Humanity has attempted to read its fortunes in the movements of celestial bodies for thousands of years, with mixed results. Horoscopes are obviously a scam, but there are things in the sky we can’t explain. Take the comet 10P/Tempel: a lump of rock and ice about ten kilometres across, flying through space at a speed of 17 km/s. It takes a little over five years to orbit the sun, and has been observed regularly from Earth since it was discovered by the German astronomer, Ernst Wilhelm Tempel, in 1873. Clearly this visitor exerts some influence on the human world: its approach brings trouble for the Labour Party, and opportunity for Andy Burnham.
In 2010, as 10P/Tempel swung towards us on its vast and silent progress through the void, Labour was very much in retrograde, and Burnham, a sprightly, 40-year-old former health secretary, was pitching his plan to “rebuild” the party, as leader. In 2015 – as Labour lost another election – the comet was back, and so was Burnham, making a second bid for the Labour leadership, as the “change candidate”. The comet returned in 2021; between perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) and perigee (its closest approach to the Earth), the voters gave Labour a kicking in the local elections, but re-elected Burnham as mayor of Manchester. Take a pair of binoculars outside on the evening of 3 August this year and you may see 10P/Tempel as it makes its quinquennial visit to the inner solar system. Here on Earth, its influence is already apparent: its coming augurs a Burnham ascendant.
In a hot car park at 10am on 22 May, Burnham launched his campaign to become the MP for Makerfield – a constituency shaped like a bat with an eight-mile wingspan, immediately to the south of Wigan – and also, by extension, his campaign to become prime minister. This is a campaign that began, loudly but unofficially, eight months ago, and will begin officially if Burnham can become an MP. It was, therefore, two speeches in one: a by-election speech and a leadership speech, a speech about why he wants to be the MP for Makerfield but also a speech about why he wants to run the country.
The crowd of supporters and journalists in Ashton-in-Makerfield had been arriving for some time. The sun was out, which can happen in Wigan. Dandelion seeds drifted through the air. For once the journalists were more smartly dressed than the politicians. It seemed like a memo had gone around to dress casually, to steer clear of the Westminster-issue Charles Tyrwhitt uniform. Steve Rotheram, Burnham’s counterpart as metro mayor for Liverpool, was in full Scouse Dad regalia: smart jeans, polo shirt done up to the chin, pristine white trainers. Barry Gardiner, the MP for Brent West, was wearing running shoes – the footwear of the moment, after a series of front pages showed Burnham on his morning jog. Josh Simons, who stepped aside as Makerfield’s MP to allow Burnham to contest the seat, was laughing with a former constituent. He looked almost relieved, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
At one end of the car park a van covered in video screens displayed a cartoon Andy, mouth set in a determined moue. A Labour organiser handed out placards for people to wave, positioned some notables – Jonathan Reynolds, Ian Lavery, Rebecca Long-Bailey – where they’d be sure to appear in photographs. They got the crowd to put in a couple of practice cheers before Burnham arrived (also in pointedly non-Westminster attire, a white T-shirt under his blazer). “I love this place,” he told us. He took his first coach to an Everton away game from down the road. The sports club at which we were gathered was just like the one a couple of miles away in which he’d made his first political speech 25 years ago; he wore a suit and tie then, and was told by a steward that he was on after the bingo. He used to drive past this club every day on the school run.
But he also said that the place in which he lived had been failed, not just by the last government but by every government for the past 40 years. Once again, he is asking for the opportunity to change – a word he used 19 times in 15 minutes – his party. “We’ve not been good enough,” he said, “and I want to leave people in no doubt today: a vote for me in this by-election campaign is a vote to change Labour.”
Will the voters of Makerfield reward his third attempt to do so? Like Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan, Burnham has enacted policies that are visibly the work of the mayor’s office, such as his affordable yellow Bee Network buses. “You know I love me buses,” he laughed, before railing against the exorbitant cost of a train ticket to London. But in an hour of watching different parts of the Makerfield constituency roll past from the upper deck of a yellow bus, I saw several houses with Reform placards in their front gardens. I didn’t see a single placard for any other party. Of the 25 seats on Wigan council that were up for election on 7 May, 24 went to Reform. In the past, Labour’s biggest majorities were for an MP (Ian McCartney) who was, like Burnham, explicitly a socialist. Fewer than one in five British people say they plan to vote Labour, however. Burnham will need to convince them to vote for a party they mostly hate in order to let him turn it into one they might not.
But while Burnham is fighting for votes in a Reform-leaning constituency, his speech didn’t mention Nigel Farage or Reform once. This was noticeable because most of the big speeches Keir Starmer has given, including his latest “reset” on 11 May, are about the fact that Farage is a terrible man and the UK will go to a very dark place if he is allowed into Downing Street. That may be true, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped people voting for Nigel Farage. Burnham’s speech was about the things he planned to do – the things he has been saying he’d do for 16 years, such as increasing the number of council houses, reforming the social care system and taking infrastructure back into public hands. It’s possible that a potential Labour voter might find Burnham’s “vote for me and we’ll take control of our utilities” a rather more enticing message than Starmer’s “vote for me and we’ll try to stave off a depressing inevitability”.
In the middle distance, in the rolling fields beyond the sports club, a large bin was on fire. If any of the attendees noticed this rather glaring visual allegory for the state of Labour politics at the moment, they were too polite to acknowledge it. Burnham finished his speech and allowed himself to be mobbed by the waiting journalists; someone got him a pint of water and he chugged half of it in a few gulps, like a proper bloke. “I think the nation has seen enough of my shorts,” he said in response to one question, and everyone laughed. This, too, is a point of difference: Burnham enjoys politics. Starmer mostly seems concerned or disappointed, which, again, is not an unreasonable response to the world, but it’s not the sort of temperament people throw votes at. Would it make a difference to have a prime minister who appeared to relish the job? The people of Makerfield will let us know.
[Further reading: Where does Nigel Farage get his money?]
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This article appears in the 27 May 2026 issue of the New Statesman, What Britain won't face