LONDON — The politician maneuvering to push British Prime Minister Keir Starmer out of his job, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, won a special parliamentary election Thursday, a key step toward a leadership battle for control of the ruling Labour Party.
The victory returns Burnham to the House of Commons where he served 16 years and sets the stage for a leadership challenge in coming weeks that could make him the prime minister. Under the U.K.’s parliamentary system a new national election is not needed.
Burnham defeated a field of candidates from the anti-immigrant Reform UK party and five smaller parties in the Makerfield by-election, a contest that drew national and international attention as the launching pad for Burnham’s expected bid to replace Starmer.
His decisive win, taking about 55 percent of the vote, was confirmed in the early hours of Friday.
Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon, a plumber and local council member who had hoped to capitalize on his populist party’s recent momentum in working-class districts like this one, finished a distant second with about 34 percent.
The margin is likely to encourage Labour figures who have pushed Burnham forward as the politician best positioned to blunt Reform UK’s rising popularity in postindustrial areas that traditionally voted Labour but have turned against the party in recent elections.
The Makerfield vote was widely understood, both in Westminster and on the ground in the local cluster of former coal towns, as a proxy battle over Starmer’s future.
Starmer, weakened by collapsing poll numbers and a string of bruising local-election losses to Reform UK, is increasingly viewed within his own ranks as a liability Labour can no longer afford to carry into the next general election, which is scheduled for 2029.
Reform UK is led by Nigel Farage, an architect of Brexit, the country’s departure from the European Union, which yielded years of economic stagnation rather than the British renaissance that Farage and others had predicted.
Burnham, a center-left figure with deep working-class roots and a populist touch, is seen by many in Labour as the man best equipped to revive a demoralized party.
A lifelong Labour member with working-class roots in the area, he spent 16 years in Parliament representing nearby Leigh, and served brief stints in cabinet posts, as health secretary and culture secretary, before losing a bid for the party leadership in 2015.
He then traded Westminster for local office, winning the mayoralty of Greater Manchester three times and building a reputation as a pragmatic, populist-minded executive.
In his victory remarks, Burnham, 56, made clear he saw Thursday’s results in the constituency in Northern England as a step toward a much bigger job.
“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working. Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be,” he said. “Tonight could — just could — be the turning point. From here on, I will give everything I have got to make it so.”
Under Labour rules, Burnham had to win the parliamentary seat before he could challenge Starmer.
Burnham is now positioned to make a formal bid to take the party’s top job, and because Labour still has a commanding majority in the Commons, become the prime minister.
Former health secretary Wes Streeting, who resigned from the cabinet in May, has said he will launch his own leadership challenge.
A challenge requires the formal backing of at least 81 Labour MPs — 20 percent of its parliamentary faction — to trigger a leadership vote by House members, which would then go to a vote by the wider party membership.
It remains unclear exactly how long that process might take. Starmer repeatedly has said that he intends to fight to keep his job, which he won in a landslide election victory two years ago.
But a number of Labour lawmakers have said publicly that the prime minister should avoid a bruising internal fight and instead set a timetable to hand power to Burnham. Thursday’s decisive result will give Burnham momentum, political experts said.
“It was a great result for Andy Burnham,” said Tony Travers, a political science professor at the London School of Economics. “Whether Starmer stays and fights depends on how many of his ministers and MPs publicly stand by or desert him. The next few days will be crucial.”
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