Labour, By-Elections and Burnham
When Andrew Gwynne stood down as the MP for Gorton and Denton, he not only triggered a by-election, he set off a bomb under the Labour Party. Gorton should be a walk-over for Labour – Gwynne won the seat in 2024 with a majority of over 13,000 and the constituency is in solid Labour territory. And yet, the by-election has caused seismic tremors in the Party’s High Command. Understanding why is key to understanding what is wrong with Labour.
The Gorton and Denton By-Election
Gorton and Denton is a microcosm of the challenges facing Starmer and Labour. The seat is split between white, working-class voters and Muslim voters. The battle-lines are drawn, with Reform hand-picking their candidate to deliver a hardline message on immigration, integration and crime. On the other side of the political dividing line, the Greens are pitching their campaign on an appeal to the Muslim vote, with a campaign centred on Gaza and the cost of living. And Labour, it seemed, had the perfect riposte to the threats from left and right in the popular figure of the Labour Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham - a Minister under the last Labour Government and a candidate capable of unifying a bloc of support on the left, trusted by working-class voters, someone both acceptable to Muslim voters and popular with young professionals.
And yet, under instruction, apparently, from the PM, the NEC (Labour’s High Command) refused to endorse Burnham as the Labour candidate, arguing that to allow him to contest the seat would expose the Manchester Mayoralty to the risk of being won by Reform - since Burnham won 214 out of 215 wards when he was last elected in 2024, that risk did not seem particularly significant.
If Andy Burnham had stood in the by-election, he would no doubt have made much of his record of solid achievement as Mayor of Manchester. He would have shown in public what his supporters say in private – a sense of optimism and acute diagnosis of the UK’s problems of “deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit” (which would have pointed the finger of blame squarely at the Tories and, given how stuffed their ranks have become with failed Tories, by extension, Reform). Instead, the decision of the NEC has cut Labour’s Gorton and Denton campaign loose on stormy seas, with no narrative, no understanding of the problems and no plan to address them, led by a leader for whom no one appears to have any enthusiasm. Labour should still win the seat – they have a formidable election apparatus, highly detailed voting data and droves of motivated campaigners – but their refusal to let Burnham stand increases the risk that Nigel Farage might add to his nine MPs.
So why did Labour take this decision?
When Labour took power, it seemed like a sound assumption that we would have a settled period of Government, without the unstable psycho-dramas which saw five Tory PMs succeed each other between 2016-2024. And yet, by April last year, a mere nine months after his triumph, there were mutterings behind closed doors in the Labour Party that Starmer ‘lovely man’ had to go. Those mutterings had become conversations by the time of Burnham’s unabashed pitch for power in the lead-up to the Party Conference last September. Starmer’s impassioned speech to Conference quietened the mutterings, but did not kill them.
The last thing the country needs is for the Labour Party to copy the Tories’ melodrama, when the cost of living, state of the economy and public services should take up ministers’ every waking moment. But Labour is floundering in the polls. Despite a recent mini-revival caused by Starmer (at last) standing up to Trump following the latter’s distasteful comments about British troops in Afghanistan, the Party is still some distance behind Reform (whose support has receded due to Nigel Farage’s oft-boasted-of close relationship with Trump and Nathan Gill’s conviction for taking money from Russia) and only just ahead of the Tories.
And the blame for that lacklustre performance is laid at the door of the PM. It is difficult to credit, but, Keir Starmer, the Leader who wrenched back control of the Labour Party from the Far Left and led it, barely 18 months ago, to a landslide victory and the promised land of Government, ending 14 years in Opposition, is a Dead Leader walking. Like many Labour MPs, I find it hard to understand how we got so quickly to the place where the question is not ‘if’ he is defenestrated, but by whom.
So what is The Problem for Starmer (and Reeves)?
Aside from his apparent lack of political instinct and his capacity for making unforced errors (for example, accepting free clothes football and concert tickets and appointing Mandelson), the biggest problem facing Starmer is the fact that he has failed to set out any central guiding philosophy for Government.
That same charge can be laid at the door of his Chancellor. Just as Starmer has been unable to answer the question ‘what is this government’s political plan for the country?’ so Reeves has been unable to answer the question ‘what is the government’s actual economic plan?’ Growth, tax rises, fiscal headroom, alleviating child poverty and the cost of living…these targets hardly amount to a ‘golden thread’ giving a coherent sense of economic direction and ‘steady as she goes’ is scarcely the political discourse to set the blood racing!
And to dabble in rumour for a moment. Starmer and Reeves are the architects of this Labour Government. On them are its foundations built. But Reeves did not travel with the PM to China – an odd absence on such an important trip for such a senior member of the Cabinet. January was a difficult month for Reeves (with several key policy positions reversed by No. 10 - a cap on ground rents payable to freeholders, inheritance tax for farmers and business rates for pubs) and it was preceded by a chaotic budget, and the Party’s failure to cut the welfare bill last summer. All this adds to a perception that the Chancellor’s political authority may be dwindling, that the Reeves/ Starmer relationship is in trouble and even some speculation that, if Labour takes the expected hammering in May’s elections, Starmer may show his more ruthless side and make Reeves the sacrificial lamb. Even if only half true, if the Reeves/Starmer partnership is merely faltering, rather than on the rocks, then the whole edifice may be in danger of collapsing.
Perhaps none of this would matter so much if the Party was riding high in the polls and the economy was firing on all cylinders. But neither of those factors applies. Economic growth remains anaemic at best. The general public feels disconnected, marginalised, ignored. Reform has made it a refined art-form to prey upon this feeling of disempowerment and nurture it into support in the opinion polls. The Government’s focus on immigration has enabled the hard-right to fan the flames of grievance into outright anger and blame immigration for poor access to basic services like hospitals or schools. Labour’s political opponents argue that the Party has put up taxes, made employment more expensive and its concessions on energy prices and school meals have done nothing to address public concern at the apparently ever-rising cost-of-living.
Having only come to politics relatively late in life, Starmer does not have a natural constituency inside the Party to support him. Allied to a tendency to manage uncertainty by asserting control (witness his ruthless culling of parliamentary candidates in the run up to the general election) this absence of genuine support, has alienated his backbench MPs and emboldened them to defy him, leading to a government which has been forced into a series of unnecessary policy U-turns, in turn energising his backbenchers to oppose him again, forcing more U-turns and a continuing downward spiral in his authority over them.
Starmer prides himself on his cautious pragmatism. In times as uncertain as these, a degree of pragmatism should be a benefit. It has guided him to keep counsel when Trump poured scorn on the UK and Europe. Not to choose between the EU and the US. Neither to support nor spurn China. Neither to double-down on Brexit, nor seek a genuinely closer relationship with the EU. To block Burnham, rather than face him down. But Labour supporters and activists increasingly feel that this pragmatism is exactly the quality that makes Starmer the wrong man to lead the single-minded charge against Reform, which he himself has called ‘the forces of darkness’. That his pragmatism has become the justification for the absence of clarity of guiding principle or purpose. Taking all of this together, we build a picture of Starmer increasingly isolated inside and outside Parliament, just at the moment that he needs to gather his troops around him and lead them with motivating rallying cry into battle.
So where does Andy Burnham fit in?
There are more dynamic ministers in the Cabinet, with a broader view of Britain and a vision for change – Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband, Shabana Mahmoud for example - but they are constrained by being in Starmer’s Cabinet. Labour MPs watched the Tories repeatedly unseat their leaders and know the dangers for the country and the Party of repeating the exercise with Starmer. Yet their greater fear now appears to be the sense of drift which risks handing the UK to Nigel Farage. In such a setting, anything that looks like genuine renewal becomes highly appealing.
Which is where we come back to Burnham. He has made no secret of his leadership ambitions. But they can only be realised if he is the leader of the Labour Party and a sitting MP. For Burnham the Gorton by-election, in his own political back-yard, was therefore an opportunity to get back in Parliament that was too good to miss. That was not how the NEC saw it. For them, allowing Burnham to stand as an MP was a clear and present danger to Starmer continuing as PM.
There is solid polling which explains the enthusiasm of the Labour faithful for Burnham and the caution of the NEC. 66% of current Labour supporters believe Burnham should have been allowed to stand in the by election. 48% prefer him to Starmer. Nationally, 40% of 2024 Labour voters believe he would be a better PM minister than Starmer and 34% of Britons have a favourable opinion of Burnham, compared with only 20% who view Starmer positively.
But if the PM and his supporters on the NEC thought that thwarting Burnham would put an end to the desire for regicide, they have been poorly-advised. Despite Labour’s (limited) polling recovery and Starmer’s assured performances on the international stage (where even his critics concede he has performed well), the talk of regicide has not receded. Blocking Burnham from standing has caused outrage amongst many Party activists and even some Cabinet members - outrage which has served to further weaken the PM’s standing.
Burnham is a nationally-recognised figure - a Minister in both Blair and Brown Governments (still revered in Labour Party circles) and a Metro-Mayor with an impressive track record of delivery (albeit ‘only’ in Manchester, which is very different to running the whole country). Unlike Starmer, he is a natural communicator – something the Labour Government desperately needs when faced with the slick and impactful communication of its opponents (whether we like them or not Zach Polanski or Nigel Farage capture and hold the public imagination and attention in a way that Starmer cannot). He is untainted by involvement in Starmer’s poor start to government, unattached to the mistakes of a desperately over-cautious manifesto; a shocking unpreparedness for office; strategic confusion over who the real political opponent is (Reform or the Tories, or the Greens…); or a leader with leaden political instincts. In responding to the public’s demand for a political figure who can inject energy into the political argument, direction and urgency, and push through the reform the country so urgently needs, it is Burnham who offers the Labour Party a glimpse of the possible fruits of renewal.
Conclusion
It is tempting to say that the Labour Government is in danger of sinking. Whilst that may be an exaggeration, it is not a huge one. With three years of its mandate left and sitting on a massive majority, its MPs should be happy and contented. They are not. Adrift in the polls. With a leader they don’t particularly like, who struggles to motivate and inspire. A Chancellor who has lost her way. Facing insurgent campaigns on the right and left which have captured the popular imagination in a way they cannot emulate.
I cannot help but feel that there is a very uncomfortable parallel to the US. Joe Biden described Donald Trump as an existential threat: terms Starmer has used about Farage. Biden clung on to his party’s nomination instead of allowing a better candidate to take on Trump: Starmer has likewise blocked Burnham from standing as an MP. The similarities are as worrying as the potential consequences and the world is now living through the repercussions of Biden’s hesitation.
Whilst I have doubts that Burnham would be able to provide immediate solutions to the UK’s problems – he would face the same mountain of economic, social and geopolitical problems that confront Starmer - he would at least bring a fresh approach aided by support in the Party and his energy, a political narrative and strong communication skills.
Perhaps the tragedy for Starmer is that he became PM at the wrong time. He is a good man not made for modern politics, where his lack of political instinct or direction is a fatal flaw. By blocking Burnham, he may have won himself some respite for now from an immediate leadership challenge – but that respite is only temporary: the time of that reckoning will inevitably arrive.