Burnham’s gameplan – and the four scenarios that will decide the next PM ...Middle East

When the votes are counted in Makerfield on Thursday night, two political futures will be sealed in a single result.

One man may find his path to No 10 finally clear. The other maybe on his way back to the backbenches. Rarely has a by-election been such a sliding door moment, or carried such weight for the man who already holds the keys to Downing Street.

Keir Starmer’s day of reckoning comes as he returns from the G7 meeting of world leaders in the French spa town of Évian-les-Bains – a summit that may prove to be his last turn on the world stage.

The Prime Minister was determined to keep the focus on the international effort he and his global partners are making to secure a “just and lasting” peace in the Middle East and Ukraine. But the spectre of the Makerfield by-election was never far away.

In an interview with Sky News, Starmer was asked directly whether there were any circumstances in which he would quit. His answer was unequivocal. “I’m not going to walk away. I am going to fight,” he said.

Starmer said to be ‘sulphorous’ at Burnham and Streeting

He insisted he was neither bitter nor angry about the predicament he finds himself in – though friends describe him privately as “sulphurous” about both challengers – Andy Burnham and former health secretary Wes Streeting – the men his allies blames for destabilising his premiership.

“No, I don’t feel angry, I don’t feel bitter,” he said, “because I remind myself it is an incredible privilege to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. To be here, talking to world leaders about some of the biggest issues of the day, to be able to serve your country, to grapple with the difficult issues.”

In a striking sign of how he intends to manage the threat Burnham poses, Starmer went out of his way to praise the man widely seen as his likeliest successor – and floated giving him a senior role in government.

He described the Greater Manchester mayor as a “great asset” and said he wanted him to have a “big role in Government.”

“I’m sure I’ll talk to Andy after the weekend, of course I will,” he said. “I’ve spoken to him many times in recent weeks, and when I came into politics in 2015, it was Andy Burnham’s team that I joined, and we worked very well together. He’s a huge asset. He’s been a fantastic mayor in Manchester. And if he comes back into Parliament, he’ll be a fantastic asset for our party and for the country.”

That, on Starmer’s part, is likely to be wishful thinking. Few of Burnham’s allies believe he would accept a role serving under the man he hopes to replace. “He hasn’t done all this to become a Cabinet minister in a failing Labour government,” one senior Labour figure said. “He has done all this to win the keys to No 10.”

Few also believe Starmer is seriously contemplating a cabinet reshuffle that would create a vacancy for Burnham. Following John Healey’s resignation as Defence Secretary over the lack of resources allocated to his Defence Investment Plan, many Labour MPs view the Prime Minister as too weak to risk a major shake-up of his top team.

Even if he were willing to do so, the most obvious roles for Burnham are currently occupied by ministers who would be difficult to dislodge. Housing secretary, a position that appears well suited to Burnham’s strengths, is held by the fiercely loyal Steve Reed. Other posts that would fit his skill set, including justice secretary and home secretary, are similarly occupied by figures Starmer would be reluctant to move.

What follows is not one obvious path for both men, but a set of scenarios Westminster has been quietly war-gaming for weeks. Thursday’s result will not decide which of them unfolds. It will simply mark the moment they begin – if, crucially, Burnham wins the by-election.

Scenario one: The coronation of Burnham

This is the route most senior Labour figures now regard as the likeliest, and the one Burnham’s camp would privately prefer.

Under it, there is no contest at all. Burnham wins Makerfield, returns to the Commons, and the pressure on Starmer builds – not through a formal challenge but through a steady drumbeat of cabinet ministers and backbenchers urging him to set out a departure timetable until his position becomes untenable.

A coronation spares the party a summer of public bloodletting, denies his rivals the oxygen of a contest, and allows Burnham to enter Downing Street as a unifying figure rather than a factional victor.

It also plays to the arithmetic. Where a head-to-head was once thought to split roughly 60/40 in his favour, that margin is now believed to have widened further still after defence secretary John Healey quit last week.

Burnham’s prospects of a coronation will heavily depend on the scale and shape of his victory. A narrow win, particularly one aided by Restore splitting the right-wing vote, would complicate any claim that he is uniquely positioned to take on Reform.

Critics would argue that his success owed as much to a fragmented opposition as to his own electoral appeal. By contrast, a commanding victory would strengthen the case that Burnham has broad electoral reach and can win over voters beyond Labour’s traditional base.

The other complication is timing – and specifically the Greater Manchester mayoral by-election that Burnham’s own victory would immediately trigger.

Move too soon, and he risks being seen to abandon the city that made him for the prize he has always wanted. It is a vulnerability Starmer pointedly sought to exploit during his broadcast round on Wednesday.

“If he does win, we’ve immediately got a Manchester mayoralty to fight and that starts straight away,” the Prime Minister told the BBC. “It’s very important to us that we win that.”

Whether Burnham moves before or after that poll may prove the single most important tactical decision of his career.

Waiting risks letting Labour lose the mayoralty by-election to Reform, denting his chances of becoming PM; moving too soon risks tainting his honeymoon period and limiting how actively he can campaign.

Scenario two: Starmer digs in

The Prime Minister’s public resolve is not in doubt. The question is whether it survives contact with reality and a bad result.

Allies take his “I am going to fight” at face value, pointing to a strong sense of duty and a genuine conviction that he was handed a five-year mandate to govern.

Some in his inner circle are privately scathing about both Burnham and Streeting and believe Starmer is a better Prime Minister than either of them would be.

His argument is partly one of self-preservation dressed as logic and strategy. “I think that the last government proved that parties that spend their whole time in leadership elections don’t go on to win the next general election,” he said – a warning, aimed at his MPs, that regicide carries a cost at the ballot box.

He has refused to engage with the manoeuvring at all. “I’m not going to get involved in this Westminster discussion,” he said. “My job is to concentrate on the job I was elected to do. And forgive me, that is what I’m going to do.”

But some in the Cabinet suspect his defiance is theatre – that he is saying only what he must, with no incentive to concede before the result is known, in case of a seismic upset no one has anticipated.

According to one Cabinet minister, there have already been quiet discussions about how Starmer might make a dignified exit, and he is said to be markedly less forceful about fighting on in private than in public.

The dig-in scenario has one structural weakness. Even if Starmer refuses to go, few in the Cabinet beyond his most loyal colleagues now believe his position is tenable – despite claims that 95 per cent of his top team are behind him.

The odds on his survival shortened dramatically with Healey’s departure, and the argument that those odds are “underpriced” rings increasingly hollow. Defiance, in other words, may delay the reckoning, but it is unlikely to prevent it.

Scenario three: Streeting forces the issue

For all the talk of a coronation, one man could blow it apart. Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, said on Tuesday that he had the numbers to trigger a leadership contest and would seek to enter any race that opened up.

If true, it would transform the picture – replacing an orderly handover with a full, formal contest fought out over the summer.

To trigger a challenge, Streeting needs the backing of a fifth of the parliamentary party. Should he clear that bar, the race opens up to others.

Burnham and any rival contender would each need the nominations of 81 MPs to get on the ballot, and Starmer would be automatically entitled to defend his position. The likely result would be a contest running through the summer recess, with a new leader crowned at the Labour Party conference this autumn.

The trouble for Streeting is that few in Westminster believe he has the numbers. They believe had he genuinely commanded the required, support, he would have moved last month, during the failed coup against Starmer – a coup that would have begun without Burnham in it.

At the time, the whips estimated Streeting had no more than 40 MPs behind him, half the threshold required to force a contest. Nothing since is thought to have closed that gap.

But with Burnham’s popularity said to be waning both within the party and country, stranger things have happened and the prospect of a full-blown leadership contest at this stage cannot be ruled out.

Scenario four: Backroom deals

Beneath all of this are the backroom deals that are always cooked up behind closed doors during every leadership contest.

There is still a long way to go before any of this is settled, and a great many deals still to be done.

Chief among them is the question of Streeting himself. There has been persistent speculation that he could be bought off with the offer of a major cabinet brief – neutralising his threat without the party ever testing whether his numbers are real.

Burnham could dangle a prize to clear his own path, trading a great office of state for Streeting’s support and the coronation that follows.

Then there is the field beyond the two front-runners. Among those said to be weighing a run is Al Carns, who resigned as a defence minister last week.

There has also been widespread speculation that Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, could enter the race should a wider contest open up – a reminder that a formal race would not necessarily be a Starmer-Burnham–Streeting three-way-race, but could draw in figures from across the party’s wings.

What unites all four scenarios is that none of them is resolved by tomorrow’s vote alone.

A Burnham victory does not crown him; it merely fires the starting gun on his march towards power. It is also not necessarily fatal for Starmer; it would simply shorten the odds of his survival.

The only result that would truly reset the board is a Makerfield upset – an outcome few are anticipating – but a Reform win would significantly strengthen the Prime Minister’s position.

In this scenario, it is possible he could limp on for months – or even years – as it would return the party to a position where there was no obvious successor to Starmer that people could agree on.

Most in the party, though, have stopped asking whether Starmer will be challenged and started asking when. The likeliest answer remains a slow squeeze on the wounded PM’s authority rather than a sudden strike.

But politics rarely follows a script.

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