By Sophie Royle
ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, England, May 15 (Reuters) – For many in Labour, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is their best hope to turn around the governing party’s fortunes. But before he can challenge British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he must return to parliament, and that’s not straightforward.
Burnham will try to run in and win a so-called by-election in Makerfield, in the northwestern region where he has been a popular mayor since 2017 – a bid Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK will do its best to thwart.
Hoping his local appeal will boost his attempt to clear the first hurdle to any bid to challenge Starmer for the leadership, Burnham will try to buck a trend felt across the country when voters rejected Labour in local elections last week.
On the streets of Ashton-in-Makerfield, a former mining town in the constituency where many struggled after the closure of the coal pits, voters were split between Burnham and Reform.
BURNHAM ‘THE RIGHT MAN FOR THE JOB’
Anthony McCormack, a former miner who retrained as a welder and is now retired, said he would back Burnham because he is “right man for the job” and would “100%” make a better prime minister than Starmer.
“The man is not a politician, he’s middle management,” he said about the British prime minister.
Labour voter Alan Birch, who is retired, said he would also rather “get Andy in and see what goes from there,” adding that under Starmer things were “going downhill.”
Starmer is under pressure from dozens of his own lawmakers to set a timetable for his departure after the election losses, and the by-election is yet another twist to a political drama that has sent markets spiralling.
Burnham was a member of parliament before becoming Manchester mayor, serving as a minister in Gordon Brown’s government and running unsuccessfully for the party leadership in 2010 and 2015.
He is not yet formally Labour’s candidate for the Makerfield seat but, unlike a previous bid for a parliamentary return earlier this year, the Labour leadership is not expected to block him from entering the race.
Reform has yet to name a candidate.
Labour has represented the area in parliament since 1906, but with the party in crisis and Reform winning all the council seats that were contested in the constituency last week, Burnham’s return is far from a foregone conclusion.
Polls show Starmer is deeply unpopular after a series of U-turns as he has struggled to deliver the growth and stability he promised, while Reform leader Farage told broadcaster GB News he would “throw absolutely everything” at the by-election in a bid to defeat Labour.
Rachael Hulse, an aesthetics nurse, said her family had always voted Labour “but now, that’s completely changed”.
“Labour don’t really have that much of a good rep (reputation) any more,” she said, adding she hoped Reform would win the seat. “It just needs a change, because we seem to be just stuck in the same rut.”
Burnham’s pitch to voters is that he can lift Labour out of that rut, saying people in Makerfield “have long supported our party but lost faith in recent times”.
“We will change Labour for the better and make it a party you can believe in again,” he said when he announced his intention to stand in the seat on Thursday.
But pensioner Ann Garner questioned whether it was the right time for a leadership contest.
“I think Keir Starmer should be given a chance,” she said. “We really need to get the country sorted.”
(Reporting by Sophie Royle, writing by Alistair Smout, editing by Elizabeth Piper and Alex Richardson)
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