Keir Starmer has said that Andy Burnham should focus on helping Labour to win the Greater Manchester mayoralty by-election if he wins in Makerfield on Thursday. Burnham is, of course, obliged to resign his mayor role if he becomes an MP, triggering an immediate contest in which Reform UK expects to do well.
The PM’s comments seem to represent his latest attempt to defer an inevitable challenge from Burnham, after the failure of previous attempts to block him from returning to the Commons. It might also work. The last time Burnham sought a seat, in Gorton and Denton before being blocked, he pledged in a letter to the National Executive Committee (NEC) to do his best to help the party win a subsequent mayoral race.
So, what would the 2026 Greater Manchester mayoral election look like? “It will be the horrible hangover after the party if Andy wins in Makerfield,” said one Labour MP.
Behind the scenes plans are already being laid in the Labour Party on the assumption that the party will succeed in Makerfield but face a bruising contest to retain control of one of its heartland cities.
In a piece of deft parliamentary management the government recently laid a statutory instrument, part of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act, which changed the system for mayoral elections – potentially to Labour’s advantage.
The instrument, which comes into force this week, changes the vote from first past the post back to the supplementary vote system by which Burnham was elected in his first two contests in Manchester. The Conservative government changed the mayoral election system to first past the post before the last contest in 2024, which Burnham still won by a large margin. Now it will revert back.
This change will likely make the race more winnable for Labour because its candidate could benefit from the second preferences of Green and Liberal Democrat voters, rather than suffering from a split on the progressive wing of politics that could let in Reform’s candidate, whosoever that may be.
Nigel Farage’s party will fight hard to win the mayoralty, bouncing off the energy of its Makerfield campaign, which will necessarily have failed to trigger a mayoral contest (if Burnham loses to Reform’s Robert Kenyon on Thursday, he will simply carry on as mayor and there will be no election).
If Burnham is elected as MP for Makerfield, he must resign his mayoralty before he can take up his seat in the Commons. The NEC is considering how to proceed if the race is triggered immediately on Friday.
One NEC source said that the process would be too short to allow a full selection process involving Labour members in Greater Manchester. Instead, the preferred option is for the NEC to draw up a shortlist of one candidate who will then go forward and begin campaigning almost immediately in the week after Burnham’s by-election win.
The internal party gossips have been having fun with this prospect. It is said that Gary Neville, football commentator and former Manchester United right-back, was asked to consider a tilt but turned it down. Ed Balls is another that was briefly puffed up then pulled down by the rumour mill.
But Bev Craig, the current leader of Manchester City Council, is the broad favourite to take up the candidacy and is understood to be preparing a run. Craig is popular across the party, and Burnham’s critics are fond of saying that she should get a lot of the credit for Labour’s successes in governing Greater Manchester.
Starmer and his supporters are now focusing intensely on the mayoralty as a way to prolong his premiership. When asked about a potential leadership challenge after a Burnham victory in Makerfield on Wednesday, Starmer said: “I would just gently point out that we do have a Manchester mayoralty by-election which will follow immediately on if Andy Burnham wins the by-election.”
Meanwhile, No 10 operatives have told Wes Streeting’s team that a leadership campaign should not be triggered until after the Manchester race because otherwise the party’s HQ would have to print leaflets with Andy Burnham’s face on it, in an attempt to use his opponent’s personal popularity to hold onto Greater Manchester. Streeting is understood to be dismissive of this complaint and prepared to begin a contest at short notice regardless.
Burnham is likely to play a large role in the mayoral campaign, whatever the circumstances. There is an expectation, even a hope, among his internal opponents that a Labour loss in Greater Manchester would damage his image before a leadership contest because he will be said to have handed a major city to Reform for the sake of his own ambition. But supporters of Burnham are clear that any loss in the mayoral race would be the fault of Starmer’s leadership and the collapse in Labour’s public support that he has presided over.
[Further reading: Makerfield days]
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