Keir Starmer<\/a> credibly offer now to the question: when will you step aside to let Burnham take your place in Downing Street? Make no mistake: Downing Street is where Burnham believes he is heading.<\/p>\nIn his victory speech, he suggested he was Labour\u2019s \u201cfinal chance to change\u201d to avoid annihilation at the hands of Reform in the next general election. If Burnham could beat Farage here in pro-Brexit territory, could he teach Labour how to beat him everywhere?<\/p>\n
He can now credibly make the argument that it is he, and not Starmer, who has the ability to halt Reform\u2019s gallop and reverse Labour\u2019s slide into the electoral swamp. The Makerfield vote, he said, would lead to \u201cbig change at national level\u201d.<\/p>\n
The icing on the cake for Burnham was that his margin of victory over Reform\u2019s candidate, local plumber Rob Kenyon, was almost triple the vote share of the even-more-right-wing party, Restore Britain, that had split the populist vote.<\/p>\n
So Restore didn\u2019t \u201chand victory\u201d over Reform to Burnham, as had been predicted. He seized it for himself and battered both the rightwing parties in the process.<\/p>\n
Lou Haigh, the former UK transport secretary and Sheffield Heeley MP who helped to mastermind the victor\u2019s campaign, came straight out to say that Starmer must now make way for Burnham in an \u201corderly transition\u201d of power.<\/p>\n
The UK prime minister has, until now, insisted he is going nowhere. The emphatic manner of Burnham\u2019s victory, and the inescapable conclusion that the so-called King of the North has answers to the Reform conundrum that he does not, means Starmer may be fast running out of road.<\/p>\n
What odds now on Burnham taking power in Britain in advance of the UK-EU summit on July 22nd?<\/p>\n
If Burnham does end up in Downing Street, and if he does subsequently try to replicate his victory over Reform across the UK at a general election, he may not find it as easy as he did in Makerfield.<\/p>\n
For a start, he cannot replicate himself as a candidate \u2013 it was clear that Burnham\u2019s celebrity status gave him advantages that would not be available to other Labour candidates. \u201cThere\u2019s only one Andy Burnham\u201d is more than a football-themed chant of his supporters.<\/p>\n
Burnham\u2019s enduring popularity also might not last too long beyond first contact with the prime minister\u2019s chair in Downing Street.<\/p>\n
There is also no guarantee that Restore, at a national level, would split as many votes away from Reform in other constituencies as it did in Makerfield. A Burnham-led Labour also might not be blessed with rival candidates as weak as the hapless Kenyon, who ran a terrible campaign and was a drag on Reform\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
And what now for Farage\u2019s party, which has been soundly beaten in the last two English byelections? It has clearly peaked. Restore is splitting its vote. Farage\u2019s dream of becoming UK prime minister has gone from near-inevitability to long shot.<\/p>\n
All eyes now will be on Starmer in the days ahead: to see if he clings stubbornly to his place in Downing Street and faces Burnham in a leadership contest; or gives way. Former health secretary Wes Streeting could also trigger a contest.<\/p>\n
Burnham, however, has the political momentum and, for his Labour internal rivals, may be impossible to stop as he makes a break for Number 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The hype was justified in the end. It was hard to escape the conclusion that at 3.06am, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85530,42,1194,43,17144,40,38,41,39,1577],"class_list":["post-507606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-andy-burnham","tag-headlines","tag-keir-starmer","tag-news","tag-reform-uk","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}