Andy Burnham’s allies ‘want Starmer to hand over power in September’

Andy Burnham’s allies believe Keir Starmer should set out a timetable to hand over the premiership in September to avoid jeopardising Labour’s prospects in the Greater Manchester mayoral race, it is understood.

The leadership hopeful’s victory in the Makerfield by-election has set up a battle for No 10 as the British prime minister made clear he will fight any challenge to his position earlier on Friday.

Supporters close to the outgoing Greater Manchester mayor are not seeking an immediate transfer of power as they want time to prepare for governing in the event that he succeeds in ousting Starmer, it is understood.

Burnham’s election on Friday as the MP for Makerfield also means he is giving up the mayoral role he has held since 2017, with a contest to replace him set for July 30th.

Reform UK, who made sweeping gains in the area at May’s local elections, and the Greens, who won the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, will both be hoping to win over voters in the traditional Labour stronghold.

Allies of Burnham are understood to want Starmer to set out a timetable to depart in September over the coming days, with some believing the mayoral race would be harder for the party to win with no prospect of a change in leader.

But Starmer has insisted he will fight his rivals should a contest be triggered after the outgoing mayor and former Leigh MP’s return to Westminster, who defied national trends to increase Labour’s share of the vote in Makerfield.

He said he will not “walk away” from Downing Street and has been holding calls with members of his Cabinet to shore up support in the wake of the by-election result, as first reported by The i Paper.

Speaking to reporters at an event in north London, Starmer said: “If there is a contest, then yes, I will stand.

“I have said repeatedly, I am not going to walk away from that.”

The British prime minister said he had not yet directly spoken with Burnham since his victory, but added that he will, and had already sent a message of congratulations to him.

In a lunchtime call with Labour staffers, he called for the party to “pull together” in taking the fight to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and warned against “turning on each other”.

He said: “The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement.

“That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”

Starmer is understood to have amassed a war chest to fund his campaign to fight any leadership challenge with the backing of a group of private donors, as first reported by The Times.

Fundraising has ramped up in the last two days with total pledges running into six figures, sources said.

At a Labour rally following his win, leadership hopeful Burnham said: “We’ve been on a path for 40 years that simply hasn’t worked for people and places in this part of the world, and this now is the change moment.

“We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”

He added: “I think we need in this country right now for people to feel a sense of hope that there is something better to work towards on the horizon.”

Signalling his priorities should he succeed in replacing Starmer, he called for reindustrialisation, reforms to Whitehall and an end to the “unfairness” of the immigration system.

Makerfield is the third successive parliamentary by-election in which Nigel Farage’s political outfit has come second over the last year, following the Caerphilly by-election for the Welsh Parliament in October, and the Gorton and Denton Westminster by-election in February.

Burnham defeated Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon by 9,231 votes, up from 5,399 in 2024, and Labour’s vote share increased by 9.61%.

Following his win, he said Labour had a “final chance to change”, and he urged his party to act now, saying there would be no second chance.

He said: “Everyone knows that politics isn’t working.

“Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point.”

In an attempt to address the assertion that he was only seeking to become Makerfield’s MP to further his own ambitions, he said: “It will never be a stepping stone to me, but instead will be my touchstone.

“A Makerfield test at the heart of British politics will make sure that the places Westminster has neglected will now get fairness.”

Louise Haigh, a former minister in Starmer’s Cabinet, urged the British prime minister to set out an orderly transition and agree a “path forward” with Burnham in the coming days.

She said: “I hope the Prime Minister takes the weekend to really reflect on the result here – listen to soundings from the Cabinet and the PLP, because all the evidence suggests that a contest will be brutal, it will be unpleasant and it will be very unlikely that the Prime Minister is going to win at the end of it.”

Asked if they had a “campaign ready to go”, she said: “Yes.”

Haigh said: “We really hope that this can be a managed and orderly transition and Keir Starmer will reflect on the results, and Andy and Keir can meet in the coming days, and over the next week, and agree a path forward.”

She said “all the agency is in Keir Starmer’s hands” and that she hoped he did that in “a dignified way”.