Labour Civil War: Greater Manchester Mayor Burnham Says MPs Calling on Him to Topple Starmer

A Game of Thrones-style contest appears to be unfolding in Westminster as speculation runs rampant over potential challengers seeking to topple Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose scandal-ridden and feckless government has long since apparently lost the support of the public, despite only coming to power last year.

Starmer’s Labour Party swept to a large majority last summer in large part as a result of public anger over the ineptitude of the Conservative Party, and for its failures to govern conservatively. A quirk or feature of the British electoral system gave Labour that large majority despite their getting an unusually low number of votes, half a million fewer than the losing party in the previous 2019 election, for instance.

With Labour now trailing behind Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party after a year of essentially Tory-plus neo-liberal governance, some in the party are starting to openly question Starmer’s leadership and call for a more obvious leftism which they think could revive the faltering party.

The first rider to publicly express interest in taking down Starmer emerged on Wednesday, with Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham branding the prime minister as “divisive” and boasting that Labour MPs are begging him to challenge Starmer’s leadership.

Burnham, a swamp creature of the Tony Blair era who rose through the ranks and held multiple cabinet posts under the socialist Gordon Brown government, has largely been able to shed the London taint over the past decade spent in Manchester, where he picked up the moniker ‘King of the North’ for his city’s relative economic success and his advocacy for coronavirus cash being spent in the north of England during the lockdowns.

Burnham has argued that the Labour government should focus on nationalisation projects to bring housing, energy, and water firms under state control, in a move that would take the party back to its socialist roots.

Commenting on his potential ambitions on Downing Street, Burnham told The Times: “If you’re asking me, am I attracted to going back into my old world and the old way of doing things in Westminster with minimal change, well no, I wouldn’t find that attractive.”

“[But] am I ready to work with anybody who wants to sort of put in place a plan to turn the country around? I’m happy to play any role. I am ready to play any role in that. Yes. Because the threat we’re facing is increasingly an existential one.”

The public speculation from the Greater Manchester Mayor comes just days ahead of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, during which the party will select its deputy leader after former housing minister and deputy PM Angela Rayner was forced to resign in disgrace after failing to pay her full property taxes on her second home.

Were Burnham to step down from his post in favour of the party leadership role, he would put himself in a position to challenge Starmer openly for the keys to Number 10 should the opportunity arise.

Although Labour has control of Parliament and no reason to call fresh elections until it expires in 2029, the prospect Starmer personally holding the office of Prime Minister for that full five years as Prime Minister is seriously in doubt. According to an Opinium survey last week, a majority of voters (54 per cent) want Starmer to resign from his post, including over a third (34 per cent) of 2024 Labour Party voters.

In terms of potential replacements from within Labour, the poll found that Burnham was on top at 13 per cent, followed by Health Secretary Wes Streeting at five per cent.

There have also been reports indicating that former Labour leader and current Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband may seek to reclaim the party helm from Starmer as well, even though his time at the helm of Labour was generally not seen to have been very effective.

Nevertheless, be it Burnham’s socialist nationalisation projects or Miliband’s green agenda, it is unclear if either strategy would be able to revive Labour in the face of Farage’s surging Reform party amid growing resentment over mass migration imposed on the country by both Westminster establishment parties.

Mr Farage has predicted that Labour will likely be forced to call for fresh elections by 2027 and has vowed to develop a plan to take control of the government by then.