On Monday evening (Malaysian Time), many political analysts were glued to their screens - even armchair analysts [myself included], watching the events unfold on Sky News‘ YouTube livestream. We cut to a scene at Number 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British Prime Minister, where Keir Starmer announced his resignation from the Premiership and as the leader of the Labour Party, thereby triggering a Labour Leadership election, the first time since 2007 that Labour had to call a leadership election while in power - with Gordon Brown coronated to take over from Tony Blair. Meanwhile, less than 5 hours later, the King of the North - Andy Burnham - took his oath of office in the House of Commons, much to the cheers of his Parliamentary Labour Party Colleagues and the jeers of one particular Tory [Conservative] MP who remarked: “Rome is Saved” - an obvious reference to Burnham’s long-serving northern political figure arriving in London, with him jokingly suggesting that Burnham was coming to "rescue" the Labour Party and the country following Starmer's sudden resignation.
That being said, this article will explore the State of British Politics, and the significance of two small constituencies called Gorton and Denton, and Makerfield that played a hand in this predicament that we find ourselves in, before giving my concluding thoughts on the situation.
The State of British Politics (2024-2026)
To understand the state of British politics today, a fundamental understanding of the General Election of 2024 is a very good place to start. The headlines on5th July read that the Conservative Party was voted out of office after 14 years in power with 5 consecutive Prime Ministers - Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak in order, by a Labour Party led by Keir Starmer. Sky News reported the verdict on the Conservatives: 412 seats for Labour, 121 for the Conservatives - marking a 174-seat majority, a true landslide which is the best since the 2001 election when Blair won his historic second term. However, the terms on which they won it were more a vote against the Conservatives, rather than for Labour, as Lord Ashcroft Polls reported. It was further reinforced by the Guardian reporting this on their election page, where Labour’s vote only increased by 1.7% compared to the last election, while the Conservative Party vote collapsed by nearly 20 points, stemming from tactical voting.
To Starmer, he could not care less. He got the mandate from the people - and Labour were back in Government. He easily formed a Government and passed the King’s Speech, setting out His Majesty’s Agenda for the Parliamentary Session - and things went off a cliff. The Guardian wrote that “political analysts of the future” would be pondering the downfall of a man who did not start illegal wars, did not trigger grave economic crises and had no heinous act of corruption. Al-Jazeera writes that there were three things going against Starmer: Unpopularity, Identity Crisis & Scandals, and Economic Mistakes.
First, unpopularity. The BBC reported that a month after taking office, his net popularity was -7, and this month suggested that his popularity was 56 points underwater. One such possibility for why this was the case was that his Government appeared to have no sense of direction, or as The Conversation put it, “rudderless”. The New Statesman reported that he himself has said: “There is no such thing as Starmerism”. Starmer governed as though competence alone could defeat populism. It could not. This led to the latest YouGov poll reporting that 24% of the population favoured Reform UK, 19% each for Labour and the Conservatives, 15% for the Greens and 13% for the Liberal Democrats.
Second, identity crisis and scandals. Starmer was an Oxford Graduate who was born to a nurse and toolmaker [he mentions his father being a toolmaker on end] - who was, again, accused of being too pragmatic and timid to make decisions despite his massive majority. Anand Menon, professor at King’s College London, was reported to have said that Starmer got into power believing that if Labour provided stability, everything would fix itself. To combat populism, on both sides, there needs to be concrete proof that mainstream [middle-of-the-road] politics can deliver to people - but he has failed to do so. Labour MPs defied his whip on votes like restricting Winter Fuel Payments, which he had to eventually U-turn on - a direct broken promise to fix years of Conservative chaos. Arguably the largest scandal of them all was appointing Peter Mandelson, who was widely known to be a friend of Jeffrey Epstein - especially as the Epstein files gained traction across the pond in the United States.
Third was economic mistakes. The Guardian put together a nice list of Starmer’s successes and failures, and I highly recommend readers read that article. However, to summarise, the economic mistakes that Starmer made were the aforementioned winter fuel subsidy reform, their welfare policy and the economy, holistically, is a mixed bag.
When it came to the winter fuel subsidies, the Civil Service Pensioners’ Alliance reported that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, defended her decision by saying that “failure to act quickly would undermine the UK's financial position with implications for public debt”, and so she took action to means-test the winter fuel, with the triple-lock on State Pensions - will ensure a rise by an estimated £1,700 over the course of the Parliamentary Term. However, in 2025, the Labour Party suffered massively at the local elections, which forced them to reverse the situation - and even a year later, Labour MPs reported that the decision was still being brought up on the doorstep. In the aspect of welfare policy, the Pensions Secretary unveiled a plan to change the benefits system to get more people back into work, and save approximately £5 billion by reducing disability payments. Obviously, the Labour backbenchers were quick to denounce this, and by July, the Government U-turned again. Lastly, the economy and the budget conundrum. Labour’s 2024 manifesto promised not to increase National Insurance, VAT, or income tax - but Rachel Reeves broke that to attempt to fill a £24 billion deficit. While she claimed that this is not a tax on the working class, the Office for Budget Responsibility [OBR] mentioned that it could lead to lower growth and cut jobs. Meanwhile, the UK’s economic growth estimate was cut from 1.4% to 1.1% by the OBR, while the IMF cut growth rate estimates from 1.3% to 0.8%.
All of these factors and others prompted many Labour MPs to want a change in leadership. In my last article about UK politics on Newswav, I mentioned and discussed the possibility of Andy Burnham - the then-Mayor of Manchester elected in 2024 for the third straight time - coming back to Westminster to challenge Keir Starmer for the leadership, because under Labour Party rules - as LabourList detailed - only members of the Parliamentary Labour Party [PLP] can be leaders of the party. The only way that Andy Burnham, widely considered to be the frontrunner for the job to become an MP since Autumn 2025 as he refused to rule out a leadership challenge, could win was for him to win a by-election.
The By-Elections
The BBC reported that the by-election of Gorton and Denton was triggered due to the resignation of former Labour health minister Andrew Gwynne, who was suspended from the parliamentary party for offensive WhatsApp messages a year ago. In the Labour Party, in order to stand in any by-election, the Guardian reported that “sitting mayors need the approval of the party’s national executive committee (NEC) to stand for Westminster.” However, seeing Andy Burnham as a leadership challenger to Starmer, he was blocked by the NEC from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election, and he was reported to have said that he is “disappointed” at the result. However, it was reported that he did campaign for the Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia - but to no avail. The tally was in, and Labour was pushed to third place behind Matt Goodwin (Reform UK), who won 28.7% of the vote and Hannah Spencer (Greens), who won the seat with 40.7% of the vote - securing a 4,400-vote majority.
Then, Josh Simons - a person whom I have not lost any love for as he’s from the right wing of the Labour Party, resigned from parliament over his role in his own thinktank’s [Labour Together] commissioning lobbying and public affairs agency APCO to investigate journalists reporting on the thinktank’s failure to disclose political donations - going so far as to implicate them to a “pro-Kremlin” network, as reported by the Guardian. So, a by-election in Makerfield was called for the 18th of June, which was delivered to the House of Commons by Speaker Lindsay Hoyle. The NEC of the Labour Party had to allow Burnham to stand because, as LabourList reported: “no other potential candidate made the shortlist.” A random constituency out in Wigan could decide the future of the Labour Party, and they did. The Guardian broke down the by-election in numbers, and it was a resounding result. Burnham won an absolute majority of the vote: 54.8% vs Reform UK’s 34.5% - a more than 20-point margin. This was the mandate that Burnham needed to show that he can beat Reform, something that Starmer is clearly failing to do in the polls. Now, he’s the only person who has declared his intention to be Labour leader.
Final Thoughts
As a person on the left, I am cautiously optimistic about a Burnham leadership. He’s saying all the right things, including reversing privatisation with his rhetoric of “ending 40 years of neoliberalism”, his strict adherence to “Manchesterism” - his personal ideology and being a founding member of the centre-left political network Mainstream, which advocates for a “democratic socialist future”. However, I am sceptical of his past ties to New Labour. Deutsche Welt reported that “Under Prime Minister Tony Blair, he served as a junior minister at the Home Office before Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, appointed him to roles at the Finance Ministry, the Department for Culture, and later as health secretary” before criticising Blair for ignoring inequality, as reported by the BBC. I am afraid that perhaps Burnham may not be the people’s champion as everyone makes him out to be. But on the other hand, maybe he’s matured as a politician and actually has a concrete plan to take Labour back to its roots.
To quote an excerpt of a poem that Burnham used on the campaign trail in Makerfield - written by Lemn Sissay, a local from Wigan:
“The North Star leads the way
To the mountain top in awe
That, my friend, is why they say
Up up up… North
And so we build year after year
And we rise tide after time
We bring light to darkness
And we shine
Welcome to our future
And all she endows
This is our dream, our vision
This is our power, our house
This is the backbone of Britain
And they say it is cold
But there is nothing warmer
Than a Northern Soul”
With such a unifying message, we all hope to say: “All hail, the King of the North.”
Timothy (timothytanyeantim@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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