{"id":585692,"date":"2026-05-15T15:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/585692\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T15:32:09","slug":"what-next-for-starmer-five-scenarios-in-labour-leadership-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/585692\/","title":{"rendered":"What next for Starmer? Five scenarios in Labour leadership crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This scenario involves a leap of imagination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is no guarantee that Burnham will win the Makerfield by-election, which will be hotly contested by Reform UK. Burnham would only need to stand down as mayor if he won the by-election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But it&#8217;s still a big gamble for Burnham as he can only mount a challenge for the Labour leadership if he&#8217;s an MP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But if he manages to pull that off, he would be able to argue he has proof that he could revive Labour&#8217;s deflated standing in the opinion polls and beat Reform UK in a general election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In contrast, Sir Keir has a pretty poor record against Reform UK, which pummelled Labour in some of its historical strongholds in last week&#8217;s elections in England, Scotland and Wales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Back in Parliament, Burnham could mobilise the necessary support to trigger a leadership contest and take that electoral evidence into the campaign.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a head-to-head with Sir Keir, who has just lost hundreds of council seats to Reform, Burnham would have the wind in his sails.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If such circumstances come to pass, they could set Burnham on a course to No 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This scenario involves a leap of imagination. There is no guarantee that Burnham will win the Makerfield by-election,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-585692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}