Populism is not unstoppable
Andy Burnham turned back the Faragian tidal wave
The death of two-party politics cannot be pronounced quite yet.
Two byelection results held in the United Kingdom delivered stunning, and in Labour’s case, consequential outcomes.
Labour’s ‘King of the North,’ Andy Burnham, united the left behind him, reducing the recently resurgent Greens and Liberal Democrats to less than half a per cent. But how he would fare against Nigel Farage’s Reform was the only battle to watch.
And the Manchester Mayor didn’t just pass his electoral test; he crushed it, and on every metric.
With 24,927 votes, he increased Labour’s majority to 9,231 votes from the 5,399 recorded in 2024, under Starmer’s electorally shallow but wide landslide.
Reform, which one every ward in last month’s council elections won 15,696 votes or 34.5 per cent of the share. While this was up 2.7 per cent on 2024’s result, Farage’s poll-leading party lost 6.8 per cent to Restore, a more hardline far-right party that has the backing of Elon Musk and his algorithm on X.
But even if the fractured vote on the right, it would still have fallen well short of the 54.8 per cent who voted for Burnham.
Having haemorrhaged support and lost thousands of councillors under Keir Starmer, Burnham will soon be knocking at door of Number 10. With an almost admirable shamelessness, MPs who were once rusted-on Starmerites rushed to social media to post their support of their newest colleague in anticipation of his political ascension.
Declaring a ‘turning point’, Burnham did not say if he would challenge Starmer, but made it clear leadership was on the table.
‘Everyone knows politics isn’t working, everyone knows the country isn’t working,’ he said.
‘Tonight could, just could, be the turning point … bringing back hope for the future.’
He warned his soon-to-be Labour colleagues: ‘I do say to my own party, this is a final chance for chance, this is what people said directly to me as I stood on hundreds of doorsteps.’
‘There will be no second chance, but it is a chance now, from this result tonight, to build a new politics based on unity and hope, turning away from the path that takes us to a divided, dark politics of the kind we see in the United States.’
Starmer congratulated Burnham and indicated he will stay on and fight. His final task is to decide whether he leaves office with dignity or derision. New cabinet resignations could begin as a way of trying to force him to stand aside to avoid tainting Burnham as a usurper.
The lesson for Burnham is, of course, Starmer’s own miserable record. ‘Change’ is easy to promise, but in welfare-dependent, low-growth modern Britain, it may be impossible to deliver, at least not without enormous disruption.
Burnham is not immediately clear about how he would square this inconsistency. But for now, his election shows that populism is not on an unstoppable trajectory in Britain.
Further north, in Aberdeen South, Scotland, the Tories also posted a win that reinforced the folly of writing off the major parties.
Douglas Lumsden beat the SNP’s Richard Thomson with a 14.7 per cent swing to the Conservatives. Reform was not even in the game, recording just 2478 votes.
This is vindication for Kemi Badenoch’s common-sense, economy-stupid first approach to the job. She deserves the unity her party is now giving her, and joins the ranks of competitive leaders.
Farage unintentionally underlined the dynamic that could kill his run to Downing Street, saying Reform had been ‘slightly hoist with our own petard’ in framing the contest about who they wanted to replace Starmer.
This is obviously the pitch Burnham or Badenoch would make at the time of the next election — who do you trust to actually run the country?
Farage also hit out at Restore voters.
‘I thought we’d get 18,000 votes, we got just shy of 16 [thousand]. So I’m disappointed by that, no question about it,’ he said.
‘There’s a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted Reform, that voted Restore. And I would say directly to them, what do you want?
‘We are the challenger party to the left in this country. And I would urge you to think again, I really, really would.’
Farage correctly likened Burnham’s appeal to that of another former, popular mayor — Boris Johnson. The comparison serves as a warning. Ultimately, Burnham needs to do what Boris could not: translate his personal brand into delivery and boost, jumpstart the UK economy.
He has tripped up populism for now; how to make it fall flat is his herculean task.