LONDON — Labour’s warring factions can at least agree on one thing: Nigel Farage risks throwing their plans to topple Keir Starmer into disarray.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham looks to have emerged from an bitter internecine battle this week as the best contender to dislodge the deeply unpopular Labour prime minister from office.
But to challenge the PM he must first win a by-election in northwest England that promises to be a political circus like no other.
Farage has vowed to “throw absolutely everything” at the battle to win Makerfield, which is expected next month. There’s good reason to think his surging Reform UK party could win.
Farage’s poll-topping band effectively deployed a “Vote Reform. Get Starmer Out” slogan to triumph at recent local elections.
“You can’t really use that line in a campaign where the Labour candidate is objectively doing that in a much neater way,” said one MP in the region, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive party matters.
This will be a case of “Vote Burnham. Potentially Get Starmer Out,” whether the Labour campaign can explicitly say it or not.
Even Labour’s rival camps are preparing to put their differences behind them to get Burnham into the Commons so a fair contest can be held.
Wes Streeting, whose resignation as health secretary accelerated the leadership contest, spoke to Burnham after quitting on Thursday in what amounted to a ceasefire offering.
The centrist candidate for the leadership even offered to campaign for him in Makerfield, one of Streeting’s allies told POLITICO.
His team insisted no deal was cut and Streeting would certainly challenge Burnham for the Labour top job regardless. “Wes will be a candidate in the forthcoming contest,” the ally added.
Lucy Powell, the Labour deputy leader who’s a close friend of Burnham’s and is preparing to take on a senior role in the by-election campaign, used a union speech on Friday to stress that Streeting as well as the third possible major contender Angela Rayner will be “key players” in the party’s future.
In move that could be as much of a sign of his diminished authority as it is a peace offering, Downing Street indicated Starmer won’t seek to block Burnham’s candidacy.
He tried that before, in the Gorton and Denton by-election, and the Greens and Reform kicked Labour into third place, ending decades of dominance in the Manchester suburb.
Why Farage is a threat
The Makerfield constituency of Wigan suburbs and former mining towns was once safe Labour territory. But last week Labour lost all 22 seats it was defending on Wigan Council to Reform.
Reform is some nine points ahead of Labour in the national polls — and the psephologists all reckon Farage’s candidate would win it with anyone but Burnham as the contender.
The local election results in Wigan would suggest, at least, that the Greens sapping votes from Labour’s left shouldn’t be a major factor in this race.
But one Green party official insisted they had focused their efforts elsewhere in the locals and that they will direct a “big activist base in the area” to fight the by-election that Burnham is trying to win.
The Labour campaign is already trying to paint the whole thing as a “straight fight between Labour and Reform” — a pitch voters weren’t buying when they opted to go Green in Gorton and Denton.
But Makerfield is a far less ethnically diverse constituency. It’s about as old-school a working class Labour heartland as you can get.
Burnham is a different breed of candidate too. The former cabinet minister who quit Westminster for the mayoralty in 2017 earned his “King of the North” nickname by successfully sparring with Boris Johnson during the Covid pandemic.
“Some estimates of his personal vote suggest he could have added up to 20 points or so to Labour’s vote share in Gorton and Denton, and 5 points on top of Labour vote intention nationwide,” as YouGov analyst Patrick English put it. “He’d need every bit of that personal boost to hold off Reform in Makerfield.”
Farage’s team are vowing to throw money, activists and major national attention at the contest — and they’re planning for the leader to spend a lot of time on the ground in the campaign.
“I struggle to see locals thinking voting Labour gets Starmer out,” said one of Farage’s advisers. There is early evidence though that the message will get across.
The Social Market Foundation has been examining online notice boards as part of research into misinformation — and its analysts have already been picking up on conversations in Makerfield groups about how they’re potentially electing the next prime minister.
There will be other distractions too. This is a by-election forced by the resignation of Josh Simons, who was only elected in Makerfield in 2024.
He has made no secret of the fact he acted to clear the way for a Burnham leadership pitch. But those who know Simons have all been asking what kind of deal he has cut. That question, as well as why Simons quit on his constituents, will be a feature of the campaign.
Danny Fletcher, a Wigan councillor spared by his seat not being contested in the latest elections, praised Burnham’s name recognition and local connections, having grown up in the region. But he warned the contest “shouldn’t be about a constituency being a pawn in someone’s career, no matter who that is.”
If Burnham wins, then it’s off to the Commons to be in place to challenge Starmer, perhaps as soon as this summer.
But if he fails to beat Reform — then what?
The man thought of as Labour’s most viable challenger will remain in the wilderness. Starmer will still be governing a parliamentary party that wants rid of him.
The internal war that would inevitably ensue would be even more chaotic and bitter than it is now — and potentially dash Labour’s hope of ever being able to prevent Farage himself becoming prime minister.
Noah Keate and Esther Webber contributed reporting.
