{"id":647865,"date":"2026-06-19T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/647865\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T21:52:09","slug":"celebrations-and-a-swift-exit-after-a-burnham-win-beyond-our-wildest-dreams-andy-burnham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/647865\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrations and a swift exit after a Burnham win \u2018beyond our wildest dreams\u2019 | Andy Burnham"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was plenty of the hopey, changey stuff from Andy Burnham<\/a> at his victory rally on the morning after the night before \u2013 but it ended with the new MP for Makerfield doing a runner. \u201cAre you going to become the new prime minister?\u201d shouted Sky\u2019s political editor, Beth Rigby, at the retreating Burnham. \u201cKeir Starmer says he is not going to give way \u2013 what\u2019s your message for Keir Starmer?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hemmed in by cameras, chairs, tables and a whole load of the giggling supporters who had been assembled around him on the turf at Ashton Town FC\u2019s grounds, Burnham picked up the pace.<\/p>\n

He skipped nimbly past the temporary toilets and weaved through the photographers and the beer garden benches, keeping his gaze firmly away from the chasing TV cameras all the while. It turned into a pretty urgent trot that might even be described as a jog. With Burnham\u2019s vanishing act began what has every appearance of being a strange sort of interregnum in British politics, as authority drifted from one man to the next, after a challenge made in deed if not in words.<\/p>\n

An hour or so later, Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, who has been managing Burnham\u2019s campaign in Makerfield, laid out in crystal-clear terms what her candidate had been shy of saying directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the prime minister takes the weekend to really reflect on the result here,\u201d Haigh said. \u201cListen to soundings from the cabinet and from the PLP [parliamentary Labour<\/a> party], as all the evidence suggests that a contest would be brutal, it would be unpleasant and it would be very unlikely the PM would win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did Burnham have a leadership campaign ready to go if Starmer refuses to move? Her answer was straightforward: \u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not only the fact of Burnham\u2019s win but the scale of it that had many of his supporters convinced on Friday that a coronation, rather than a contest, was the only course of action. Burnham\u2019s madcap escape from the inevitable questions was about allowing Starmer his own dignified way out.<\/p>\n

Burnham won the seat with a majority of 9,231 \u2013 nearly double that enjoyed by his predecessor, Josh Simons, in 2024. With 54% of the vote, he finished about 20 percentage points ahead of Reform, despite Nigel Farage\u2019s party\u2019s vote share rising by 2.7 percentage points from the general election. The former health secretary Wes Streeting \u2013 remember him? \u2013 posted on social media his congratulations. \u201cIt gives us all hope that Labour can still win, but Andy\u2019s campaign is proof that to do so we need to change,\u201d said the rival leadership hopeful.<\/p>\n

Burnham addresses supporters at the victory rally. Photograph: Temilade Adelaja\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Understandably, but rather unconvincingly, Starmer sought to own the victory on Friday morning in an interview with broadcasters and in a call to party officials. The sweeping victory in Makerfield was evidence that the \u201ctide is turning on Reform\u201d, Starmer said, as he endured a fresh round of broadcast reporters telling him he was \u201cfinished\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s pull together as a party and a movement,\u201d the prime minister added, betraying none of his inner emotions, as he insisted the result was a \u201cvery good outcome\u201d. \u201cThe one thing we\u2019ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement,\u201d he said. \u201cThat has never worked. That\u2019s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n

Confronted again about his parlous position, Starmer added: \u201cIf there is a contest, then yes, I will stand. I have said repeatedly I am not going to walk away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

One No 10 adviser said it wasn\u2019t a bluff. There were \u201cenough people around the prime minister still who want to back him to fight\u201d, they added. \u201cThere are no men in grey suits, or at least not ones he thinks are worth listening to.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a social media post filmed in an undisclosed field far, far away from reporters\u2019 pesky questions, Farage too was putting the best gloss he could on it. He was \u201cdisappointed\u201d and urged voters who had voted for the rival party on the right, Restore Britain, which secured just short of 7% of the vote in Makerfield, to \u201cthink again\u201d. \u201cAs for the Reform vote share, well, I thought we would get 18,000 votes, we got just shy of 16,000, so I\u2019m disappointed by that, no question about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

It was only an hour after the polls closed at 10pm on Thursday night that the scale of the victory had become clear to Burnham\u2019s inner circle. Holed up in the Edge convention centre in Wigan, his closest aides could see they were on course for a significant victory after sampling boxes of ballots showed they were ahead in the \u201cvast majority\u201d of wards.<\/p>\n

Burnham on the run after the victory rally. Photograph: Temilade Adelaja\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Five miles south in Stubshaw Cross, in the old Labour club that became Burnham\u2019s campaign HQ (while also carrying on its normal business and hosting a wedding, funeral, christening and birthday party during the campaign \u2013 all of which the would-be prime minister attended), his team had refused to believe their data suggesting that 65% of voters canvassed had promised to back their man.<\/p>\n

But, shortly after midnight, word filtered through that they were on course for a victory that was \u201cbeyond our wildest dreams\u201d, as one Burnham staffer described it. \u201cLisa [Nandy, the culture secretary] was funny, she just couldn\u2019t stop grinning,\u201d said one Labour source. \u201cYou try and stay composed before the result comes but some people have got better game faces than others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soon after, there was a rumour among the Labour ranks that Farage had already left Makerfield \u2013 although a Reform spokesperson insisted at the time he was still in the area. At about 1.30am, Jon Burns, one of Farage\u2019s key aides, strode up to a senior Labour organiser and offered his congratulations. The private handshake was taken as the concession and by 4am the party was in full swing in Stubshaw Cross.<\/p>\n

According to those who attended, Burnham walked in with his family and immediately commandeered the playlist, putting on New Order\u2019s Your Silent Face \u2013 his choice \u201cwhen I want to be in running mode\u201d, he said \u2013 and a somewhat eclectic mix of Dua Lipa, the Smiths and Oasis.<\/p>\n

The Downing Street heir apparent circled the room hugging supporters, thanking them for their efforts over the mammoth four-week campaign during which Labour canvassers knocked on every door seven times. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t raucous, but there were a lot of Cruzcampos,\u201d said one attender, adding that there was \u201ca suggestion of karaoke but thankfully that didn\u2019t come to pass\u201d.<\/p>\n

The celebrations ended at 6am with the sun firmly up on a bright summer morning. Four hours later, many of them were at Ashton Town\u2019s football stadium, some wearing sunglasses and others nursing pints of lager, Guinness and mini bottles of champagne.<\/p>\n

Burnham, casually dressed in a cream-white polo shirt with gold zip, arrived looking pretty fresh-faced, although his wife, Marie-France, resplendent in a polka-dot top, took the precaution of hiding behind a pair of oversized sunglasses.<\/p>\n

Directly behind Burnham, in the horseshoe-shaped crowd of his supporters facing the cameras, were Haigh and Anneliese Midgley, an adviser to Starmer in opposition but now a key organiser for Burnham. \u201cThis campaign was won by a band of strong northern power women,\u201d Burnham said, perhaps in acknowledgment that in taking his place in Downing Street, he would continue Labour\u2019s record of electing solely male leaders.<\/p>\n

He praised his predecessor who had stood down for him in recognition of the seriousness of the local election results in May and the need for \u201cchange\u201d. It had been an act of \u201cincredible selflessness\u201d, Burnham said, although there is talk of Simons taking a Downing Street role.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to respond to what people here are saying,\u201d Burnham went on. He talked through some of his broad-stroke campaign themes: cutting water, energy and rail fairs and a focus on vocational education; a reindustrialisation of the north, and procurement that backed British businesses. It was a \u201cnew path\u201d for the country, he said. \u201cThis now is the change moment,\u201d Burnham concluded, and everyone knew what he meant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was plenty of the hopey, changey stuff from Andy Burnham at his victory rally on the morning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-647865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647865","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=647865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}