Burnham says byelection win ‘last chance’ to change Britain as Starmer vows to fight any leadership challenge – UK politics live

Burnham said that his byelection win was the “last chance” to change the country, and a chance “to lay out a new path for Britain”.

He said:

double quotation markIt is our last chance to change, but we’re going to take it, aren’t we? We are going to take that opportunity and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.

The word Makerfield in the future must be known as a byword for the change that came to British politics. This is the moment.

We’ve been on a path for 40 years that simply hasn’t worked for people and places in this part of the world, and this now is the change moment.

We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”

I think we need in this country right now for people to feel a sense of hope that there is something better to work towards on the horizon.

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Andy Burnham’s victory shows that the new MP for Makerfield has a mandate to “take on [Nigel] Farage”, according to the Fire Brigades Union (FBU).

The FBU’s general-secretary Steve Wright said the result was a win for the Labour movement, “which staged a mass ground campaign in Markerfield involving trade unions like the FBU”.

He said:

double quotation markThe electorate in this constituency has overwhelmingly voted for hope and rejected the divisive policies of the far right.

Andy Burnham rightly said in his victory that “everyone knows politics isn’t working” and “tonight could just be a turning point”.

Members of the FBU are being forced to live with chronic underfunding of the fire service because of the way political decisions are being made.

Keir Starmer has continued with the disastrous Tory approach of trying to cut our way to a better future that has so badly let down working class people for over 15 years.

He added:

double quotation markThe Fire Brigades Union was proud to play its part in campaigning for Andy Burnham in this campaign and defeating the far right.

Andy now has a mandate to take on Farage and break with austerity by embracing policies to tax the super rich to properly fund public services and pay workers.

It’s critical that the Labour party urgently adopts that change in direction.

Simon Opher, the Labour MP for Stroud, says Andy Burnham’s byelection win last night demonstrates the “appeal of progressive politics”.

In a statement, he said the country has “seen a glimpse of the future”.

Opher said:

double quotation markAndy Burnham’s win is good for the country. It clearly demonstrates the appeal of progressive politics - and the power of articulating a vision that offers people hope.

We now have the chance to sustainably improve living standards, rebuild our public services, revitalise our democracy, invest in our communities, and make our country a fairer and more secure place to live. We need affordable housing, an education system that works for all, and a health and care system that supports those who needs it. The economy should work for everyone.

Every Labour leader faces the interests of wealth and power who say that this is how it has to be and that a fairer world will never work. If he were to become leader, Andy would be no different.

But I think we have seen a glimpse of the future. Working together, we can build a better society.

A Labour backbencher said the prime minister should set out his timetable to exit Downing Street following Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield.

Jon Trickett, MP for Normanton and Hemsworth, said:

double quotation markThe north’s voice has been heard. Andy Burnham’s win in Makerfield is a victory for the Labour movement as a whole which fought a properly organised campaign to defeat the toxic anti-working class politics of the far right.

In the wake of the by election, it’s clear that Farage and his hard-right acolytes can be defeated. However, there can be no more messing about.

Keir Starmer has to immediately state a timetable for his departure as leader, as he is an obstacle to defeating Farage at the next general election.

Kemi Badenoch has claimed that the Tory victory in the Aberdeen South byelection means her part has won a referendum on more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

Speaking at a victory rally in the constituency, she said:

double quotation markWe have won that referendum on oil and gas. Aberdeen has sent a message to the Labour government and to the SNP that we will not be ignored, Aberdeen will not be ignored, the centre will not be ignored …

What is happening right now as we kill the oil and gas sector is we are killing our energy security …

A message has been sent that we do need to drill our own oil in the North Sea, not take oil from Russia or Norway when we have got our own oil right here.

That is all from me for today. Tom Ambrose is taking over.

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Keir Starmer has told Labour party staffers that they should focus on the fight against Reform UK.

In a call, he told them:

double quotation markThe tide is turning on Reform. If you look at the national polling, Reform are now only six or seven points ahead of Labour in the national polls, which two years into a five year parliament is a place that we can make huge advances from.

The next opportunity is the Greater Manchester mayoralty, which now will follow as a result of the Makerfield by-election. It’s a chance to go and take the fight to Reform.

It’s really important, it’s a huge byelection, one of the biggest by-elections we’ll ever run. It is really important that we maintain that Labour mayoralty, and that we take Reform on.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson dismissed suggestions there might be a vacancy at No 10. The spokesperson said Stamer had been ‘crystal clear’ he would fight any leadership challenge. The spokesperson said:

double quotation markThe prime minister has been very clear this morning that there’s more to do. He said ‘that’s what I’m focused on, that was what I was elected to do, which is to serve my country’, and that’s the job he’s getting on with.

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The CBI has warned the government against “a summer of speculation and drift”. In a statement, Rain Newton-Smith, the CBI chief executive, said:

double quotation markThe UK cannot afford a summer of speculation and drift while politicians are distracted by internal party dynamics.

The government must remain focused on delivery and implementation.

For strong, stable economic growth you need strong, stable, consistent government.

Political uncertainty dampens business confidence and investment, impacting job creation, wages and the cost of living.

Business needs to know that the government can take big decisions, will deliver on its commitments and is prepared to tackle the rising costs of doing business.

Shakespeare would have loved this: two serious figures, both with a claim to the moral leadership of their party, both with a sense of destiny, one from the north, one from the south, involved in a succession battle, and addressing their loyalists from opposite ends of the country. Shakespeare not being available, let’s hope James Graham does the honours.

Andy Burnham’s win, and in particular the scale of it, has pitched him into a standoff against Keir Starmer. It will probably take a while to resolve, and neither of the two men said anything particularly revealing this morning about the tactics they will deploy. But the two interventions did tell us quite a lot about the state of play.

Starmer went first, with a pooled TV interview (a particularly soulless form of communication championed by No 10 for some years now, allowing the PM to deliver normally pre-scripted lines-to-take, safe in the knowledge there won’t be much time for follow-up questions). Starmer was polite about Burnham, seemed genuinely pleased about Reform UK hitting the buffers, and repeated what he has been saying for weeks about intending to fight any leadership challenge. The struggle for journalists it to work out to what extent he means it, and today he sounded no more gung-ho, or no more insincere, than he has done in the past. We don’t know; perhaps he doesn’t either.

Starmer was at his best explaining why he thinks the government had notched up some solid achievements to its credit. (See 10.30am and 10.36am.) In some respects it has. But the voters of Makerfied clearly did not think so, because they were voting for Burnham to turf him out.

Burnham spoke shortly afterwards. He was giving a stump speech to supporters, and it was a version of the address he has been giving throughout the campaign. He did not reference Starmer, gave no credit to the PM for the things Starmer thinks have gone well, and he spoke as if his byelection victory was about to herald a transformation on a par with the end of winter in Narnia.

There was no common ground; Starmer and Burnham sounded as if they were talking about different governments and different countries, one on the road to recovery, the other a basket case.

We still don’t know what’s coming in Act 2. Already there are reports of people in the Burnham team saying that, if Starmer does not agree to quit voluntarily, it might get rather more unpleasant. We’ll see.

Here are some more pictures from Andy Burnham’s rally.

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In his speech Burnham set out his view again of how he would apply what he calls “the Makerfield test”. He said:

double quotation markWe will take the energy of this campaign and we will bring it forward into changing British politics for the better, and to make this part of the world – if you like Makerfield test – at the heart of British politics.

When policies come forward, if they don’t work for people here, for the places of this constituency, if they don’t lift people up, then they shouldn’t happen at all.

We’ve not had a country run on that basis before. Places like this have often been an afterthought. Westminster has looked past the communities of this constituency.

Well no more. That changes today.

Burnham suggested a Reform UK win in the byelection would have shown that Britain was starting to take a path towards “greater darkness”.

He explained:

double quotation markThe best thing that we can say about last night is that there was a risk that we would carry on seeing Britain and the politics of our country go down a path towards greater darkness and division, and ending up somewhere like the United States of America where people don’t talk to each other in the street if they vote different ways or in their workplace.

We will not let that happen here. We will bring people back together.

I said last night, I will be a member of parliament for everybody, however they voted. I will work on a place first, not a party first basis.

I know people who normally vote for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, perhaps voted Reform in May, I know they gave me their votes to give me that last chance to do something.

And I respect them for doing that. And I will always then work in the way that that shows how much I value what they did. And that’s the kind of change we need to change in our politics to make it work again for people.

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Burnham said that his byelection win was the “last chance” to change the country, and a chance “to lay out a new path for Britain”.

He said:

double quotation markIt is our last chance to change, but we’re going to take it, aren’t we? We are going to take that opportunity and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.

The word Makerfield in the future must be known as a byword for the change that came to British politics. This is the moment.

We’ve been on a path for 40 years that simply hasn’t worked for people and places in this part of the world, and this now is the change moment.

We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”

I think we need in this country right now for people to feel a sense of hope that there is something better to work towards on the horizon.

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