Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester city council, has been named as Labour's candidate to replace Andy Burnham as Greater Manchester mayor. The byelection, set for 30 July, is expected to be a tight contest with Reform UK, with Burnham likely to campaign heavily for Labour despite potentially becoming prime minister within weeks.
As many as 2 million people are eligible to vote in the Greater Manchester byelection, making it the largest in modern British politics. Craig, 41, took over Manchester city council in 2021 at age 36, becoming the third holder of the office in four decades and its first woman. She has long been seen as a rising star within Labour.
Publicity Blitz and Reform UK Challenge
Despite her achievements, Craig remains little-known to ordinary voters. A major publicity campaign will present her as continuing Burnham's work, who won the 2024 mayoral contest with nearly two-thirds of the vote and a 351,000-vote majority. However, Labour figures are braced for a bitter fight with Reform UK after losing over 100 seats across Greater Manchester in May's local elections.
Reform UK won 106 seats across the area's 10 local authorities, including 18 out of 19 in Tameside, 24 out of 25 in Wigan, and seven on Manchester city council. Nigel Farage's party has not yet named its candidate, but the frontrunner is Dan Barker, a nuclear industry project manager who came fourth with 7.5% of the vote in the 2024 mayoral election. In 2024, Reform finished nearly 4,000 votes ahead of the Green party's Hannah Spencer, who won the Gorton and Denton byelection in February.
Other Candidates and Key Issues
The Greens have unveiled their candidate as Trafford councillor Geraldine Coggins, pitching the battle as a contest between their party and Reform UK. Rupert Lowe's hardline rightwing Restore Britain party is expected to focus the campaign on grooming gangs, an issue that scarred communities in Oldham and Rochdale, and has garnered support from Elon Musk. Its candidate, mental health nurse Marlon West, is the father of grooming gang victim Scarlett.
Craig has spoken of her childhood in council housing in Greenisland, Northern Ireland, before moving to Manchester in 2003. She was awarded an OBE in December for services to local government and received a congratulatory call from Keir Starmer. In 2021, she told the Manchester Evening News that when she came out as gay at age 14, "everyone told me my life would be a disaster, nobody would love me," and she did not want to be "pigeonholed" as the first woman or openly gay leader of the council. She said: "I don't want to be pigeonholed, to just be invited to panels to talk about how it feels like to be a woman. Talk to me about my economic policy, talk about inclusive growth, transport, infrastructure, business, like the stuff that I enjoy reading about."
