Comment: Why Labour should crown ‘King Of The North’ Burnham and avoid a leadership contest
Keir Starmer should give in to the inevitable, agree a timetable to step down, and pave the way for Andy Burnham to succeed him, avoiding the months of internal infighting, says Simon Walters
Friday 15 May 2026 10:53 BST
The game is up for Sir Keir Starmer and he might as well face it. Barring a last minute hitch, Andy Burnham is set to replace him as prime minister.
I have a lot of sympathy for Starmer, a decent man. But there is no escaping the fact: the Labour Party wants him out and there is no way back for him. He should accept the inevitable and agree a timetable for his departure.
Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and any other would-be Labour leader can also stand down. They are wasting their time if they think they can defeat Burnham. He beats them by a mile in any poll of Labour voters.
Remarkably for a party whose national reputation is at rock bottom, Burnham is also the most popular politician in Britain among the wider public, with higher ratings than Nigel Farage, Zack Polanski, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey.
That is why I have this suggestion for the Labour Party: call off the proposed leadership contest. It is not as impractical as it sounds, since it hasn’t actually been triggered yet. What is the point of Streeting and co slugging it out with Burnham, when they are bound to lose?
It would mean months of internal bloodletting, not to speak of inflicting the chaos of a rudderless government on the country at a time of economic instability and war. And for what? The coronation of ‘King of the North’ Burnham at the end of it?
If he is going to be crowned anyway, why not do it sooner rather than later and save Labour and the rest of us a lot of trouble? Rayner and Miliband broadly share Burnham’s soft left brand of politics but must know the telegenic Manchester mayor is a more effective communicator than either of them.
Unlike them, with his background as a cabinet minister in Tony Blair’s administration, Burnham has at least the potential to win over middle ground voters. In any Burnham-led government, Rayner and Miliband would be certain to have senior jobs. There is no need to wait an age to sort that out.
There is already speculation of a deal between Burnham and Streeting, who is to the right of Burnham and knows the predominantly left Labour Party is unlikely to choose him over Burnham. Streeting is pragmatic enough to know he would be richly rewarded for smoothing Burnham’s path to No 10.
And Burnham needs Streeting to keep Labour’s Blairite rump happy. In any event, at 43, Streeting could have another tilt at the leadership if Burnham makes a mess of it. That leaves Starmer himself, currently refusing to quit his Downing Street bunker and threatening to fight Burnham and any other challenger in a last ditch General Custer style stand in a leadership contest.
His standing in the Labour Party, never mind the country, is so low I do not think that is tenable. Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady’, eventually buckled in similar circumstances. And Keir Starmer is no Margaret Thatcher.
That is not to say handing the keys of No 10 to Burnham without a contest is without difficulties. It assumes he will win the by election in Makerfield, on the outskirts of Manchester, where Labour MP Josh Simons has said he will vacate his seat for him.
Simons only beat Reform by 5,400 votes in the 2024 election – and Reform won 50 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 23 per cent in the area in the local elections.
Nigel Farage will throw everything at the by election to try to rain on Burnham’s parade. But I believe the Burnham’s popularity in the North West – Makerfield includes part of his old Leigh parliamentary seat and is half way between Burnham’s adopted Manchester and his native Liverpool – will see him through.
The risk to him is that voters in Makerfield may resent the idea of being used as a vehicle for Burnham’s vaulting ambition. Equally they may be attracted by the idea of having their own interests directly represented in No 10.
The way things stand, if the leadership contest is not triggered until after the Makerfield by election, due in mid June, the final outcome will not be known until well into July.
That would be a farce and paralyse Britain. It could be avoided and kept to a minimum if stubborn Starmer agreed a timetable to step down.
Of course, if Burnham fails to win Makerfield, a contest would have to go ahead. But I do not think Starmer can cling on until then. Burnham is not without flaws.
As Boris Johnson showed, it is possible to be a showboating city mayor yet prove incapable of governing a nation. Labour critics question whether Burnham’s style is matched by substance.
He has rowed back from a rash comment in January that Britain is “too in hock to the bond markets” – which raised the spectre of a left wing version of Liz Truss’ economic catastrophe. That said, barring a banana skin in Makerfield, he appears the obvious and most likely successor to tired Starmer who surely can no longer resist pressure from his own party to resign.
Labour traditionalists will say dispensing with a leadership contest breaks all the rules and is unprecedented, undemocratic and more.
Then again, it is unprecedented in Labour’s history for MPs to bring down a sitting prime minister by means of a leadership contest.
And it is undemocratic for a party to remove a prime minister who won a general election.
