Andy Burnham’s decisive return to Westminster in the Makerfield by-election has been hailed by allies as the opening move in a campaign that could alter the trajectory of British politics, with the Greater Manchester mayor positioning himself as a direct challenger to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The contest, triggered by the resignation of Labour MP Josh Simons, was billed as a two-horse race between Burnham’s Labour party and the surging right-wing Reform UK. Pundits had anticipated a close fight, but by the early hours of Friday morning it became clear that Burnham had pulled off a barnstorming victory, taking 54.8% of the vote to Reform’s 34.5% — a lead of more than 20 percentage points. His majority of 9,231 votes over Reform candidate Robert Kenyon, a local council member, almost doubled the majority secured by his predecessor in the 2024 general election. Turnout hit 58.7%, the highest for a UK parliamentary by-election in nearly seven years, underlining the intensity of local interest. Reform UK’s performance was their second-best in a Westminster by-election to date.
The victory exceeded the expectations of all published opinion polls conducted during the campaign. In his victory speech, Burnham made little attempt to hide his ambition. “This is a final chance to change,” he said. “This is what people said directly to me on the hundreds of doorsteps that I stood on. We must hear it, we must act upon it and we must get it right. There will be no second chance.”
The result has been widely interpreted as a signal of a potential shift in British politics, giving Burnham the parliamentary platform he needed to mount a credible challenge for the Labour leadership and, ultimately, the premiership. It is a development that would have seemed improbable just months ago.
The reinvention of Andy Burnham: from Westminster insider to ‘King of the North’
Burnham’s journey back to Westminster is remarkable not because of his pedigree as a career politician, but because of the transformation he underwent during nine years away from Parliament. First elected as MP for Leigh in 2001, he rose quickly through New Labour’s ranks, serving as a junior minister under Tony Blair before being promoted to the cabinet by Gordon Brown, first as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport from 2008 to 2009, and then as Secretary of State for Health from 2009 to 2010. He also served as Shadow Home Secretary under Jeremy Corbyn from 2015 to 2016.
Yet by 2016, his ambitions had been twice thwarted. He ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 but withdrew before the final vote. In 2015 he tried again, only to finish second to veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. Facing a potentially long period in opposition, Burnham quit Westminster to run as Labour’s candidate for the newly created role of Mayor of Greater Manchester. In a blunt farewell speech, he declared that “voters have a problem with an out-of-touch elite who don’t seem to care”.
It was this decision that reshaped his political identity. Since taking office in 2017 — and winning re-election in 2021 and 2024 — Burnham has cultivated a powerful regional brand, revelling in the moniker “King of the North” for his robust championing of an area that has long ceased to be the UK’s economic engine. His closest friend in politics, Steve Rotheram, the mayor of the Liverpool City Region, has described how the role transformed the politician. “I’ve known him for 18 years. I saw the way he started to shape politics once he left Westminster,” Rotheram said. “Before that, politics was starting to shape him.”
Gone are the sharp suits and conservative ties of his ministerial years. Now Burnham dresses casually in dark suits, black T-shirts and bomber jackets, often sporting a pin badge bearing the worker bee — a symbol of Manchester’s industrial heritage. He has embraced a direct-to-voter communication style, posting folksy daily video clips from the campaign trail in which he addresses a hand-held camera, speaking frankly about the sense of neglect felt by people in towns like Ashton-in-Makerfield and its surrounding former coal-mining villages.
His political and economic philosophy has been dubbed “Manchesterism” — a model he describes as “business-friendly socialism”. In practice, this has meant bringing essential assets like transport and water into greater public control, forging closer partnerships between the state and business to spread the proceeds of wealth, and a huge expansion of devolution. The flagship policy is the Greater Manchester Bee Network, an integrated public transport system that brought buses back under local control. Burnham argues that this approach is a response to the “high inequality, low-growth trap” resulting from privatisation and over-centralisation since the 1980s, and it has been credited with contributing to Greater Manchester becoming the UK’s fastest-growing region in terms of gross value added per capita over the past decade. In a video launching his campaign to return to Westminster, he said this meant “the end of neoliberalism” and promised a national rollout of the model.
The contrast with Starmer — a forensic technocrat who has at times seemed to belong to another political era — could not be more stark. Described by friends as charming and funny in private, the prime minister’s public delivery is often stiff and overwhelmingly cautious, contributing to record low favourability ratings in opinion polls. Burnham, by contrast, has built a reputation as a strong communicator who is comfortable in his own skin, and has managed to position himself as a Westminster outsider despite his long background in national government.
Throughout his slick, fast-paced and social-media-friendly campaign, Burnham tapped into a deep sense of dissatisfaction. “People here have voted for change,” he said on Friday. “They have voted for more power for the north and everywhere forgotten by Westminster.”
The path to power: leadership rules and the challenges ahead
Burnham’s bid for the top job is far from guaranteed. Under Labour’s rules, a challenger needs nominations from 20% of Labour MPs — currently 81 parliamentarians — to trigger a leadership contest. The threshold was raised from 10% to 20% at the Labour Party Conference in 2021. Burnham, having now secured a seat in Parliament, is eligible to be nominated. The National Executive Committee sets the exact timings and procedures for any leadership election, which is initiated either by the leader’s resignation or a successful challenge.
Burnham’s allies are hoping that Starmer will opt for a more dignified exit, but the prime minister stated on Friday that he would contest any leadership battle, citing his mandate from the July 2024 general election. Starmer’s popularity has reportedly declined since that landslide victory, with criticism mounting over his handling of the cost of living crisis and the state of public services.
While Burnham’s people-pleasing style has been praised at a regional level, critics warn it could prove a liability in the highest office. In recent weeks he has had to row back from previous suggestions that the UK should be less beholden to the reactions of bond traders, and that he would like to see the UK rejoin the European Union within his lifetime. It is likely that both Reform UK and the Conservatives will attempt to paint him as a left-winger who will hike taxes and be profligate with taxpayers’ money. “People don’t want hard socialism under Burnham,” one Reform parliamentarian said on Friday.
Burnham, however, describes himself as a democratic socialist and while he is associated with the left wing of his party, his record as Manchester mayor earned him a reputation for pragmatism. He has indicated a willingness to consider changes to income tax personal allowance to support lower earners, suggested reallocating funds towards social housing, and expressed openness to further public control of utilities. He has vowed to adhere to existing fiscal rules and Labour’s manifesto promise not to raise taxes on working people.
If Burnham can secure the necessary nominations, the annual Labour Party conference — scheduled for October in his birthplace of Liverpool — could become less of a party gathering and more of a coronation. For now, the self-styled King of the North is back in Westminster, and the question of whether he can seize the crown remains open.
