Andy Burnham won Makerfield with 54.8% of the vote, and Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon finished more than 9,000 votes behind. The result, reported by NBC News on June 18, turned a by-election in a working-class corner of northwest England into the opening round of a fight for Downing Street.
Within days Keir Starmer had resigned, and Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was the favourite to replace him. The win itself was the easy part.
A seat built for a leadership bid
Labour MP Josh Simons gave up his seat deliberately so Burnham could get into parliament. Once there, Burnham needed the backing of 81 Labour lawmakers to challenge Starmer. NBC noted that 110 of them had already signed a letter demanding the prime minister go.
“This now is the change moment,” Burnham told supporters after the count. “Everybody knows that politics isn’t working.”
His pitch to Makerfield voters was local first, then a warning. A Reform victory, he said, could push Britain “towards greater darkness and division, and end up somewhere like the United States of America.” Nigel Farage conceded his party had been “slightly hoisted with our own petard” once Burnham took up the message of replacing Starmer. Reform’s own candidate did not help: social media posts about women and abortion surfaced during the campaign.
What the numbers say about Reform
Makerfield is exactly the kind of seat Reform wants. That is why the margin drew attention. Analysts at The Conversation, writing on June 22, pointed out that Reform now holds six House of Commons seats and picked up 1,452 councillors in local elections. They also saw something in the Makerfield count itself: Green and Liberal Democrat support shrank as Burnham surged, while votes on the right split between Reform and the Restore party.
That fragmentation helped him. It may not repeat nationally.
The same writers credited his local standing, three decades of political experience and an anti-establishment tone, despite being a Labour man. He promised “hope” and a “more broadly consultative and collegial leadership style,” and floated “public control of transport, utilities and housing,” along with “a written constitution” and proportional representation.
Fantasy meets reality
Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, was blunt about the road ahead. Supporters, he said, have treated Burnham as “something of a fantasy leader,” a figure onto whom people project their own solutions. “Now, presuming he takes over from Starmer, that fantasy will collide with reality, and reality always wins.”
The Makerfield result cut against the wider national trend, which has favoured Reform over Labour. Burnham’s task as prime minister would be to show that one northwest by-election was a pattern, not an exception.
Sources
- Britain's Keir Starmer could face imminent challenge as key rival Andy Burnham wins special election
- Andy Burnham is favoured to become the next UK prime minister. Does his triumph offer lessons for defeating One Nation?
