My colleague George Eaton has some exclusive polling from More in Common showing how Britons say they would vote if it Andy Burnham replaced Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party. The poll puts Labour ahead. And that hypothetical polling is not the only reason to imagine that Burnham might rescue Labour at the polls.
Because whereas Starmer, Angela Rayner, and almost every other cabinet member you can think of gets panned by Reform-minded voters, Burnham does not. He gets a benefit of the doubt from just the kinds of voters Labour needs if it is to win again.
Favourability polls illustrate as much. The Labour brand is in the toilet, polling some 98 per cent unfavourability among Reformers and 65 per cent among all voters. Burnham leaves more to the imagination.
It is not that the mayor of Greater Manchester is some celebrity superstar. But he hasn’t peeved off the public yet. And that is about as much as a Labour politician can hope for in Britain today.
But all speculation is just that. Burnham is mayor of Manchester. He is not yet a contender for the leadership. Unlike Boris Johnson, he cannot run for parliament while remaining mayor. All this only really matters once he can walk the Palace of Westminster. And by then, today’s heat might well have cooled off.
But we can only work with the now. When, and how, can Burnham win a by-election?
It is an open secret among Labourites in the north that the now-disgraced MP Andrew Gwynne will resign his seat at some point this parliament when a Burnham candidacy is probable. His seat straddles the boroughs of Tameside and Manc and is known as Gorton and Denton.
To be true, it’s one of the poorer parts of east Manchester and boasts sizeable support bases for both the Greens and Reform. Gwynne held on comfortably in 2024, but he suffered substantial losses. Reform second, the Greens third, and the Workers Party fourth, here the conduit for disgruntled Muslim voters.
If an election was held today, Britain Predicts has the seat down as a Reform gain. Labour to collapse, Reform to surge. Even with tactical voting, Reform would still eke out a win. Gorton and Denton requires as big a swing to win for Reform as was seen in Runcorn and Helsby. If it can happen in Runcorn, and it did, it can certainly happen in Denton.
But Andy Burnham is a special candidate. His results would be different. It is difficult to predict how him standing would affect the results, but we do have some data to hand. Burnham today is more liked by 2024 Reform voters than the Labour brand, both at the time of last General Election, and today.
In Gorton and Denton, effectively 2-3 percentage points of the Reform 2024 vote dislike Labour but like Burnham. In other words, that is 2-3 points that were not open to voting for Labour then or now, but could be open to voting for Burnham.
And once you include the other parties as well as Reform, Burnham picks up 5-7 percentage points from 2024’s active voters. Whereas Gwynne got 51 per cent last year, Burnham may have got upwards of 58 per cent. And that’s before you consider those voters Burnham would have brought back out.
In the end, these modifications to the Britain Predicts model show that instead of getting 29 per cent in an election held today, Labour would get 34-38 per cent. Instead of being behind Reform, they would be on course to win.
But by fine, fine, margins. Brand Burnham clearly has strength. He could bring to a Labour candidacy a 5-8 point bump in a by-election. But what’s to say things won’t go sour for him when the voters see him in a Westminster light, not a northern light? Nothing is permanent. Least of all brands.
[Further reading: Reform has gone too far on immigration]
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