Burnham
By 
Sir Keir Starmer’s days as prime minister are numbered. The triumph of his Labour colleague and rival Andy Burnham in a by-election in the northern constituency of Makerfield on June 18th means that Sir Keir will soon face a formal challenge to his leadership—one he is very likely to lose.
Mr Burnham had been out of Parliament for nearly a decade while serving as mayor of Greater Manchester. He will return to the House of Commons next week after comfortably winning the Makerfield contest with 55% of the vote, well ahead of the candidate for Reform UK, a right-wing populist party, who won 35%.
Labour’s victory might seem like cheering news for Sir Keir, a rare by-election triumph for his party, which has slumped in the polls and took a battering in local elections last month. It is not. After that debacle in May nearly 100 Labour MPs called for the prime minister to resign, and Wes Streeting, his centrist health secretary, quit the cabinet promising to challenge him. The wrangling was paused only after Makerfield’s previous MP stood down in order to give Mr Burnham a chance to get back into Parliament (a leadership contender must be an MP) and join the looming contest.
Will Mr. Burnham use the momentum from his victory? Many observers believe that Mr. Burnham would be foolish to wait too long, given his resounding win on Thursday. Mr. Burnham could challenge Mr. Starmer as early as next week, when he is expected to arrive in London for the first time as the member of Parliament representing Makerfield, in northern England. But Mr. Burnham’s camp says it wants to avoid a messy fight. Louise Haigh, a Labour lawmaker and ally of Mr. Burnham, told the BBC on Friday that they wanted the process to be “as managed and controlled as possible.” She added: “I would hope that Andy and the prime minister can speak over the coming days. We want to avoid a leadership contest if possible.”
Podcast listeners will recollect that Brockington and I discussed this very eventuality... It’s obviously good news that Burnham won the election so emphatically, but I think it’s pretty apparent at this point that the reasons that UK Prime Ministers fail over the last decade has less to do with themselves than with the stars… which is to say that people expect that Burnham will fix everything that the perfidious Starmer has fucked up are likely to be deeply disappointed. But we’ll see.