Why Keir Starmer must resign over his catastrophic 2,500-vote victory in Makerfield

It was just past midnight, and I was nursing a rather aggressive claret at my dining club in St James’s, when the grim tidings first began to flutter across my phone screen. Down in Makerfield, a byelection was drawing to a close. The early tallies were looking increasingly, horrifyingly robust. A source deep within the Labour party machinery—a man who once promised me an exclusive scoop on a reshuffle that never happened, but whose taste in truffles I implicitly trust—sent me a frantic text message. "We are ahead by 2,500 votes. It’s an absolute bloodbath." I set my glass down. The implications were immediate and chilling. Keir Starmer’s position as Prime Minister was now completely untenable.

To the layman, to the uninitiated voter who views politics purely as a numerical exercise in which the side with the most ballots is somehow "the winner," this might seem counterintuitive. Why, the ordinary citizen might ask, would winning a critical byelection against the surging threat of Reform UK be a bad thing? But those of us who have spent decades breathing the rarefied air of the Westminster lobby, those of us who regularly trade knowing glances with permanent secretaries over poached salmon, understand the deeper, darker reality. Electoral success is often the most fatal disease a Labour leader can contract.

Let us examine the sheer scale of the disaster Starmer has brought upon himself. By defeating Reform UK in Makerfield by a projected 2,500 votes, he has utterly failed to manage expectations. He has recklessly demonstrated that his party can attract support, thereby inflating the egos of his internal rivals, most notably Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. Burnham, as we all know, has been hovering around the periphery of national politics like a remarkably well-coiffed spectre. The fact that a Labour candidate is winning on Burnham’s turf is not a vindication of Starmer’s national project; it is a clear signal that Starmer is merely a temporary placeholder in Burnham’s inevitable, unstoppable ascent to Number 10. If Starmer had any strategic sense, he would have orchestrated a crushing defeat to put Burnham back in his box. Instead, he has foolishly allowed a victory.

I was speaking only yesterday with David Blunkett, who, unlike the current crop of frontbenchers, understands the delicate art of political hara-kiri. Appearing on Newsnight, Blunkett bravely articulated the truth that the rest of the commentariat has been too timid to say out loud: Starmer should stand down whether the party wins or loses tonight. This is the kind of visionary, post-logical thinking that made New Labour great. It is a fundamental law of British politics that a leader is never weaker than when they are actively succeeding. Blunkett understands this. I understand this. The only person who seems utterly oblivious to the crisis of his own electoral viability is the Prime Minister himself.

I am reminded of a rather revealing lunch I had with Tony Blair in the late nineties, right at the height of New Labour’s dominance. I leaned over the sea bass and asked him, point-blank, what his greatest fear was. I expected him to say the economy, or perhaps the unions. Instead, he looked me dead in the eye and said, "Winning too much." He understood that the electorate is like a fickle cat; if you feed it too many electoral victories, it becomes bloated, lazy, and eventually sick on your Persian rug. Starmer lacks this feline intuition. He sees a bowl of votes and he simply eats them all, oblivious to the stomach ache that awaits him in the morning.

Think of the message this sends to the voters of Reform UK. We are told by the polling experts that Reform is feeling "gloomy" about their prospects in Makerfield. My heart aches for them, frankly. What sort of Prime Minister looks at a marginalized group of right-wing populists and decides to defeat them at the ballot box, rather than endlessly pandering to their anxieties on morning television? By decisively beating Reform, Starmer is alienating the exact demographic he has spent the last three years trying to vaguely appease without actually agreeing with. It is an act of sheer electoral vandalism. He has won the seat, yes, but at what cost? He has lost the narrative.

Burnham, meanwhile, is already behaving like a Prime Minister in waiting. My sources tell me he has spent the evening "bringing in top economists" ahead of a possible leadership run. Now, I have had dinner with several top economists in my time—mostly at Davos, where the canapés are passable but the conversation is strictly macroeconomic—and I can assure you that one does not simply "bring in" economists unless one is preparing to violently overthrow the sitting government. The fact that Burnham feels emboldened to look at spreadsheets while Keir Starmer is sitting in Downing Street is an insult that cannot go unanswered. The only dignified response from Starmer is immediate resignation.

The internal panic within Labour HQ is palpable. They know that this victory is a poison chalice. As one senior insider confessed to me, the mood is practically funereal.

This brings us back to the central thesis of my column, which I have argued consistently across three different prime ministers, mostly because it makes for tremendous copy. Power is an illusion, and actual votes are a distraction. The real currency of Westminster is momentum, and nothing arrests momentum quite like a definitive, unambiguous result. By winning Makerfield, Starmer has closed the book on the Makerfield byelection. There is no more suspense. There is no more room for endless speculation in the Sunday papers. He has killed the story. A leader who kills the story is a leader who has lost control of the press, and a leader who has lost control of the press is no leader at all.

Nigel Farage, for all his faults, understands the power of losing. He has built a legendary career out of not becoming an MP. There is a nobility in it, a kind of tragic romance that resonates with the British public. Starmer, with his relentless, managerial competence and his insistence on putting up candidates who actually get more votes than the other people on the ballot, is entirely devoid of romance. It is vulgar. It is the political equivalent of wearing brown shoes in town. And it is exactly why he is fundamentally unsuited to the highest office in the land.

Consider the position of the Conservative Party in all of this. They are, currently, nowhere. But in their absence, Labour is forced to fight itself, which is exactly what the Tories want. By winning this byelection, Starmer has fallen perfectly into their trap. He has given his own party the oxygen of success, which inevitably breeds the carbon monoxide of ambition. Every single Labour MP who looks at the Makerfield result will think to themselves, "If we can win here, why do we need Keir?" It is a devastatingly simple logic. The more successful he is, the more useless he becomes.

I sent a WhatsApp message to the Prime Minister’s director of communications shortly after the 2,500-vote margin leaked. I advised them to frame the victory as a catastrophic failure of local campaigning, perhaps blaming the candidate for trying too hard. I have yet to receive a reply. This bunker mentality is exactly why Starmer is in so much trouble. He is surrounding himself with yes-men who are probably telling him that winning the byelection is a good thing. It is this kind of insulated, reality-denying arrogance that brings empires crashing down.

It is time for Keir Starmer to look himself in the mirror and ask what is best for the country. Is it best to stubbornly cling to power just because the electorate keeps aggressively voting for his party? Or is it best to show true leadership, to recognize that his mandate has been fatally compromised by its own undeniable strength, and to hand the reins over to Andy Burnham before Labour accidentally wins another term in office?

If he does not act, the situation will only deteriorate. Next month, there might be another byelection. He might win that one, too. The majorities might increase. Before long, he could find himself trapped in Downing Street, surrounded by loyal MPs, burdened with a massive parliamentary majority, utterly powerless to stop his own success. For his own sake, and for the sake of the political commentators who rely on his vulnerability to fill column inches, he must do the right thing. He must resign today.