Makerfield Speaks for the Red Wall – Keir Starmer Must Go

Carnage. I think that is the best way to put it. Massive council wins for Reform and an evisceration of Welsh Labour, epitomised by First Minister, Eluned Morgan, being ejected at break-neck speed from her Senedd seat, has rubbed salt into Labour’s backbench anxiety. The threshold for triggering a leadership challenge against the PM, the elusive and seemingly far-fetched 81 MPs, has been surpassed within the space of 48 hours. The only element that’s missing is a leader of the pack. Don’t get me wrong, Wes Streeting does have significant quality as a contestant and is many times more articulate than Keir Starmer. Yet his affiliation to Peter Mandelson and long-time right-‘Starmerite’ credentials weighs him down. In fact, polling suggests that even Starmer would lash Streeting in a labour member vote.

For a month, it was all quiet on the Southbank front. All eyes sharply trained on the Makerfield by-election where Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester and King of the North, hoped to win and put Labour out of its misery. Now that the results are in, and Burnham has demolished Reform with a majority of 9,000 votes, it seems that Burnham’s distinct and rooted offer pays dividends against Farage. Furthermore, the writing on the wall says that Labour must part with Starmer, and crucially, tack left to catch Farage’s runaway train. It is also worth noting that Zack Polanski has conceded that Labour cannot be counted out of elections and has publicly declared openness to a coalition agreement with a post-Starmer leader. Add the Lib Dems,  content with choosing bungie-jumping and Chappel Roan over policy, Sir Ed Crazy will be ecstatic to get a seat at the Cabinet table for his exploits. To step away from the rhetorical falafel that has come before, Burnham is the clear favourite to be Labour Leader, and changing into soft left gear feels like the right strategy to keep the hot steam of Reform from coming out of Downing Street kettles. 

To really bring home the importance of the result in Makerfield on Friday 19th June, many political commentators are framing this as a Burnham swing in the principal seats that Reform want to paint sky blue. Reform’s aim is to take apart Labour's red wall, much like Boris Johnson managed to do in 2019 by campaigning on the issue of Brexit. Keep in mind also that even if Rupert Lowe’s “Restore” Party had split Reform’s vote, as Farage is now angrily insisting, it would still not have been enough for Reform to win, and the Tories and Greens were not at the races at all. Look, the proof is in the pudding; Keir Starmer is the story. The appetite for Starmer to go is greater for Reform voters than getting Reform elected. Secondly, Reform’s defeat was a clear vote for Burnham to be Prime Minister, when a vote against him, would’ve been a vote for Farage to walk through that famous black door. 

So here we are, a return that was deemed incredibly difficult has been made with aplomb, and the numbers needed for a leadership challenge that once looked like a mountain have turned out to be more of a speed bump. Now, as Keir Starmer has rightly noted, the Manchester Mayoralty by-election begins, and I think there is a consensus between Starmer and Burnham that that should come before any leadership fisticuffs. However, Burnham’s camp has made the point that he alone won the election in Makerfield. An orderly transition, where Starmer sets out his timetable for resignation, boosts the Labour offer to Greater Manchester and the wider country, whilst also allowing Starmer to leave the job with dignity. There is no doubt that Sir Keir changed the Labour Party, took it back to office, and put the UK back on the European stage. 

Now, surely, Starmer does not want to leave office like Boris Johnson did, the man who he was meant to be the alternative to. Surely he does not want to go down in history as a PM who threw his party under the bus in order to try and cling on to power. It is time to look to the precedent of Justin Trudeau and learn the lessons from Biden; it’s time to make a choice between staying and triggering a bloody leadership fight which Starmer has no chance of winning, or doing the mature and honourable thing to prevent Labour from running into the ground. Sir Keir, for the good of God, go.

Image: Flickr/No 10 Downing Street (Simon Dawson)

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