GREATER Manchester mayor Andy Burnham received a public endorsement on Friday from ex-Health Secretary Wes Streeting to contest the Makerfield byelection, in his fresh bid to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader.
Writing on X, Streeting, himself a potential leadership contender, said: ‘We need our best players on the pitch. There is no doubt that Andy Burnham is one of them. The Makerfield byelection will be tough. Votes will need to be earned. Andy is the best chance of winning and that should override factional advantage or propping up one person.’
The seat opened up on Thursday when sitting Labour MP Josh Simons stood down to allow Burnham to challenge Starmer for the leadership. Simons had a majority of 5,399 at the 2024 general election, with Reform’s Robert Kenyon taking 12,803 votes. Kenyon was elected to Wigan Council earlier this month and could stand again. Reform leader Nigel Farage has said his party will ‘throw absolutely everything at’ the contest.
Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell also backed Burnham’s return to parliament. Speaking at a Fire Brigades Union conference in Coventry, Powell said: ‘We could have further to fall as a party and we absolutely need to come back together as one team, because we’ve got to take the fight to Farage. We are at real risk of Nigel Farage walking up Downing Street in a few years time, and we can’t let that happen.’
She added that she had it ‘on good authority’ that there would be ‘absolutely no attempt to stop’ Burnham from standing, drawing applause from delegates.
City traders responded sharply to news of a likely Burnham leadership bid. The yield on UK 10-year gilts rose 11 basis points to 5.11 per cent and 30-year yields climbed by the same margin to 5.76 per cent, not far from Tuesday’s 28-year high of 5.81 per cent. Sterling fell more than half a cent to a five-week low of $1.333.
UK borrowing costs moved more sharply than those in the United States or Japan, with traders citing concerns that a new prime minister could borrow more heavily.
It was reported that the Makerfield contest could cost the taxpayer up to £226,000. A mayoral byelection in Greater Manchester, should Burnham vacate the role, would run into the millions; the 2024 mayoral election cost £4.7 million.
Burnham is being widely presented as Labour’s saviour as Starmer flounders in the wake of last week’s bruising losses in the council, Scottish and Welsh elections. This would be his third attempt at the leadership, after losing to Ed Miliband in 2010 and Jeremy Corbyn in 2015.
During his 2015 campaign he promised that his first overseas trip as leader would be to Israel. As recently as February this year, he was publicly backing Starmer.
As a Labour MP he voted for the Tony Blair government’s invasion of Iraq, and as shadow home secretary in 2016 he was among the parliamentary supporters of Labour Friends of Israel who flocked to back the lobby group, alongside then shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips and Dan Jarvis.
Burnham’s principal adviser during the last Labour administration was Jennifer Gerber, who in 2010 became director of Labour Friends of Israel and led the group for the next decade.
Before that she headed Progress, a Labour pressure group founded by Peter Mandelson, the associate of the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which received millions from David Sainsbury, a major backer of the Labour Together think tank.
When Gerber stood down from Labour Friends of Israel in 2020, she praised Starmer for ‘committing to fully rooting out the Israel obsession in the party’.
The 2015 leadership campaign was bankrolled by donors whose networks remain influential in Labour today.
Burnham received more than £130,000 in private donations.
