Andy Burnham’s decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election — taking 55 per cent of the vote against Reform UK’s 35 per cent — has triggered an open cabinet revolt against Sir Keir Starmer. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander have both called on the prime minister to set out a timetable for leaving Downing Street. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who had previously made the same demand, has not spoken to Starmer since the result. Burnham, who will be sworn in as an MP on Monday, is expected to easily secure the 81 nominations required to trigger a leadership contest. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has also indicated he could run, though may stand aside if Burnham’s momentum proves insurmountable. Starmer, for his part, insists he will fight any challenge and has urged the party to avoid “tearing itself apart.” Only Chancellor Rachel Reeves offered unqualified public support.
The received wisdom
The sympathetic framing of Starmer’s situation goes something like this: the man walked into an almost impossible inheritance. The Conservatives had left the public finances in a precarious state, the economy was flatlining, and Labour’s parliamentary majority, vast as it appeared in 2024, was built on a fragile pluralism rather than genuine enthusiasm. Starmer kept the party together long enough to win power, reformed the party’s internal culture after the Corbyn years, and began the long difficult work of fiscal repair. That he has encountered turbulence is unsurprising; so did every reforming Labour government from Attlee onward. Burnham’s win, the optimists say, actually vindicates the Labour brand — Reform was beaten, and the party held. What is unfolding is not a crisis of governance but the normal friction between a sitting leader and the restless ambitions of successors who want their moment. Orderly transitions happen in mature democracies. The fact that cabinet ministers are discussing succession openly is not necessarily chaos — it may, in fact, be healthy.
A different read
That reading has more than a little wishful thinking embedded in it.
The constitutional logic of a prime minister who has lost the open confidence of at least three senior cabinet members — the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary, and the Transport Secretary — is grim. In British parliamentary tradition, cabinet collective responsibility runs in both directions: ministers support the prime minister’s policy publicly, and in exchange, the prime minister retains the authority to govern. When that compact breaks down openly, it typically cannot be reassembled by a combination of defiance and phone calls to waverers.
The historical parallel that should concentrate minds is not Attlee’s turbulent 1945 government, nor even Tony Blair’s long managed departure. The more apt comparison is Harold Wilson’s second term, when a prime minister who had won an election found himself progressively isolated not by ideological opponents but by colleagues who concluded, with reluctant arithmetic, that the party’s survival required a change. Wilson resigned in 1976 before he was pushed. Callaghan inherited a weakened party and, eventually, the Winter of Discontent.
The structural problem Starmer faces is not merely personal popularity. It is that the political space he was trying to occupy — a moderate, pragmatic, fiscally responsible centre-left — is being squeezed simultaneously from several directions. Reform UK, which took 35 per cent in Makerfield on a strongly anti-establishment platform, is not going away. The Conservatives’ remarkable win in Aberdeen South — their first Scottish by-election victory in more than 50 years — shows that there is still a centre-right electorate available to be consolidated. Burnham’s 55 per cent in Makerfield is impressive, but the constituency was a Labour fortress. It tells us that the party brand, properly deployed by a candidate with genuine regional credibility, can beat Reform. It does not tell us that Starmer could replicate that performance nationally.
The Tuesday cabinet meeting, which all senior ministers will attend, is the next pressure point. If Cooper and Alexander maintain their position in the room — and there is no obvious reason why they should retreat — the prime minister faces a choice between a scheduled departure and a formal no-confidence vote. Either outcome ends the current phase of Labour government. The question for Burnham is whether he can translate local popularity and Westminster arithmetic into a policy platform with enough substance to distinguish his prospective leadership from what precedes it. “Change” is not a programme. The party has been here before.
What to watch
- Whether Starmer addresses the party on Monday before Burnham is sworn in — a statement of intent to resign or to fight would immediately reshape the political landscape.
- The Tuesday cabinet meeting: if Alexander and Cooper hold their ground, the logic of collective responsibility makes Starmer’s position formally untenable.
- Streeting’s calculation: he has the support to enter a contest, and his instinct appears to be to run regardless. If he stands, the party faces a genuine contest between three significant figures, and the outcome becomes genuinely unpredictable.
- The Greater Manchester mayoral by-election on 30 July: Starmer had pointed to this as a reason to delay any leadership decision. With Burnham now gone to Westminster, the new mayoral candidate is an unknown quantity. Watch whether that race becomes a proxy battlefield.
— J