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In Britain, an Election That Could Mark the Beginning of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s End

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is expected to challenge Starmer for leadership of the Labour Party.

On June 18, an unusual but potentially consequential vote is scheduled to be held in a little-known parliamentary constituency on the outskirts of Manchester in northwest England. The outcome in Makerfield, as the area is known, could quickly lead to the selection of a new British prime minister.

The candidate of the governing Labour Party is Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester. If he wins, Burnham is expected to quickly challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has been badly wounded by a series of snafus and regional election losses. “If I get your support, I would seek to represent you at the highest possible level,” he said during a BBC debate in Makerfield.

A career politician, Burnham, 56, gave up his parliamentary seat in the area for the mayoralty in 2017. Now, at a time when the central government in London is out of favor, he is trying to parlay his association with Manchester, the star performer of an otherwise lackluster British economy, into the premiership. “I pioneered a new politics,” he said during a recent televised debate staged by the BBC. Burnham said he would bring the “more collaborative,” long-term approach that he calls “Manchesterism” back to the capital “to restore the public’s trust.”

The Makerfield vote will also be a test of whether Labour can weather the rise of Reform UK, the British analogue of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, which made large gains in local elections in May. With Reform leading in recent national polls, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, who was instrumental in pushing Britain to vote to leave the European Union a decade ago, is now also seen as a possible future prime minister. Farage’s gaining that role “would obviously have all sorts of impacts in terms of the nation’s foreign policy, its stance toward Europe and its relations with the United States,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

That the election is occurring at all is evidence of the volatility of contemporary British politics, which has produced five prime ministers in the last seven years.

Less than two years ago, on July 4, 2024, Starmer led the Labour Party to its first general election victory in nearly 14 years, winning a large majority of 411 of 650 seats in parliament. Yet the goodwill Starmer earned by the win dissipated at a pace that surprised analysts. What’s certain is that Starmer is now hugely unpopular and that a series of wrong moves contributed. Early in his term, Starmer cut a popular subsidy of winter heating costs for the elderly. Later, he appointed Peter Mandelson, a controversial political figure, to the prestigious post of ambassador to Washington, and then dismissed him after embarrassing revelations of the close ties the envoy had to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The May elections........

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