Now the march begins to put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street

Has Makerfield just made Britain’s next prime minister? Cheerleaders for Andy Burnham would have you believe so. Since the byelection result was delivered in the early hours at a conference centre in Wigan, his backers have been hailing “Our Andy” as a conquering hero. But it would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.

The many Labour people who think their party needs to be bolder and less risk-averse will admire both the result and the gamble he took to achieve it. Standing for Makerfield was “a big roll of the dice”, as one of his cabinet-level supporters told me before they knew the outcome. This constituency was very Brexity at the 2016 referendum and Reform won every council ward in the May local elections. The gamble has paid off handsomely. His margin of victory exceeded most expectations with a vote share which comfortably bested the combined score of Reform and its far right rival, Restore. He took 54 percent of the vote, a chunky increase on the 45 percent that Labour managed at the 2024 election. He bagged 24,927 votes, an advance on the 18,202 that Labour managed at the general election. It is hard to imagine any other Labour candidate pulling this off. This is unquestionably an endorsement of the appeal of the Burnham personal brand in the north-west of England. It also demonstrated his skill at positioning himself as both the anti-Starmer candidate and the anti-Reform candidate. For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. They will point to it as evidence that he has what it will take to regalvanise Labour, reconnect the party with the many voters it has lost, and see off the menace posed by Nigel Farage. For all Reform’s efforts to put a gloss on it, the party will be very disappointed by its third consecutive loss at a Westminster byelection.

So Mr Burnham will return to Westminster armed with a potent calling card in the struggle for the leadership of the Labour party which will now be unleashed. He made an explicit declaration of his intentions in his victory speech at the count when he declared: “This result will bring about a country that works fairly for everywhere and everybody”, claiming that it presented “a final chance to change” for the unpopular Labour government. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites.

This will have appeal to those who don’t fancy the inevitable divisiveness of a leadership contest, but some significant obstacles lie in his path. One of them is Sir Keir Starmer. Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails. Even a very weakened prime minister has some power to make life difficult for the man who wants his job.

Sir Keir has gritted his teeth and made the effort to sound pleased that Mr Burnham is on his way south. Some of the prime minister’s allies argue he should offer the other man a “big job” in government to make him look churlish when he refuses it. Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.

This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago. He could be punished for that by Labour members if it comes to a vote on the leadership. But if he were to accept a delay before he makes his move on Downing Street that would risk seeing the steam evaporate from the momentum that he enjoys today.

Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. There are already suggestions that he will present Sir Keir with a list of Burnham backers among Labour MPs, the idea being that this might persuade the prime minister that it is game over for him and to quit without a contest. A “smooth and orderly transition”, as it is being coded, would be sold as a way to allow Sir Keir to depart Number 10 with at least a few shreds of dignity and spare the Labour party the messy and protracted agonies of ousting an incumbent from Downing Street. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. Several of their number – including Shabana Mahmood and Ed Miliband, both potential chancellors in a Burnham government – have told the prime minister to his face that he should announce a departure timetable. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test for them and other ministers will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will.

Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest. Wes Streeting, who has been adamant in his determination that he will run for the premiership, will also have something to say about that. His camp claims to have a spreadsheet of supporters containing more than the 81 Labour MPs he would need to enter a leadership contest.

Makerfield was one of the most consequential and one of the weirdest electoral contests we have ever seen: a leadership coup wrapped inside a byelection. The voters there have made their pick. They have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.

Photograph by Ryan Jenkinson/Getty Images