Burnham should bide his time

Former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election last Thursday by a huge majority, comfortably trouncing the far right of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the same area in Greater Manchester where Reform had won all the seats in local government elections as recently as last May.

Burnham proved he can defeat Reform UK which has been gaining support from Labour voters and caused panic amongst Labour MPs, many of whom now want prime minister Keir Starmer to resign in favour of Burnham.

As a member of parliament, he is now poised to challenge a sitting Labour prime minister barely two years into a five-year term that Labour won by a landslide in 2024. It is an extraordinary situation for a Labour prime minister to face such a challenge so early in his premiership.

Starmer is not electorally strong enough to threaten a snap general election to discipline his parliamentary party. British prime ministers have the power to seek a dissolution of parliament from the King earlier that the five-year maximum and the convention is that the King must grant it. The power was taken away in 2011 and restored in 2022 and only used as a Machiavellian survival manoeuvre once when Harold Wilson threatened dissolution in 1967 after he discovered a plot to remove him.

Starmer’s preferred course is to say this is a very bad time to engage in a leadership contest but if one were triggered, he would fight for his job.

As leader of the Labour Party, Starmer is automatically on the ballot in any leadership election. Any potential challenger, however, would need the backing of 20 per cent of Labour MPs – currently 81 members – to trigger a contest.

Former Greater Manchester Mayor and newly elected Makerfield MP Andy Burnham addresses members and supporters after he won the Makerfield by-election

As prime minister, Starmer must command the confidence of parliament. It is why the leader of the party with an overall majority is asked to form a government and why the convention is to call a general election if the prime minister loses a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

If a prime minister loses the support of his party in parliament he or she can resign or soldier on and fight off any challenge to the leadership of his party. At present, despite pressure from both friends and foes to bow out gracefully, Starmer appears determined to stay.

Labour MPs are naturally concerned they would keep their seats in the next general election in 2029 because many of them have very small majorities. The pressure to replace Starmer gathered momentum after Labour lost the local elections to Reform UK in the recent local elections due to a strange personal dislike of the prime minister – hard to believe as the prime minister is so quintessentially English.

Boris Johnson said after he was forced to resign as PM in 2022 that “the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves”. The coming weeks may reveal whether Labour MPs are beginning to move as a herd.

A change of leader is not the answer right now and on closer examination Andy Burnham is hardly a political phenomenon. It is difficult to comprehend how this yesterday’s man has all of a sudden become suitable to become UK prime minister.

If he were to challenge Starmer, it would be his third and most ruthless attempt at becoming Labour leader. He was defeated by Ed Milliband in the contest after Gordon Brown lost the 2010 election. He tried again in 2015 when Ed Milliband lost the 2015 election but lost very badly to Jeremy Corbyn of the hard left who did not even want to run until he was nominated as an outsider by Margaret Becket, a Labour Party grandee to offer party members a wide choice.

Burnham’s ministerial career under prime ministers Blair and Brown 2003-10 was unremarkable and he contributed little as opposition spokesman on education, health and home affairs between 2010-17.

He gave up national politics in 2017 and moved north to become mayor of Manchester where he was reelected for a third term in 2024 and by all accounts has been a very good mayor. But he has been away from Westminster politics for nine years and you would think he needs at least a couple of years to readjust before seeking to replace the prime minister.

As an elected MP he automatically ceased being mayor and it will be interesting to see if Labour holds onto the mayoralty of Manchester. Keir Starmer is right that the responsible thing for Burnham to do right now is to concentrate on ensuring that Manchester returns a Labour mayor to replace him as it would damage the Labour Party electorally if Reform UK won the mayoralty in Manchester Burnham abandoned.

As Starmer won the 2024 general election for the Labour Party by a huge overall majority just two years ago and has democratic legitimacy, Burnham is best advised to bide his time until the next general election in 2029 comes into prospect.

The democratically proper time for any challenge to Starmer, assuming he is still as unpopular as the polls suggest, is after he has served four of the five years he was elected for as leader of the Labour Party to serve as prime minister.

Britain does not directly vote for a prime minister in a general election, but party leaders do win elections. So, a political party whose leader wins an election has a democratic obligation to the electorate not to replace him as prime minister prematurely. To do so would mean the party, not the country, elects its prime minister which is fundamentally undemocratic if not unconstitutional.

Starmer should take a leaf out of the Tony Blair Blair’s playbook and agree that he would make way for Burnham – like Blair promised Brown – but only when the 2029 general election appears on the political horizon and only if he is still unpopular.