Yesterday, the United Kingdom held a by-election in Makersfield, an area in northwest England. It previously was represented by a Labour party member and, as the results revealed, will be represented by a Labour party member again: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Great Manchester. As it was a single election, only sending one parliamentarian to London, it did not de jure change the balance of power. Labour still has an overwhelming parliamentary majority.
But de facto, it may have irrevocably changed British politics. Because Labour may soon find itself with new energy – and the British Right may find itself on its back foot.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is currently one of the least popular democratically-elected leaders on the entire planet. Depending on the polling, he is dead last or close to it (being saved by the even more unpopular German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron). In 2024, he ushered Labour into power with a massive parliamentary majority – while getting almost the same percent of the vote that the party received in 2019 (the difference was the Conservatives crashing by almost 20 points, a big shift in a first-past-the-post system like Britain’s). Which is to say that, while he had a large majority in parliament, his victory was less of a vote of confidence in his leadership than it was a vote of no confidence in the Conservatives.
