the Labour Party leadership and the UK premiership.
Results released early Friday showed Burnham defeated his nearest rival, Robert Kenyon—candidate of the anti-immigration Reform UK party—for the Makerfield parliamentary seat. The win gives him the House of Commons seat needed to launch a campaign for prime minister.
Observers say Burnham’s victory could force Prime Minister Starmer to resign or trigger a leadership race between the incumbent PM, the former mayor, and former Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
Burnham is widely seen as the strongest contender for prime minister if he challenges Starmer. In an Ipsos poll published earlier this week, 25% of British adults named Burnham their preferred prime minister, compared to 12% for Starmer.
If he replaces Starmer, Burnham—who led the 2015 Labour leadership race before finishing second to Jeremy Corbyn—would become Britain's seventh prime minister since the 2016 Brexit vote.
After leading Labour to a landslide general election victory in 2024, Starmer faces mounting pressure to resign amid widespread public discontent. Internal calls for his resignation have grown since Labour suffered heavy losses in local and regional elections in May.
Twenty ministers have resigned from Starmer’s government in under two years, nearly half citing lost confidence in his leadership or policy clashes, including Streeting. Starmer has rejected resignation calls, vowing to fight any challenge and insisting a leadership contest would be “bad for the country.”
Dubbed the “king of the north” for his grassroots appeal across northern England and willingness to challenge Westminster, Burnham campaigned on a promise to “change Labour” in order to “change politics and the country.” As Greater Manchester mayor, he built a following in underdeveloped northern areas by tapping into populist themes of elite indifference and industrial decline.
First elected mayor in 2017 and re-elected in 2021 and 2024, Burnham has criticized Britain’s political system as “too London-centric” and attacked neoliberal and trickle-down economic policies that he says “didn’t trickle down much at all.”
He previously held ministerial posts under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Before the vote, he was the narrow favorite, leading Kenyon by 5 points in an Opinium poll.
The Makerfield seat was previously held by Labour’s Josh Simons, who resigned last month to clear the way for Burnham to challenge Starmer. About 75,000 people were eligible to vote in the constituency, about 200 miles northwest of London. Turnout reached 58.75%, up from 52.4% in the 2024 general election.
