19 June 2026. Andy Burnham speaks to supporters after the Makerfield by-election in Ashton in Makerfield. (Alamy)

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“It 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,” said Burnham, who secured his return to the House of Commons by winning over 50 per cent of the vote on Thursday.

“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.”

Burnham, who must now resign as Greater Manchester mayor to take up his role as MP, comfortably defeated his closest rival, the Reform UK candidate Rob Kenyon, by 20 percentage points.

The by-election in the northwest of England has widely been described as one of the most consequential in British political history, with Burnham now expected to launch a bid to replace Keir Starmer as prime minister.

PoliticsHome reported on Friday that he is expected to meet with Labour MPs in Westminster on Monday as he prepares his push to enter No 10.

Starmer had today insisted he would fight any leadership contest, warning that he would not simply “walk away” after being elected nearly two years ago.

In a speech to supporters, Burnham called for an economy that “works for everybody” and the end of “trickle-down economics”, saying he wanted to see the renationalisation of key industries and the use of public procurement to reindustrialise Britain.

“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 that they can have a better life.

“That’s what people were saying, and we must respond to that.

“We need an economy that works for everybody, not a few in far-off places from here, but an economy that works for people right here.”

He continued: “We do need to bring down water bills, energy bills, rail fares, just as we brought down bus fares in Greater Manchester to make life more affordable for people.”

The former health secretary said he would apply a “Makerfield test” and that if policies did not work for his constituency, they could not work at all.

He called for an education system less “dominated by the university route”, and on immigration vowed to bring an end to “HMO Britain”, whereby communities are not given a proper say over asylum accommodation in their areas.

“It’s not fair that they think that they can just operate like that and not hear the call of people here, the decent people here who always will do the right thing, the compassionate thing, but not when it’s unfair in terms of the way places like this are treated.”

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Speaking on Friday morning, the Reform UK leader said: “There’s a couple of thousand voters there [Makerfield] who would normally have gone out and voted Reform that voted Restore, and I would say directly to them: ‘What do you want?’.

“We are the challenger party to the left in this country, and I would urge you to think again.”

In the run-up to Thursday’s by-election, there were suggestions that Restore Britain, set up by Lowe after he was kicked out of Reform, could effectively cost his old party victory by eating into its vote, allowing Labour candidate Andy Burnham to come through the middle.

Restore Britain candidate Rebecca Shepherd came third with nearly 7 per cent of the vote in Makerfield.

In the end, this figure was academic in terms of the impact on Reform’s chances of winning the seat, as Burnham’s landslide victory saw him comfortably outperform Reform and Restore Britain’s combined vote share. As pollster Peter Kellner noted this morning following the result in Makerfield, he reached this benchmark “with 6,000 votes to spare”.

But, as the University of Manchester’s Professor Rob Ford explained, Restore Britain’s current polling is significant because if it holds up until the next general election, it could cost Farage victory in other constituencies.

Ford told PoliticsHome that while the hard-right party would be unlikely to win seats outright based on current polling, apart from perhaps Lowe’s Great Yarmouth, it could take key votes from Reform in seats they must win to have a chance of winning power.

“Reform has got to win up of 300 seats to form the next government,” he said. “They really would like to be able to say X and Y seats are in the bag. Restore Britain adds this additional element of uncertainty.”

Ford argued that the best guidance for where Restore Britain could grow elsewhere in the country is to look at where the British National Party (BNP) attracted support two decades ago, pointing to areas like Barking in east London, parts of northwest England, and former villages in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

“I suspect what Lowe and Restore Britain attract is many more non-voters,” he said, in places where there is “deeply disaffected, alienated, anti-system, anti-politics” sentiment.

There were early signs of Restore Britain’s threat to Reform in Lowe’s Great Yarmouth at last month’s local elections. The party won all nine seats it contested, meaning Reform fell short of winning full control of the council.

Jon Wedon, the leader of the Restore/Great Yarmouth First group on the council, told PoliticsHome that the party’s strategy in Great Yarmouth in the run-up to 7 May was “really quite straightforward: a local election campaign on local issues”, claiming that Farage’s “get Starmer out” message didn’t work locally.

Julian Gallie, head of research at Merlin Strategy, said Restore Britain is likely to be most successful in places with high levels of support for Reform, potentially setting up more battles between Farage and Lower for that chunk of the right-wing vote. He pointed to so-called ‘Red Wall’ seats in the North and the Midlands, as well as parts of Essex.

In focus groups, when Lowe comes up naturally and unprompted, Gallie said, “it’s normally this boomer age group, and it’s the prime Facebook users who are the most tempted by Restore. They come across Restore and Rupert Lowe on there.”

However, he said that Lowe seems to be breaking through with “more leafy Conservative voters” in a way that Farage has not managed up to now.

“Lowe in his aesthetic, his farmer look, it’s seen as maybe less tacky than Reform, and can actually appeal to those more middle-class who are more right-wing on immigration and areas like that,” he told PoliticsHome.

Ford said that Restore Britain appears to be already influencing Reform by pushing the party into “more hardline” positions in a bid to shore up its right-wing flank.

“The irony in all this is that Farage’s whole political strategy was pulling parties to the right. Lowe is now using the same strategy against Farage,” he said.

Ford told PoliticsHome that while this might not hurt Farage’s standing with his own core voters, it could hurt his electoral prospects by “motivating anti-Reform voters” to set aside their differences and do whatever it takes to stop him winning.

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The incoming MP for Makerfield is understood to be prioritising MPs with whom he does not have strong relationships, like those elected at the 2024 general election, several sources told PoliticsHome.

Burnham pulled off a landslide victory at the Makerfield by-election on Thursday, finishing far ahead of second-placed Reform UK and winning more voters than all other candidates combined.

The former health secretary, who now must resign as Greater Manchester mayor to return to the House of Commons, said the result was a “loud cry for change”.

Attention now turns to when and how Burnham will challenge the leadership of Keir Starmer.

The Prime Minister reiterated this morning that he would stand in any Labour leadership contest and would not “walk away”.

PoliticsHome understands that the Burnham operation is reluctant to take an overly aggressive approach to removing Starmer, and hopes that the PM will agree in the coming days to stand aside in an orderly fashion.

Burnham’s supporters say the manner of his victory in a seat where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made major gains at last month’s local elections make the case for putting him in No 10 even stronger. “It is such a huge message,” said one Labour MP helping his campaign.

A different Labour MP, who has been invited to meet Burnham on Monday, told PoliticsHome: “I was waiting to see the result [in Makerfield], and because the scale of the result is so significant, in my patch, [he] is definitely the best chance of winning people back.”

They continued: “The truth is, and it’s been briefed a little bit, there is a slight concern, Andy Burnham doesn’t know the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party].

“He was obviously in government before, but there’s a whole bunch of people he doesn’t know now. And the meetings on Monday are prioritising people he doesn’t know.”