Labour’s Burnham veto has made a tricky Manchester byelection much harder | Andy Burnham
As Labor leaders gathered at the Titanic hotel in Liverpool on Friday night, one question loomed above all others: to replace the captain or not to replace the captain?
For many, the question has become even more pressing after Keir Starmer’s allies brutally stopped Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster before it even began.
There were reasonable practical reasons to prevent the mayor of Greater Manchester from running for the newly vacant seat of Gorton and Denton: not least that the by-election to replace him would be the biggest and most expensive in modern British history.
But many Labor MPs, including Burnham’s aides and agnostics, see the decision as a clear attempt to save the prime minister as the party heads towards a giant political iceberg.
Manchester’s diverse south-east is home to around 119,000 people, including Levenshulme’s left-leaning young professionals, Denton’s white working-class Reform voters and a significant Muslim population (28% of the total) around Rusholme and Gorton.
Former minister Andrew Gwynne, who retired for medical reasons this week after being suspended for 11 months over leaked WhatsApp messages, won in 2024 with 13,413 votes, with Reform UK coming in second.
Although it is a new constituency created as a result of boundary changes, it consists of three seats that have voted Labor for decades. Voters in Gorton have been electing a Labor MP since George V’s accession to the throne.
Reform UK will hold the by-election as a referendum on the government, and Starmer in particular. Nigel Farage’s party leads by eight points in national polls on averageThe Prime Minister’s popularity has decreased since the general election.
Four miles west, he will be drawn from the left by Labour, the Greens and any Gaza-focused candidate, whether an independent, a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, or even George Galloway (yes, the 71-year-old has heralded another comeback).
“Voters angry with Labor tend to go both ways,” said Professor Rob Ford of the University of Manchester, pointing to the rise of Reform UK and the Greens across the country.
Without Burnham’s star power, he expects Labor to lose but said it would be tight “with multiple forces pulling in different directions”.
Britain Elects, a polling firm, puts Farage’s party ahead only one point ahead There are Labor votes in Gorton and Denton, but this does not take into account many nuances, including tactical voting.
Labor hopes enough voters will be so disgusted by the idea of a Reform MP that they vote red at the expense of the Greens and Liberal Democrats (who together accounted for 17% of the 2024 vote).
Voting suggests The “Burnham brand” plus tactical voting would put Labor four points ahead of Reform UK in Gorton and Denton, according to British Voters’ Ben Walker, who said a Burnham candidacy would bring an additional five to seven percentage points nationally.
Local factors make this difficult to sort out: Burnham is hugely popular in Greater Manchester, but Labor has been heavily tarnished in Gorton and Denton as a result of Gwynne’s ill-advised text messages to several other local councillors, including on Gaza and other national issues.
The other uncertainty is timing. The government has not yet set a date for the by-election but it is expected to be before May 7, when Labor is eyeing a blow in devolved elections in Wales and Scotland and councils across England.
Keeping it at the same time would push any midterm election losses to the bottom of the news agenda. Keeping it sooner would somehow save Gorton and Denton from the national picture. Neither option looks great.
One thing is clear: choosing to run for a seat without Labor Party approval. most popular The politician made an already difficult midterm election even more difficult.
