Andy Burnham is facing a high-stakes battle as he maps his route back to Parliament. The stakes could not be higher for the Labour frontrunner, with victory far from guaranteed and Nigel Farage poised to throw Reform's financial resources at tripping up Labour's wannabe saviour.
The By-Election Challenge
The Greater Manchester Mayor is contesting a seat with a vulnerable majority of around 5,000 votes, a fraction of the 13,400 majority overcome by the Greens recently in Gorton and Denton. This move is seen as either courageous or desperate. Win, and the popular King of the North would be virtually nailed on to replace Keir Starmer as Prime Minister after next month's crucial Makerfield by-election.
Labour's Hopes Rest on Burnham
Suddenly, all Labour's hopes rest on a man who isn't yet an MP and faces a pack of questions about where he would actually take Labour. Burnham is considered a Labour leadership hopeful, should he win the upcoming by-election. The old joke about a Blairite, Brownite and Corbynite walking into a pub and the landlord saying, "Hi, Andy" requires Burnham to spell out exactly what Manchesterism is and what that would mean for disillusioned working-class voters across England, Wales and Scotland.
Lose, and we would never learn, with Starmer surviving a little longer before he is challenged and replaced by Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband or somebody else. The result would be yet more chaos.
Labour's Plummeting Fortunes
The party's survival potentially resting on Burnham's shoulders underlines how far Labour has plummeted less than two years after securing a thumping Parliamentary majority, albeit on only 34% of the votes. We are in a fresh era of fractured politics, and old maps are of limited value, but history offers both encouragement and a nightmare for Burnham.
Historical Parallels
The encouragement is the story of Tory grandee Alec Douglas-Home running successfully as PM in a 1963 Kinross and Western Perthshire by-election, after an Establishment Conservative magic circle had already installed the then-peer in No10. The nightmare is Harold Wilson's first Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, who lost a by-election in the "safe" Labour constituency of Leyton in 1965. He was trying to get back into the Commons after the Tories nicked his Smethwick seat a year earlier with a grotesque racist pitch.
If Labour's running man becomes an MP, he will deserve his shot at No10.
