UK PM Starmer vows to fight any challenge after leading rival Burnham wins big

By Andy Bruce, Andrew MacAskill and Elizabeth Piper

WIGAN, England, June 19 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Friday he would not walk away, vowing to fight any challenge from his leading party rival Andy Burnham and potentially ushering in a new bout of political instability.

Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, won a decisive victory for Labour to claim a parliamentary seat in northwest England, and has signalled that he will use it to enter any contest to replace Starmer.

The scale of his victory in Makerfield in northwest England prompted more Labour lawmakers to say Starmer, unpopular and under pressure from the populist Reform UK in surveys, should consider stepping down to enable an orderly handover to Burnham.

That would mean Britain installing its seventh prime minister in just over a decade, the highest turnover in nearly two centuries – a reflection of voter anger at successive failures to improve living standards and public services and tackle illegal immigration.

But Starmer, who led a landslide election victory in 2024, said he was “not going to walk away”, reeling off a list of actions: closer ties to the European Union, stabilising the economy and reducing waiting times in the health service.

BURNHAM HITS NATIONAL THEMES IN SPEECH

“If there is a contest … I will stand, and I’ve said repeatedly I’m not going to walk away,” Starmer told reporters in London.

In a call with Labour staff across the country, he warned of the dangers of a potentially disruptive leadership campaign, urging them to ensure instead that Labour retained the mayoralty of Greater Manchester.

“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,” he said. “That has never worked.”

His resistance to growing Labour calls to step down could mean that the party airs its divisions in public in a leadership contest – something that undermined the Conservatives, who lost power after changing leaders five times in eight years.

Burnham, a 56-year-old career politician, took 54.8% of the vote to the populist Reform UK candidate’s 34.5%, boosting his image as someone who could halt the rapid rise of veteran Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s party.

Hours after claiming victory, he set out a national approach in what lawmakers called a prime ministerial-style address.

“I did talk about the need to change Labour … and we’ve got to now take this moment and answer the challenges that have been laid down,” he told a crowd of supporters, listing areas that he said needed to be tackled: making life more affordable, reducing utility bills and driving reindustrialisation.

“It is our last chance to change but we are going to take it … and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.”

His victory not only sent him back to parliament, from where he can mount a leadership challenge, but also boosted the hopes of some worried Labour lawmakers that they can win the next national election, due in 2029.

Many believe that Starmer, struggling with some of the worst popularity ratings of any British leader, cannot achieve that.

BURNHAM BROADLY POPULAR AMONG LABOUR MEMBERS

Polls of Labour party members indicate Burnham would win a formal leadership contest, although some Labour lawmakers hope that process can be avoided.

Starmer, 63, has repeatedly vowed to fight on, despite scandals, policy U-turns and accusations of indecision, wanting to finish his five-year term by fulfilling his vow to solve some of Britain’s most pressing problems.

But about a quarter of his lawmakers have urged him to quit since Labour suffered heavy losses in local elections last month, and more were adding their names. Senior colleagues, including the defence and health ministers, have resigned.

Some Labour lawmakers said the party should give Starmer the weekend to reflect and consider stepping down. A Burnham ally, Labour lawmaker Louise Haigh, told the BBC she hoped “that Andy and the prime minister can speak over the coming days”.

“We want to avoid a leadership contest if possible, and we hope that we can agree a way forward,” she said.

Many Labour members of parliament fear losing their seats in the next election, due in 2029, to Farage’s party, which has led opinion polls for more than a year.

Another of Starmer’s rivals, former health minister Wes Streeting, said this week he would force a contest soon unless the prime minister announced when he would stand down. He said Burnham’s victory was proof that Labour needed to change.

Party rules require 20% ‌of the parliamentary party, or 81 lawmakers, to announce they are backing a single candidate to ⁠trigger a leadership challenge.

(Reporting by Andy Bruce, Andrew MacAskill and Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Kevin Liffey)