Good news is rather hard to come by these days, and so must be welcome whenever possible. Last night, Andy Burnham won his by-election in Makerfield and that really ought to be celebrated. For weeks, there had been worries that Reform could, somehow, manage to swing it and send yet another MP to Parliament. Restore, too, was making its first proper showing at a British election, and there was no telling how the extreme-right party would fare.
Others also worried that progressives might split the vote, or that constituents in the seat had simply had enough of the Labour party, even if the candidate was an attractive one. In the end, none of it came to pass. Labour won with 55% of the vote – a higher share than it received at the election in 2024 – and soundly beat Reform, which only managed to reach 35%. Restore, meanwhile, did get 6.8% of the vote, though the figure merely mirrors the 7.4% the British National Party got in the seat in 2010.
The Greens and the Lib Dems’ vote share, meanwhile, was invisible to the naked eye, and a hearty sign that the progressive alliance, informal and unspoken as it may be, is alive and well. Today is, in short, a good day. What comes tomorrow may not be all that easy, however.
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Andy Burnham won big in Makerfield last night but it was a by-election that never needed to happen; a dangerous bout of vanity he thankfully got away with. The message he offered voters was also an unusual one. Well, not Labour’s official slogan, or the one written on the many placards shown on the news: instead, everyone knew that, really, you should be voting Burnham if you wanted to get Starmer out. Clearly, that was a popular offer.
The only problem, really, is that it isn’t clear Andy Burnham actually would be a better prime minister than Keir Starmer. In fact, it is worth wondering if the former mayor of Greater Manchester doesn’t suffer from exactly the same personality defects as the man he’s seeking to replace.
For a start, both men have a tendency to try and please everyone, disappointing them all as a result. A number of politicians suffer from this deeply human flaw, but it is especially pronounced in the pair of them. What it means in practice is that they often seem incredibly indecisive and conflict-averse, appearing to flip and flop this way and that, instead of charting a course and remaining on it.
Another issue is that Starmer and Burnham were both cursed with personalities that are more reactive than proactive. The prime minister fared well as a shadow minister then as leader of the opposition, specifically because he didn’t have to set out the terms of engagement himself. Once he found himself in a position where he had to act as the agenda setter, he crumbled.
Meanwhile, many people noticed that Burnham flourished once he left Westminster and became mayor. There are a number of reasons for that – one of them being that he never had to be put in charge of hundreds of restless Labour MPs.
But another is that he got to define himself in opposition to others. At first, it was against the Conservative government he was fighting; after that the King of the North merely kept his battle going against Westminster, and those Londoners who think they know better than anyone.
It was a useful shtick, and gave him a good rhetorical framework with which to govern, but it simply isn’t possible to take that mindset into Downing Street. There isn’t even a European Union to rail against anymore. Will he, too, like Starmer’s government, start blaming the civil service blob as a way to fashion an enemy out of thin air?
It also feels worth pointing out that, though the Labour party currently loves to love Burnham, their history wasn’t always that simple. Makerfield’s new MP stood for the leadership in 2010 and in 2015 and he lost both times, and was often (gently and not-so-gently) mocked in the process.
Of course, it is possible that his time up north has changed him, and the party is now able to see him for what he is, but managing various, warring left factions isn’t for the faint of heart, and can only be done by someone who commands the respect of the party’s many wings.
Can that really happen when, already, he speaks to Labour’s left with one corner of his mouth while getting his allies to tell Shabana Mahmood that she’ll stay in post and will be able to keep her stringent immigration policies on track?
Or maybe all of that can wait, at least for a while. Last night’s results could have been disastrous and they weren’t, and it’s worth stopping for a moment and savouring that. Complicated conversations can wait til tomorrow.
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