Celebrations and a swift exit after a Burnham win ‘beyond our wildest dreams’

Andy Burnham celebrates with supporters at a victory rally at Ashton Town FC. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Andy Burnham celebrates with supporters at a victory rally at Ashton Town FC. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images Celebrations and a swift exit after a Burnham win ‘beyond our wildest dreams’ After partying into the early hours, supporters were back for the new Makerfield MP’s victory rally which ended with a madcap escape T here was plenty of the hopey, changey stuff from Andy Burnham at his victory rally on the morning after the night before – but it ended with the new MP for Makerfield doing a runner. “Are you going to become the new prime minister?” shouted Sky’s political editor, Beth Rigby, at the retreating Burnham. “Keir Starmer says he is not going to give way – what’s your message for Keir Starmer?” Hemmed in by cameras, chairs, tables and a whole load of the giggling supporters who had been assembled around him on the turf at Ashton Town FC’s grounds, Burnham picked up the pace. He skipped nimbly past the temporary toilets and weaved through the photographers and the beer garden benches, keeping his gaze firmly away from the chasing TV cameras all the while. It turned into a pretty urgent trot that might even be described as a jog. With Burnham’s vanishing act began what has every appearance of being a strange sort of interregnum in British politics, as authority drifted from one man to the next, after a challenge made in deed if not in words. An hour or so later, Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary, who has been managing Burnham’s campaign in Makerfield, laid out in crystal-clear terms what her candidate had been shy of saying directly. “I hope the prime minister takes the weekend to really reflect on the result here,” Haigh said. “Listen to soundings from the cabinet and from the PLP [parliamentary Labour party], as all the evidence suggests that a contest would be brutal, it would be unpleasant and it would be very unlikely the PM would win.” Did Burnham have a leadership campaign ready to go if Starmer refuses to move? Her answer was straightforward: “Yes.” It is not only the fact of Burnham’s win but the scale of it that had many of his supporters convinced on Friday that a coronation, rather than a contest, was the only course of action. Burnham’s madcap escape from the inevitable questions was about allowing Starmer his own dignified way out. Burnham won the seat with a majority of 9,231 – nearly double that enjoyed by his predecessor, Josh Simons, in 2024. With 54% of the vote, he finished about 20 percentage points ahead of Reform, despite Nigel Farage’s party’s vote share rising by 2.7 percentage points from the general election. The former health secretary Wes Streeting – remember him? – posted on social media his congratulations. “It gives us all hope that Labour can still win, but Andy’s campaign is proof that to do so we need to change,” said the rival leader