In the end, it wasn’t even close. Andy Burnham, popular mayor of Greater Manchester, won the Wigan-based constituency of Makerfield in a landslide, taking 55 percent of the vote and—crucially—outpolling Reform, Restore, and Tory combined (along with everyone else). Conservatives, LibDems, and Greens all lost their deposits. He not only increased Labour’s vote but increased its vote share by dint of higher turnout: the swing in his favour came to 11.6 percentage points. This is genuinely hard to do when one stands for the incumbent party and runs in a by-election in an FPTP parliamentary system.

　　Yes, he was running for PM as well as the seat. Yes, he ran against his own party and its catastrophically unpopular PM, Sir Keir Starmer. Campaign posters used his name, not his party affiliation. His canvassers wereinstructedto say that they were “out campaigning for Andy Burnham” and not Labour. Yes, he was the beneficiary of tactical voting not only from Greens and LibDems but also Tory and even Reform supporters: he attracted many votes because he was seen as most likely to “get Starmer out.” Yes, he is genuinely liked and widely admired for his successful helming of Manchester, one of England’s great cities and historical touchpaper for the Industrial Revolution. He acquired the Game of Thrones moniker “King in the North” when he went toe-to-toe with then-PM Boris Johnson over the draconian lockdowns the latter imposed on Manchester and other Northern cities.

　　Makerfield thus made itself a synecdoche for Britain while the country held its breath. Its voters then told Starmer in no uncertain terms: in the name of God, go!

　　The Makerfield by-election was Thursday, June 18. By Monday morning, June 22, Starmer’s position as leader of the Labour Party and prime minister was untenable. On the Friday after Burnham’s win, he’d vowed to fight—on the perfectly reasonable basis that it was he, and not Burnham, who’d led Labour to an historic landslide in July 2024. However—in a ritual that’s now become grimly frequent—the trademark lectern soon appeared outside Number 10 and Starmer fell on his sword. Memes about “Britaly” and Larry the Cat, Chief Mouser—the 19-year-old tuxedo tabby David Cameron originally adopted from Battersea Dogs’ Cats’ Home in 2011—outlasting six PMs began to circulate. It was an oddly bitter little speech—BBC Verify (wags call it “BBC Very Iffy”)—went to town on his claimed “achievements.” It evinced a flash of feeling only when he discussed his family. That this brief emotional shift shocked the British commentariat—including me—gives a hint as to why Starmer became so unpopular.

　　In one of those amusing moments that serve to make Britain look unserious, Steve Bray—the “Stop Brexit” man—played the EU anthem (Beethoven’s Ode to Joy) through the first half of Starmer’s speech. Never mind that the choral version Bray uses (Friedrich Schiller wrote the words) isn’t the actual EU anthem—it uses Beethoven’s original instrumental score instead—it succeeded in making Starmer look even more pompous and ridiculous than usual. This is hard. Starmer masterminded much of the demented second referendum campaign in 2019 and contributed mightily to Britain’s post-2016 parliamentary shenanigans. Labour and Remain needed his pinpoint legal drafting skills then. Bray was one of his most committed supporters.

　　Bray was supposed to be a joke at the expense of Leave/Boris/Tories. Now here he was, busy dropping a giant musical turd on Starmer/Labour/Remain. Conservative Leader of the Opposition Kemi Badenoch made the same point, albeit more courteously. For the first time in my life, I didn’t resent him playing Ode to Joy outside the Houses of Parliament. Weirdly fitting, somehow.

　　When lawyers in high political office fail to launch, they do so in a particular way: by mistaking process for outcome.

　　Starmer will, however, be hanging around for a bit—at least until later in July. The Parliamentary Labour Party is less ruthless when it comes to defenestrating its leaders than Tories are, something true for many decades. Starmer expressed a wish in his speech for a leadership election and a real contest, but thus far the only contender capable of gaining genuine traction—former Health Secretary Wes Streeting—has rowed in behind Burnham. That suggests a coronation, with Burnham stepping directly into Number 10. By contrast with the Tories—whose repeated prime ministerial coups were at least entertaining—this is like a slow-motion crash between two milk floats. There are nonetheless rumours swirling around the Palace of Westminster that Starmer is furious at Burnham’s request that he stay on as PM (and national punching-bag) until September to “to give their man time to prepare for power.” A well-organised, amicable handover it is not.

　　Though I have never voted UK Labour—a contrast with my Australian political habits, where I’ve voted Australian Labor—I confess I struggle to explain the visceral hatred Keir Starmer attracts from the Great British Public, across the political spectrum, too—from Greens for Gaza to Restore for Remigration. Starmer is the country’s most unpopular prime minister since records began.

　　This is a bloke who’s more than the butt of jokes in pubs up and down the land (something, I’m afraid, that goes with the territory). He’s had hit singles penned at his expense (“Keir Starmer’s a wanker!”) and mocking football chants have followed him not only around the country but around the world—including from football fans currently touring the US for the World Cup. Widely parodied for sounding like he’s talking through a saltine box, his wooden, adenoidal delivery and astonishing talent for reverse ferreting (Brit-speak for “flip-flopping”) has curdled into a derision whose depths are difficult to plumb. When he finally called it quits, everyone from Ryanair to Royal Mail joined in the pile-on.

　　Some observers have suggested that Starmer’s successful legal career before entering parliament at 52 was inadequate preparation for life in politics. There’s something in this, but not in the way most critics think. Lawyers are often able politicians—Australia’s longest-serving and second-longest serving PMs (Sir Robert Menzies and John Howard) were a barrister and a solicitor, respectively. Both were outstanding in the top job. Meanwhile, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were also barristers and similarly adept—even transformative—politicians. You could argue they both switched to politics early/mid-career so weren’t ossified into some of the more annoying habits that go with long-term legal practice. However, that reasoning fails to explain Menzies, who was already a leading silk (King’s Counsel) before becoming PM.

　　When lawyers in high political office fail to launch, they do so in a particular way: by mistaking process for outcome. This is at the root of Starmer’s failure. His proceduralism—a flaw shared with bureaucracies in late-stage Chinese dynasties and the UK’s civil service now (which is in part modelled on the historic Chinese version)—was exacerbated by his background as a human rights barrister. His Doughty Street private practice was built on distrust of and challenge to any exercise of power and authority.

　　That’s a damaging world view for someone who then goes on to wield power and authority. Having identified so strongly with being on the side of right—he undertook some loopy prosecutions while director of the Crown Prosecution Service—he was then unable to comport himself as a holder of non-legal power and authority. Had he been a lawyer whose career was spent working within the system and believing it to be a good one or at least a morally neutral one, it’s possible he’d have been better at the persuasion and good-faith negotiation needed for politics. But a combination of complete moral certainty, opposition to existing social structures, and procedural exactitude proved useless in the more ambiguous real world.

　　From its earliest days, human rights practice has depended on subverting the existing system while simultaneously exploiting its hierarchical features. Running subversion on everything turned cases into intellectual Contract Bridge games divorced from substantive questions (like “did X commit Y crime” or “should Z be deported?”), focusing instead on whether there was a right to play as a trump card. Lawyers like Starmer became adept at arguing those points to judges—rather than, say, persuading juries that a given client was not guilty. This is one reason why human rights—particularly when they take the form of international conventions—are parasitic on the rule of law. The sooner the UN and all its works and all its ways are fed into history’s woodchipper, the better. However, the court hierarchy rewards winning and winning in novel appellate cases, including cases subversive of settled law and procedure. Starmer’s career flourished, but came apart once he landed in No 10. “Fight the power” doesn’t work when you are the power.

　　What, then, of Andy Burnham?

　　Besides being far, far more popular than Starmer, Burnham has the sort of shallow background as a staffer (“special adviser” in Brit-speak) that often cripples people with similar experience when they become politicians. Apart from a few years working in the trade press—he once knew all there was to know about shipping containers—the closest he’s had to a real job is a year spent working for the Football Task Force. Aged only 31, he fulfilled his ambition to become an MP. By his 38th birthday, he was a cabinet minister. He looks like a career politician from central casting.

　　However—in 2017—he left London disillusioned with Westminster politics and took himself back home to Manchester. He said at the time he was “stepping away from a Westminster system” that was “broken and failing to deliver for ordinary people.” After nine successful years as mayor—three thumping election victories and Manchester’s emergence as the fastest-growing economy in the country—he now seeks a mandate to “rebuild a system where public service is at the heart of decision-making.”

　　There are problems when freaks and weirdos finish up with power or influence: Starmer is a (relatively rare) example of a weird lawyer in the top job. The “influential freaks” issue is at its worst in the academy. One reason universities across the developed world are in such a mess and so unpopular is that sad, weird, spergy losers (“who weren’t thumped hard enough or often enough at school,” my partner adds, tartly) have been able to get their hands on the levers of power. Think-tankers and staffers—as Burnham was—can have the same complex of hopeless traits as academics, although less frequently in my experience. I’ve seen similar issues in tech, too. This explains how academics start believing people can change sex or that prison should be abolished, staffers come to think infinity immigration and rent controls are good ideas, while techies get sucked in by masturbatory drivel like effective altruism. These are things so ridiculous only intellectuals could believe them.

　　Burnham will be a much harder nut to crack, although there is a risk—like Badenoch herself—he will be unable to transfer his personal popularity to his party any more than temporarily.

　　But—and here the “but” is necessary—the useless, spergy academic or think-tanker/staffer/techie is a stereotype. Like most group and occupational stereotypes, it is accurate, and it costs civil society when not confronted honestly. Bad character is not only a problem for Donald Trump: it can take other forms. Stereotype accuracy does not imply universality, however. There are normie academics. There are normie policy wonks and techies and staffers. Burnham is one of the latter. On this, I will make a related (and very Australian) point: he was an outstanding schoolboy and university sportsman in both football and (especially) cricket. He didn’t find it “hard to be both a good student and one of the lads.” He wasn’t the brainbox who—to use an Australianism—“couldn’t catch a cold.” It’s hard to hold much against him when Manchester’s Mayoral gifts register shows he’s accepted Adidas trainers to feed his daily running habit. My Australian girlhood reminds me that combining high intellect with athletic ability is like landing on “free parking” in Monopoly. People like that often have superbly rounded personalities.

　　After blazing his name across his Catholic high school’s honour board, he read English literature at Cambridge before fruitcakes colonised the discipline. His favourite poet is Philip Larkin. When he takes the top job, he will be the first Cambridge-educated PM for many a long year. He’s twice run for Labour leader—against first Ed Miliband and later Jeremy Corbyn—and in both cases came badly unstuck. And yet: each loss showed he could go away, lick his wounds, and learn. He speaks well. He connects with people.

　　Nonetheless, the mayor of Greater Manchester has limited powers and a £3 billion budget—in government terms, a small job. Burnham has had little to say about issues facing Britain—dealing with Trump, what to do on defence spending, the country’s ballooning welfare bill, mismanaged immigration policy. Talented metro mayors of the Burnham type who do wonderfully by their cities sometimes evince the Peter Principle. Boris Johnson famously failed to make the transition from capable London mayor to PM. Sometimes even the (smaller) leap from metro mayor to state rather than national politics is a gulf that can’t be bridged. I had a ringside seat as able Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman fell to pieces when he became Queensland premier (equivalent to a US governor). And—if you’re British—the most notable historical mayoral hero to prime ministerial zero is, of course, Neville Chamberlain.

　　Starmer has been an easy-beat parliamentary piñata for both Badenoch and Nigel Farage. His wooden humourlessness at the despatch box has fed her personal popularity and Reform UK’s party popularity. Burnham will be a much harder nut to crack, although there is a risk—like Badenoch herself—that he will be unable to transfer his personal popularity to his party any more than temporarily.

　　I say this in light of a thoughtful and often moving piece from centre-left commentator Ian Leslie, someone who’s forgotten more about UK Labour’s inner workings than I’m ever likely to know. Leslie—with a great deal of supporting evidence—identifies Burnham as a decent and thoughtful man who is, nonetheless, “a people-pleaser.” That is, someone who struggles to do the “one job” necessary in a parliamentary system: “to be the tie-breaker—to take the decisions that can’t be resolved by ministers and officials.”

　　He goes on:

　　He wants to be Andy, mayor of Britain. But a Prime Minister is not a mayor. The decisions are bigger, more complex, and more contested, by an order of magnitude. I’m not convinced that overseeing an upgrade to Manchester’s bus system qualifies you to chair the national security council or to act as First Lord of the Treasury. Mayor Burnham did not have to make decisions—on, say, immigration—which were bound to be hated by big parts of his electorate. In fact, you could say that’s why he became mayor. He had got about as far in national politics as an inveterate pleaser can.

　　Like Leslie, I’m astonished that Andy Burnham is the latest figure we’re about to dump in No 10. We are embroiled in more ways than we care to admit in a European war; race riots seem to happen every summer now; large parts of the state and some parts of the private sector simply do not work. “Broken Britain” may have been one of David Cameron’s throwaway quips and false when he uttered it in 2010, but it’s true now. Australian and American friends who come to visit this Sceptred Isle often pause to ask me does anything in this country work properly? Anything at all?