If Andy Burnham Had the Cojones He’d Stand as an Independent and be PM in Six Months

At the risk of ignoring Napoleon’s advice to “never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”, here’s my suggestion for how the Labour Party could rid itself of Sir Keir – a wish held as fervently by many in the Parliamentary party as it is by Labour members, their supporters and their opponents.

The only potential replacement that could move the polls even slightly back in Labour’s favour appears to be Andy Burnham. While it currently looks like Starmer has snookered Burnham, if Andy had the cojones and followed the strategy laid out in this article, he could be Prime Minister within six months.

Andy Burnham, in tune with about 89% of the population, thinks that Starmer is a disaster. He thinks that if he got into the Commons he could challenge Starmer and win a leadership contest. Clearly, Starmer agrees with this analysis, which is why he rigged the NEC vote to keep Burnham in his Manchester box.

Magnanimously, Starmer has conceded that Burnham could stand as an MP at the next General Election, but by then, while it’s conceivable that Burnham could win a leadership contest, the odds on him ever becoming PM will have infinitely lengthened.

If Burnham wants to be PM he needs to win a Commons seat now, not in three years time, and the Gorton and Denton seat is one of the few in the country that he could feasibly win. It’s on his turf and if Burnham stood it would inevitably be framed as the ‘return of the King’, as a referendum on Starmer himself rather than on the Labour Government as a whole. Ironically, Burnham, despite being Labour, could galvanise the ‘protest’ vote against his own party leader.

If he really wants to be PM he’d be mad to pass up this opportunity, but he needs to act quickly as applications need to be in by February 3rd for the vote on February 26th.

As the Labour Party won’t let him stand under its banner, why doesn’t he stand as an independent? Admittedly, he’d have to give up his Mayoralty and the £114,000 salary that goes with it, but even if he failed to win the by-election he could probably win back the Mayoralty in the subsequent election, even if he had to stand as an independent in that election too.

Without Burnham on the ballot, Labour doesn’t have a prayer, which certainly weakens the charge of ‘betrayal’ that Starmer would inevitably level at Burnham. If Burnham won as an independent, in a way Labour would have hung on to the seat. The only loser in the Labour family would be Starmer himself.

We’ll come to how he might win the by-election later, but let’s first just jump ahead to the reaction of the Labour Parliamentary Party if he suddenly appeared in the House. He’d be a hero to a large swathe of Labour MPs, with the exception only of Starmer himself and perhaps one or two Cabinet Ministers with designs on the leadership. Can you imagine the scene, if immediately before PMQs on the Wednesday after the by-election, with the House full, Burnham took his seat for the first time? Power would visibly ebb from Starmer and flow inexorably towards Burnham.

Roll forward to the May elections, assuming they go as badly for Labour as expected and Starmer is mortally weakened, the likelihood of a leadership challenge becomes all the greater. Should Wes Streeting or Shabana Mahmood, from the Right of the Party, launch a leadership bid, surely it would be unthinkable for the NEC to block independent MP Andy Burnham either rejoining the Parliamentary Party or launching a leadership challenge of his own from the centre Left of the party as he would simply have too much support, particularly if Angela Rayner or another leading figure from the Left joined him.

Such a situation isn’t unprecedented. Back in 2000, Frank Dobson was selected as the Labour Party’s candidate to be the first elected Mayor of London. Dobson was selected when the majority of members wanted Ken Livingstone. Livingstone stood and won as an independent. Four years later Livingstone won again but this time as the official Labour candidate. If even Tony Blair in his pomp couldn’t keep out the renegade, what chance Starmer in June, after a disastrous May, of keeping out Burnham?

If Burnham can get himself into the Commons, he stands a good chance of successfully wresting the leadership of the party from Starmer. But can he win the by-election?

The BBC chart below compares the results for the Gorton and Denton constituency for the 2024 election with those from 2019. Turnout was a pathetically low 47.8%, highlighting the lack of enthusiasm for any of the candidates. While Labour’s candidate, Andrew Gwynne, won 50.8% of the vote, this represented only 24.3% of the electorate.

With 52% of the electorate staying home in 2024, it’s possible that Burnham could motivate a silent majority to come out to register a figurative kicking to Starmer, regardless of the swings amongst those who did vote in 2024. However, more realistically, many 2024 Labour voters would probably prefer to line up behind Burnham if they thought he was going to defenestrate Starmer imminently rather than go across to Reform or the Greens, who can’t achieve anything until after the next General Election. The same would be true of Conservative and Lib Dem voters: how much more satisfying to vote for an independent Burnham than to see your vote fritter away between half a dozen other competing parties?

In the absence of Burnham from the by-election line-up, the contest will probably break down into a Greens/Islamic vs Reform contest. It will certainly be interesting as a harbinger of what’s likely to come in many Midlands and Northern cities in the next General Election. But beyond its shock value it would have no long-term consequence. Throw in a Burnham putsch and suddenly Gorton and Denton has significance.

My suspicion is that Burnham has done his own soundings and decided that even with him on the ticket, Labour still can’t win. However, without him I think that Labour will join the Tories in being in danger of losing its deposit.

From my vantage point it seems that the people have decided a ‘plague on both your houses’. I agree with Dominic Cummings’s view that the old parties are becoming an irrelevance. However, it’s just possible that Burnham, standing as an independent on a mission to challenge Starmer, might yet pull off a victory.

I doubt anyone feels that a Burnham Government would be any better than a Starmer led one (he has almost always voted against stronger laws and enforcement of immigration rules, for instance), but at least it would be amusing to watch it all happen as we all endure the ongoing shambles.

Come on Andy, give us a laugh: find some cojones and stand.