Οn Thursday 18 June 2026, voters in Makerfield will cast ballots in what appears to be a routine by-election in a Greater Manchester constituency. In reality, they will be voting on something far more consequential: whether Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, will gain the parliamentary seat he needs to mount a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer.
The stakes could not be higher. Labour is in open crisis with the Prime Minister’s approval rating collapsing to -46%, one of the worst in modern British political history. By mid-May, over 95 Labour MPs had publicly called on Starmer to resign or set out a timetable for his departure. The party that won the 2024 general election with a landslide majority of 172 seats now faces the prospect of a leadership contest before the decade is out. And Andy Burnham, the popular Mayor of Greater Manchester, has positioned himself as the frontrunner to replace him.
This is not a story about one seat. This is a story about power, ambition, and whether Labour’s old guard can hold on to control of the party it has led for less than two years.
Why this by-election matters
On 14 May 2026, Josh Simons, the sitting Labour MP for Makerfield, announced his resignation. His statement was extraordinary: he was standing down specifically to give Andy Burnham the opportunity to contest the seat and return to Parliament. Simons, an MP who had held the seat since 2024, was voluntarily removing himself from the House of Commons. In doing so, he was participating in what The Guardian described as a manoeuvre not seen since the 1965 Leyton by-election, a sitting MP resigning to create a vacancy for a political figure not currently in Parliament.
This was not a spontaneous decision. Burnham and his allies had clearly orchestrated the move. It reflected a political reality that had become impossible to ignore: Burnham cannot run for the Labour leadership without a seat in Parliament. The party’s rulebook is explicit. To stand as a candidate for Labour leader, you must be a Labour MP. Burnham, despite being one of the most popular figures in the Labour Party, has been serving as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. While that role has given him executive experience and regional influence, it has left him locked out of the leadership race.
The question of why Burnham needs a parliamentary seat now, rather than waiting until the next general election in 2029, reveals everything about the urgency of Labour’s crisis. For months, speculation had been building that Burnham might attempt to return to Parliament through a by-election. In January 2026, he formally requested permission from Labour’s National Executive Committee to stand in the Gorton and Denton by-election. Starmer and his allies saw the threat. They voted 8 to 1 to block Burnham’s candidacy, citing concerns about triggering an unnecessary mayoral by-election. Burnham withdrew, disappointed and humiliated.
The Green Party won Gorton and Denton, taking a traditionally safe Labour seat. The message was clear: Starmer had sacrificed electoral advantage to prevent Burnham from entering Parliament. Labour MPs were furious. They saw the block as confirmation that Starmer was using the machinery of the party to protect his position against rivals. It accelerated calls for his removal. And it made it clear that if Burnham wanted to return to Westminster, he would need another opportunity. Josh Simons provided it.
The Labour crisis: how Starmer lost his party
To understand why Makerfield matters, you need to understand why Labour is in such turmoil. Keir Starmer won the 2024 general election decisively. Labour’s 172-seat majority was the largest in the party’s modern history. But it came with a caveat that has proven increasingly troubling: Starmer achieved this majority with just 34% of the vote, the smallest share of the popular vote of any majority government since records began in 1830. From the beginning, his mandate was fragile.
The first year of the Starmer government has been defined by disappointment and anger. The government inherited an economy still struggling with the aftermath of the previous decade’s austerity, currency instability following Brexit, and a cost-of-living crisis that had not abated. Starmer promised change. Instead, he has presided over a government that has raised taxes, reformed welfare, taken a cautious approach to Gaza that has infuriated the left of his party, and failed to deliver the dramatic improvement in living standards that voters expected.
The May 2026 local elections were catastrophic. Labour lost 1,496 councillors. Reform UK, the party led by Nigel Farage that had surged in national polling, gained 1,453 councillors and emerged as a genuine political force at local level. The Conservatives, despite being in opposition, also lost seats. But it was Labour that bore the brunt of public anger. In the May elections, the party discovered a horrifying truth: it was losing voters simultaneously to the left and the right. Progressive voters angry about Gaza and welfare reform were abandoning the party. Working-class voters in traditional Labour heartlands were flocking to Reform UK, attracted by the party’s anti-establishment message and its promises to prioritize British workers.
By mid-May, 97 Labour MPs had called on Starmer to resign or announce a timetable for his departure. One cabinet minister, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, and four junior ministers, including Jess Phillips, resigned in protest at the government’s direction. The party that had presented itself as united and disciplined in 2024 was now in open revolt. Party members were divided. According to LabourList, 159 Labour members supported Starmer, 98 called for his resignation or a departure timeline, and 146 remained undecided or silent.
Starmer has not resigned. He has vowed to remain as Prime Minister and has stated publicly that he would stand in a leadership contest if one were called. But few in Westminster believe he can survive. The consensus is that a formal challenge will come within weeks or months of the Makerfield by-election result, and that it is only the identity of Starmer’s challenger that remains uncertain.
Andy Burnham: the northern hope
Andy Burnham is not a fresh face in British politics. He is a 57-year-old politician who has spent the last two decades in public life, serving in Parliament, in the shadow cabinet, and in government. But he is also a politician who understands something fundamental about contemporary British politics that Starmer appears to have forgotten: the importance of the North.
Burnham was born in Stockport, a working-class town in Greater Manchester. He grew up in a family without privilege. He studied at Cambridge University—he is no radical—but he never lost his connection to the communities of the North that shaped him. He was an MP for Leigh, a Red Wall seat, for twelve years. He served as Health Secretary under Ed Miliband. And since 2017, he has been Mayor of Greater Manchester, a role in which he has carved out a reputation as an effective regional leader willing to stand up to central government.
As Mayor, Burnham has negotiated devolution deals with Westminster, securing additional powers and funding for Greater Manchester. He has built relationships with business and civic leaders across the region. He has positioned himself as a voice for working people and communities left behind by decades of austerity and industrial decline. He is media-savvy, comfortable in interviews, able to connect with voters, and capable of articulating a vision of what Labour should be doing that resonates across traditional party divides.
Most importantly, Burnham has something Starmer increasingly lacks: popularity. A Survation poll of Labour members conducted on 13 and 14 May 2026 found that 61% would support Burnham in a hypothetical head-to-head leadership contest against Starmer, compared to just 28% who would back the Prime Minister. These numbers are striking. They suggest that if a leadership contest were held, Burnham would win decisively.
Why would Labour members prefer Burnham to their sitting Prime Minister? The answer lies in what Burnham represents. He is from the North, a region that Labour has consistently struggled to hold since 2016. He has executive experience actually running things—not just voting in Parliament, but managing a budget, delivering services, negotiating with business. He is not tainted by the Gaza war controversy that has divided Labour’s left wing. He is seen as authentic, connected to working communities, and willing to listen to criticism from his party. He represents, in other words, a different Labour.
The Makerfield race: Burnham’s path to Parliament
The by-election polling tells a story of a race that is far tighter than it appears on the surface. According to the latest poll from More in Common and UCL Policy Lab, conducted from 28 May to 12 June 2026, Burnham is ahead. He stands at 45% of the vote, compared to 40% for Reform UK’s candidate Robert Kenyon. But the margin of error in this poll is ±4.3 percentage points. This means the real level of support for each candidate could be anywhere within a range of roughly 5 points in either direction. In practical terms, this is a toss-up.
The context makes this even more striking. In the 2024 general election, Labour won Makerfield with 45.2% of the vote. Reform UK finished second with 31.8%. That was a Labour lead of 13.4 percentage points in a constituency the party thought it could rely on. Since then, Reform has surged 8 points nationally. In Makerfield, if the polling is accurate, Reform has closed the gap from 13.4 points to just 5 points.
What explains this shift? The May 2026 local elections provided a powerful signal. Reform’s breakthrough in council elections demonstrated that the party is no longer a fringe curiosity but a genuine political force. Voters who might once have dismissed Reform as a protest vote now see it as a viable alternative. This is particularly true in working-class communities in the North, precisely the communities where Labour has struggled since 2016 and where Reform has made its strongest gains.
Makerfield is a Red Wall seat, the type of constituency that Labour held for decades before the 2016 Brexit referendum scrambled traditional voting patterns. It is a place where working people feel let down by Westminster. The cost of living crisis has bitten hard. Communities feel they have been neglected. And now they see an insurgent party offering a different vision. Against this backdrop, Burnham’s personal popularity and his Greater Manchester profile are the main things keeping Labour ahead.
What happens if Burnham wins?
If Burnham wins on Thursday, he will enter Parliament with a mandate. He will be the MP for a constituency that, in conventional politics, should have been a safe Labour hold but became genuinely competitive. He will have defeated Reform UK in a Red Wall seat. And he will immediately become the strongest challenger to Keir Starmer’s leadership.
The mechanics of a Labour leadership contest are straightforward. Under current party rules, if 20% of Labour MPs call for a vote of no confidence in the leader, one is automatically triggered. There are currently 348 Labour MPs in Parliament. That means 70 MPs would need to call for a confidence vote. Given that 97 MPs have already called for Starmer to resign, triggering a confidence vote would be trivial. Once triggered, MPs vote. If the leader loses, party members then vote on who should replace him.
A Burnham victory in Makerfield would be the trigger many Labour MPs have been waiting for. It would demonstrate that he can win elections in difficult circumstances. It would give him momentum. It would provide him with a platform in Parliament from which to articulate an alternative vision for the party. And it would give his supporters the ammunition they need to push for a confidence vote.
If that vote is triggered, the path to a Burnham leadership is clear. Among Labour members, he would almost certainly win, based on the polling evidence. He would then face a choice: call an election immediately, attempt to stabilize the party and government, or both. Whatever he chose, a Burnham victory in Makerfield would almost certainly result in him becoming Prime Minister within weeks or months.
What if Burnham loses?
A Burnham defeat would be dramatic. It would mean Reform UK has taken its first Westminster seat won directly from Labour, a symbolically powerful breakthrough for Farage’s party in territory it has never previously held. It would shatter Burnham’s carefully constructed narrative of inevitability. It would undermine his claim to be the person who can win back Red Wall seats from Reform. And it would likely destroy his immediate prospects for the leadership.
But even a defeat would not necessarily save Starmer. A Reform victory would trigger an even deeper crisis. It would confirm that Labour is losing working-class votes to Reform in constituencies it thought it could hold. It would raise urgent questions about whether Starmer has the political skill to compete with Farage’s party. And it would accelerate calls for Starmer to go—though without a clear successor waiting.
A Burnham defeat would leave Labour leadership contest potentially open to other candidates. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has ambitions. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has been receiving advice from former Prime Minister Tony Blair, is seen as a potential contender. Deputy Leader Angela Rayner has declared, “I’m not dead yet,” signalling her willingness to run. A leadership race without Burnham would be far more unpredictable, with multiple candidates dividing the vote.
Why Thursday matters
British politics has a habit of moving slowly. Leadership contests take months. General elections are scheduled years in advance. But every so often, a moment arrives that crystallizes everything that has been building beneath the surface. Thursday 18 June 2026 is one of those moments.
The Makerfield by-election is not just about one seat in Greater Manchester. It is a referendum on whether Keir Starmer can hold his party together. It is a test of whether Labour can compete with Reform UK in working-class communities. It is a demonstration of whether Andy Burnham has the political skill and popular support to become Labour’s next leader. And it is a moment that could determine who leads Britain through to the next general election and beyond.
If Burnham wins, a leadership contest will almost certainly follow within weeks. Labour will enter the most turbulent period of its recent history, with the party effectively in limbo while members vote on their next leader. The government will be in a state of uncertainty. But there is a possibility, perhaps a real one, that Labour will emerge with a leader who is more popular with members, more trusted in the North, and more capable of competing with Reform UK for working-class votes.
If Burnham loses, Labour’s crisis will deepen. The party will face a leadership contest anyway, but without a clear frontrunner. Starmer may attempt to limp on, hoping that events change the political dynamic. Or he may be forced out within days, with the party in freefall. Either way, Labour will be weakened heading toward the 2029 general election.
For voters watching from the outside, what matters is this: something significant is happening in British politics. The consensus that held for two years, that Starmer could serve a full term as Prime Minister and lead Labour into the next election—has collapsed. What replaces it remains uncertain. But Thursday’s by-election result will go a long way toward answering that question.
Vote in Makerfield on Thursday. The outcome will reverberate far beyond Greater Manchester.
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