Britain has had six prime ministers in the last decade and is about to install a seventh. This seems inevitable following the stunning victory of Andy Burnham, the erstwhile mayor of Manchester, in the crucial Makerfield by-election Thursday night. He received 55 percent of the vote and crushed the life out of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
The Labour prime minister, Keir Starmer, is now under intense pressure to hand over the keys of Number Ten Downing Street to wannabe Burnham tout de suite. Around 81 MPs are needed to trigger a leadership election under Labour’s rules. Burnham’s people claim they will have over 200 names by Sunday.
Starmer insisted as recently as two days ago that he was not going to quit, whatever happened in Makerfield. He had a job to do and he was going to finish it, having won a thumping general election victory only two years ago. If a leadership election happened, he said, he would be a candidate in it—as is his right.
But that now seems a forlorn hope, even a state of delusion. The political reality is that Andy Burnham’s momentum is unstoppable. Last weekend, a succession of senior Labour MPs, led by the Energy and Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, will be lining up to persuade Sir Keir that he should agree to an “orderly transition” to avoid a damaging leadership election that would only extend the crisis.
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