Andy Burnham is an unlikely stand-in for Tom Cruise. Yet, in Wigan on Friday night, the comparison suddenly felt less far-fetched than it sounds.
Here is the backdrop: no one has declared war, but every side is clearly mobilising.
That is the mood inside the British Labour Party after what many are calling the most consequential by-election in at least 50 years, with Labour figures and Westminster watchers treating the result as far more than a local contest.
The vote, as supporters of Mr Burnham openly argue, happened for one overriding reason: he intends to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader and British Prime Minster.
Which brings us to the Tom Cruise angle. Like the protagonist in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, Mr Burnham faces three supposedly “impossible” tasks before he can claim success. Step one was straightforward on paper but brutal in practice: win Makerfield.
For Mr Burnham, it was never enough to scrape over the line. He needed a decisive victory to keep his bid credible — not only to enter Parliament as an MP, but to beat Reform UK convincingly and show Labour MPs he can take on Nigel Farage’s newest political vehicle. That, in turn, would have to speak to national polling that, so far, has Mr Farage in pole position to win the next general election.
On that first test, he delivered. Labour dramatically expanded its majority in Makerfield, helped by tactical support flowing in from other parties as voters coalesced into a broad anti-Reform bloc.
The scale of the collapse elsewhere underscored the shift. The Conservatives had been the second party here for the century up to 2024. On Thursday, their candidate secured only 997 votes. The Liberal Democrat candidate took 163 — just 68 more than a man wearing a rubbish bin on his head.
Count Binface, a familiar figure on the British by-election circuit, made the most of it, fielding media interviews and posing as he was photo-bombed by the hard core of the Monster Raving Looney Party.
Andy Burnham shakes hands with ‘Count Binface’ with a candidate dressed as a fox
It is entertaining — unless you are the Liberal Democrat candidate hovering only slightly above Count Binface. Or the man in the fox costume campaigning for animal rights.
Still, the strategic point for Labour is serious. If Mr Burnham can consistently pull not just disillusioned Labour supporters but also “stop Farage” voters from the Conservative, Green and Liberal Democrat parties, then he may look to many MPs like the kind of leader they believe they need before the next general election.
Britains most respected polling expert, Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University, said Mr Burnham “has provided as much evidence as any Labour MP could expect from a by-election as to his potential ability to take the challenge to Reform, and to fight an electoral strategy and frame an appeal that enables Labour to be competitive with Reform.”
“And that, above all, is what many a Labour MP is seeking.”
But the second “impossible” task is harder: engineering a change at the top that puts Mr Burnham in Number 10 — and doing it without tearing up the party, destabilising the Government, or weakening the country in the process.
Complicating matters is an additional subplot: Mr Burnham’s victory in Makerfield automatically triggers a by-election for Mayor of Greater Manchester.
That mayoral contest is scheduled for 30 July, and Mr Starmer has pointed to it as a reason to delay any leadership challenge, arguing there should be no heave until after the mayoral vote. That would shove any confrontation into August — the political holiday season.
Which, in practice, means September.
And as the old dictum goes — ‘Events, dear boy’ — time can change everything. A favourable development for Mr Starmer could blunt the insurgency and keep him in place.
Not so fast, argues the Burnham camp. They say that clinging on increases the risk Labour loses the Greater Manchester mayoral election — a result that would almost certainly be read as a verdict on Mr Starmer’s leadership and become a magnet for internal anger.
It would also mean surrendering control of a major metropolitan area of three million people — and, in Mr Burnham’s view, losing a flagship example of the civic nationalism he says is essential to renewing both Britain and Labour.
Keir Starmer (L) has seized on the Manchester Mayoral election as a delay tactic against any challenges by Andy Burnham
Notably, figures around Mr Burnham have begun referring to a ‘Starmer Bunker’ — a pointed nod to the German war film ‘Downfall’, whose scenes have become a staple of internet memes about leaders in denial.
Professor Curtice reached for a similar image when asked about how many MPs may be lining up behind Mr Burnham.
The Labour-leaning magazine New Statesman reported on Thursday night that Mr Burnham has more than the 81 MPs required to trigger a leadership election. But insiders say the composition of that support — particularly how many cabinet ministers are willing to attach their names — could determine whether the second “impossible” task is achieved: persuading Mr Starmer to set out a timetable to leave Downing Street, announce it, and depart with dignity, rather than endure a bruising, contested leadership campaign marked by internecine bloodletting and personal monstering.
Part of that pressure, if it comes, would likely play out through a slow and very public erosion of support at senior level — the same kind of drip-feed that helped bring down Boris Johnson.
“If yet more Labour MPs come out and say, Keir Starmer should go, Andy Burnham should be made his successor. There will come a point where he’s effectively at the same point with Boris Johnson,” said Professor Curtice.
He added: “If indeed – if only at the end point – this means that we begin to get yet more ministerial resignations such that, as Boris Johnson eventually found out, he could no longer fill a governmental administration, at that point, the game is over.
“So we’ll wait and see whether or not we reach that point, but certainly the risk to Keir Starmer – that basically the citadel is going to crumble beneath his feet, whatever his protestations – that risk has been increased by the size of Andy Burnham’s victory.”
At Westminster, the working assumption among Whitehall and parliamentary watchers is that Mr Burnham may pause for a few days, giving Mr Starmer a chance to end his premiership on his own terms.
If that does not happen, the process is expected to turn ugly. The key signals to watch would be ministerial resignations — politics’ closest equivalent to psychological pressure.
Yet even if Mr Burnham managed a smooth, largely bloodless handover — and the odds are stacked against that, as recent Conservative history suggests — he would still face the third “impossible” task.
That one may prove the most daunting of all.
It would require him to use Labour’s massive parliamentary majority to push through sweeping changes to how Britain is governed, produce major political and economic results, and then win the next general election on the strength of those outcomes — effectively killing off the Reform UK threat.
“Change” is becoming central to Mr Burnham’s pitch — and, his allies insist, it is not simply shorthand for removing Mr Starmer.
Watch: Andy Burnham speaks to RTÉ News earlier this month
In an RTÉ News interview at the start of the month, Mr Burnham used the word “change” four times. In his victory speech on Thursday night, he said it six times. Then, in his thank-you remarks as he looked ahead to returning to Parliament, he used “change” 17 times.
Much of that emphasis, he argues, reflects a deeper frustration: that the politics of the past 40 years has left too many people behind, particularly in the north of England, in communities such as Wigan and across the Makerfield constituency.
“I described it last night as a last chance to change – and that’s how people here seemed to see it,” he told supporters.
“When I was speaking to them on the doorsteps, they were saying: ‘Well, Andy, maybe we can give you our support this time – but it’s not a blank cheque.’ It’s not ongoing support. You have to respond to what people here are saying.
“You have to do something to make life more affordable, to put more money in people’s pockets. To give people more breathing space again, so they can have a better life.
“That’s what people were saying, and we must respond to it.
“We need an economy that works for everybody, not just a few in far-off places, but one that works for people right here.
“We do need to bring down water bills, energy bills and rail fares, just as we’ve brought down bus fares in Greater Manchester, to make life more affordable.
A billboard bearing a ‘vote Andy for us’ message ahead of the Makerfield by-election
“We do need an end to trickle-down economics, which didn’t trickle down very much at all to places like this.
“We want to see a new drive of re-industrialisation across the North of England, and across the country as a whole.
“And that requires a big change in Whitehall – particularly in public procurement.
“It’s about time we started backing British business and British industry, so that we can re-industrialise places like this.”
It was a set of familiar soft-left themes — strong on intent, light on detail — particularly on how such measures would be funded at a time when government finances are under strain.
In the conservative press, opponents are already deploying the “red scare” against Mr Burnham, invoking the image of bondholder vigilantes turning on a Burnham administration as they did on former Conservative Prime Minster Liz Truss four years ago.
A morning-after address to campaign staff is rarely the place for line-by-line policy. But in any leadership contest against Mr Starmer, the prime minster would enjoy a built-in advantage: the information asymmetry that comes with holding the keys to Number 10.
Mr Starmer is widely viewed as more detail-oriented than Mr Burnham, and his supporters argue he could exploit that to damage a rival who speaks in broader strokes.
Once again, the old divide emerges: campaigning in poetry, governing in prose.
For now, Mr Burnham is the one writing the poetry — and that gives him a public advantage as the story accelerates.
To complete his three “impossible” tasks and become, in this telling, Labour’s political equivalent of Tom Cruise — the Top Gun of the party — Mr Burnham will need every trick, ounce of momentum and ounce of spectacle he can summon.
