Burnham’s bye-bye by-election for Starmer

Sometimes in politics, your opponents throw shit at you. Sometimes, shit just happens. Either way, it’s messy, smelly, humiliating.

Having endured months of political misery since becoming prime minister, Keir Starmer is now facing up to more of the same. Whether it’s by unhappy accident or Machiavellian design doesn’t matter.

The decision of former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne to retire from politics means his hitherto safe Gorton and Denton seat must hold a by-election at which Reform will throw everything. But Nigel Farage is not Starmer’s biggest problem there. If the prime minister’s rival Andy Burnham is going to make a run for the leadership, he will get no better opportunity than the one given to him by Gwynne.

Despite Labour’s national unpopularity, Gorton and Denton is very winnable for Burnham. It’s in the Manchester mayoralty region – where he has some personal cachet – and it has come up at just the right time. The early gossip in Labour circles is clear: if Burnham doesn’t attempt to make a run at it, he is effectively giving up on a return to Westminster.

That combination of factors obviously raises suspicions that Gwynne’s decision to step down has been orchestrated. He has been suspended from the party over offensive WhatsApp messages, so has an axe to grind against the leadership. He is from the soft left of the party, much of which feels particularly betrayed by Starmer’s rightward shift. And he is a traditional ally of Burnham.

All of this will surely look suspicious to paranoid minds within No 10. But it is also the case that Andrew Gwynne has been in poor health for two years, has largely absented himself from Westminster over that time, and had ruled out deliberately doing Burnham any favours. Some Labour figures who know him believe Gwynne is simply stepping aside because he needs to, and because he believes his constituents deserve an MP who can dedicate themselves to the job.

Whatever the reasons for the decision, Starmer’s situation is deeply unenviable. No serving prime minister relishes the prospect of a by-election. A by-election in which your primary leadership rival might be the candidate is an even worse option. And that’s only the half of it.

Before the election contest proper comes the battle to decide who will be able to stand as Labour’s official candidate – a process controlled by Labour’s National Executive Committee, on which Starmer loyalists are believed to hold a majority.

That leaves the PM with a few possible options and outcomes. He could try to block Andy Burnham and succeed, try and fail to block Burnham, or choose not to interfere in the race. Burnham is by no means a shoo-in for selection even if Number 10 doesn’t directly act to block him.

If Burnham runs for parliament and wins, he becomes ineligible to serve out the rest of his term as mayor for Greater Manchester – meaning Labour would face a second, potentially even higher profile by-election, as well as endless Westminster drama over a challenge to Starmer. If he runs and loses, Labour faces having a lame duck Manchester mayor as well as a lost seat.

The NEC might well choose to block Burnham – perhaps using the mechanism of an all-woman shortlist – even without No 10 interfering to secure that. If they did so, disgruntled figures within Labour would surely blame Starmer and No 10 anyway.

All of this is fuel for endless internal political drama, with lots of potential to further piss off left wing MPs and members already tempted by the Green Party or Liberal Democrats. But then there is the matter of the by-election itself.

Gwynne comfortably held his Gorton and Denton constituency by a majority of just over 13,400 in the 2024 election, but few think this is enough to qualify the seat as ‘safe’ in 2026. Reform were a distant second in the seat with just over 5,000 votes, and would be sure to make a challenge.

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The Green Party, though, secured almost as many votes, and the constituency could also prove a tempting target for a “Gaza independent” or Your Party candidate to stand.

The favourite theory of Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney’s is that at the ballot box, voters tempted by the Greens, Lib Dems, or other left wing options will ultimately rally back to Labour to stop Reform. Gorton and Denton could easily prove that wrong: Zack Polanski’s Greens have zero reasons to do Starmer any favours, and will likely run an aggressive campaign in the seat. Labour will need every bit of help it can get to win the seat – and realistically, a Starmer loyalist would be about the worst candidate they could stand.

Burnham, though, with a strong personal brand, might have a better chance of holding the seat for Labour – but given how openly he is gunning for Starmer’s job, that would only create more problems in turn.

The best-case scenario for Starmer here is a dismal one: Burnham running for the seat and losing would solve one problem, but it would also panic dozens of Labour MPs, who would realise that their chances of holding their own seats would be similarly grim. There are simply no good outcomes in Starmer’s near future.

Ever since its earliest days, Starmer’s No 10 has perennially been trying to manage a successful relaunch. It has failed time and again, with its polling and popularity dropping all the while. In recent weeks, though, there has been a faint hope that less gloomy economic news and the ditching of yet more unpopular policies just might spark a mini-revival.

But now, whatever motivated it, Gwynne’s decision to step down has doomed yet another relaunch. Labour is doomed to months more of internal psychodrama, throughout the context and the fallout from it.

Neither Gwynne nor Burnham has created the weaknesses in Labour nor in its electoral position. But they will inevitably expose them in the weeks to come, and they will force the party to publicly air its dirty laundry in the run-up to crucial elections in May.

Maybe all of that was deliberate, and maybe it wasn’t. It truly doesn’t matter: a miserable few months for No 10 is now all but guaranteed. Cue shit-eating grins all round.