CABINET members have reportedly told Keir Starmer to go, while the Prime Minister has used a lunchtime call with Labour staff members to urge them to "pull together" and take the fight to Reform.
The Prime Minister, under pressure to hand over power to Burnham, has insisted he will not “walk away” from Downing Street, setting Labour up for a showdown over the premiership as the outgoing Greater Manchester Mayor insisted his win was “the change moment” for Britain.
The Prime Minister said he had not yet directly spoken with Burnham since his victory, but added that he will, and had already sent a message of congratulations to him.
Starmer also said his rival’s by-election victory was evidence “the tide is turning on Reform, that they can’t now win by-elections”.
He reiterated his message in a call to Labour staffers across the country at lunchtime, saying the party needs to “pull together” and “take the fight” to Reform UK.
He said: “Let’s pull together as a party and a movement. The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement.
“That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.
“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."
The election for the new mayor of Greater Manchester has been confirmed from July 30.
He added: “It’s really important, it’s a huge by-election, 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.
“This is the fight in politics at the moment. We should relish the opportunity to take the fight to Reform and give them a hiding in Manchester, and frankly, expose them for who they are: divisive, inward, wanting to divide our country, the complete opposite values to us.
“When they see problems, they don’t ask how do we fix this problem, they ask how do we exploit this problem. When they see communities, they don’t look at the great strength of our communities, they think, how can we pull this community apart, how can we set people and individuals and groups against each other?
At a Labour rally following his win, leadership hopeful Burnham said: “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.”
He added: “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.”
He called for reindustrialisation, reforms to Whitehall and an end to the “unfairness” of the immigration system, which he said people had raised frequently on doorsteps during his campaign.
Makerfield is the third successive parliamentary by-election in which Nigel Farage’s political outfit has come second over the last year, following the Caerphilly by-election for the Welsh Parliament in October, and the Gorton and Denton Westminster by-election in February.
Burnham defeated Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon by 9231 votes, up from 5399 in 2024, and Labour’s vote share increased by 9.61%.
In his victory speech after winning the Makerfield by-election, Burnham said Labour had a “final chance to change”, and he urged his party to act now, saying there would be no second chance.
He said: “Everyone knows that politics isn’t working.
“Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point.”
In a direct message to Labour MPs he said: “I do say to my own party: this is a final chance to change.
“This is what people said directly to me on the hundreds of doorsteps that I stood on.
“We must hear it, we must act upon it and we must get it right. There will be no second chance.”
