UK special election could topple Starmer: 5 key players and where they stand on Israel

LONDON — It has been called the most consequential special election Britain has seen in the last century. In the early hours of today, voters in the northwest England constituency of Makerfield chose Andy Burnham to be their next member of parliament.

They may well also have picked the country’s next prime minister.

Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has made it clear that if he wins Makerfield, he will challenge Keir Starmer for the leadership of the governing Labour Party.

Less than two years after leading Labour to a landslide general election win, the prime minister — deeply unpopular in the polls and having suffered a humiliating pounding in last month’s local government and Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections — is fighting for his political life.

Starmer’s position has been on the rocks since a spate of ministerial resignations last month and calls by over 100 of his backbench MPs for him to quit. Burnham reportedly hopes for a “coronation” by which the prime minister will agree to an orderly transition and Labour MPs will fall in behind him. But events may prove much messier: Starmer is apparently determined to fight any challenge and a leadership election may see others enter the ring.

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So who are some of the key players in the drama engulfing Britain’s government? And what are their stances on Israel and issues of Jewish concern?

Andy Burnham: ‘King of the North’

Burnham, a Cabinet minister in the last Labour government, left parliament in 2017 to become mayor of the Greater Manchester region. He’s proved adept at the job and hugely popular, winning re-election in 2024 with 63 percent of the vote. As Labour’s political fortunes have darkened since taking office in 2024, the self-styled “King of the North” has been itching for a return to Westminster. With polls showing him to be the most popular politician in the country, Labour MPs see a Burnham premiership as the best way of salvaging the party’s chances at the next general election — due by 2029 — and holding onto their seats.

But do they know what they’ll be getting? A rising star under New Labour, the affable and charismatic Burnham was seen as a staunch ally of former prime minister Tony Blair firmly on the party’s centrist wing. When Labour lost office in 2010, however, Burnham began to tack left. Despite a failed bid to become leader in 2010, Burnham was the favorite when the party set about picking a new chief after its second defeat in 2015.

However, Burnham’s hopes were dashed when, in a stunning upset, a hard-left outsider, Jeremy Corbyn, won the crown. Burnham went on to serve loyally in Corbyn’s shadow Cabinet, refusing to resign in 2016 when most of his colleagues quit the top team in a failed coup attempt.

In Manchester, Burnham has positioned himself to the left of Starmer — although his political journey has taken a further turn in recent weeks as he sought to win support in blue-collar Makerfield. The “Red Wall” seat has been solidly Labour for over a century, but it also voted heavily for Brexit, and the right-wing populist Reform UK swept the constituency in May’s local elections. If the popular Burnham weren’t running, Reform could well have won the seat.

During his 2015 leadership bid, Burnham stuck to his hitherto broadly pro-Israel position, promising at a Jewish community town hall that, if elected, his first foreign trip would be to Israel. Opposing the BDS movement, he added that he failed to understand the “unjustified spitefulness” directed against a country that stood up for gay rights, trade union rights and civil liberties.

After the bloody Hamas-led invasion of October 7, 2023, Burnham, by then mayor of Greater Manchester, assailed Hamas’s “barbaric” and “appalling” attacks and stated his belief in Israel’s “right to defend itself and protect its civilians.”

Nonetheless, along with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Burnham was one of the first senior Labour figures to call for a ceasefire in late October 2023 — just weeks into the war and months before Starmer, who was fiercely resisting pressure within the party to roll back his support for Israel, eventually joined them. Burnham also publicly called for the UK to recognize a Palestinian state last June. In recent days, however, he’s provoked the ire of the hard left by refusing to label Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.”

Josh Simons: The Starmerite rebel

Burnham’s route back to the House of Commons — a requirement for any aspiring Labour leader — was made possible by the resignation of Jewish Labour MP Josh Simons, who was elected to represent Makerfield in 2024. As head of the pro-Starmer think tank Labour Together, 32-year-old Simons was seen as a key member of the prime minister’s political project.

After winning Makerfield, he was rewarded for his loyalty by a swift ascent up the ministerial ladder, becoming a minister in the Cabinet Office last September.

But earlier this year, Simons was caught up in an ethics scandal concerning his time at Labour Together and the commissioning of a report into journalists investigating the think tank.

Forced to quit as a minister in February, Simons swiftly turned on Starmer, becoming one of the first Labour MPs to call on the prime minister to step down following May’s disastrous election results. Simons’s final act of revenge against Starmer came shortly afterward when he announced he was leaving parliament to make way for Burnham’s return. Simons could reportedly soon be back at the center of power, working for Burnham in Downing Street.

Wes Streeting: The Blairite princeling

Alongside Burnham, former health secretary Wes Streeting is expected to make a bid for the premiership. Streeting quit the government last month with a searing attack on Starmer’s leadership. A number of his allies also resigned their ministerial posts to join the scores of Labour MPs publicly calling on the prime minister to quit. Labour’s rules require any leadership contender to receive the backing of at least 81 MPs. Streeting insists he has the numbers, although some pundits doubt that claim.

The youthful former health secretary (Full disclosure: Streeting once worked for this writer) is smart and one of Labour’s best communicators, but his roots in the party’s moderate wing may alienate Labour members who will ultimately decide the outcome of any contest. Polls suggest that Streeting would be crushed in any contest against Burnham (and, albeit less convincingly, by Starmer if the prime minister chooses to fight on). However, Streeting was one of the government’s few stars as health secretary, is intellectually tough and has oodles of political savvy. He may prove a more formidable leadership candidate than the polls suggest — or, some speculate, he might stand aside to give Burnham a free run in return for a top Cabinet post in a new government.

Streeting, whose northeast London constituency, Ilford North, has a small but prominent Jewish community, has a long record of opposing antisemitism. Elected to parliament in 2015, he refused to serve in any shadow ministerial post under Corbyn and was outspoken in his criticism of the leadership’s failure to tackle the rise in antisemitism in the party. As health secretary, he took a similarly tough line against antisemitism in the National Health Service, commissioning a review that recommended a series of measures that the government immediately adopted, including the banning of political badges such as Palestinian flags on uniforms.

But Ilford North, which also has a large Muslim population, gave Labour a nasty shock on general election night two years ago when a pro-Gaza independent came within 528 votes of toppling Streeting. Streeting, traditionally sympathetic to Israel, has become markedly more critical during the Gaza conflict and was a key voice in Starmer’s Cabinet pushing for the UK to recognize a Palestinian state last summer.

Streeting’s public criticisms have been echoed in private. In February, following a parliamentary vote forcing ministers to release their communications with Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to Washington, fired by Starmer over his links to billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Streeting published WhatsApp messages that showed he was also sharply critical of the Jewish state in private.

While Mandelson cautioned against the UK recognizing a Palestinian state at that point, warning it could lead Israel to annex the West Bank, Streeting responded: “This is rogue state behavior. Let them pay the price as pariahs with sanctions applied to the state, not just a few ministers.” He also told Mandelson: “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes. Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing.”

Since leaving the Cabinet, Streeting has implicitly criticized Starmer’s handling of the conflict in Gaza, saying he had repeatedly raised his concerns in government but felt like he was “hitting up against a brick wall.”

Earlier this month, he joined with some of Labour’s most strongly pro-Palestinian voices in parliament in calling for the government to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Ed Miliband: The Kingmaker?

Another key player in the coming days will be Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who became Labour’s first Jewish leader in 2010. But Miliband’s five years at the helm of the party aren’t fondly remembered by much of the Jewish community.

On his watch, the party’s support among Jewish voters collapsed, having been strong during the Blair-Brown governments. Miliband took a hostile stance towards Israel during the 2014 Gaza war and pushed a vote in parliament backing unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, while the party was slow to condemn rising antisemitism at home.

After stepping down as leader following Labour’s heavy defeat in 2015, Miliband has remained hugely popular with party members and highly influential within the Starmer government. Once a strong ally of Starmer, relations between the two men are reported to have been strained since the Energy Secretary privately told his boss to quit shortly before May’s elections.

By contrast, Miliband has become increasingly close to Burnham — the man he beat to the Labour leadership in 2010 and who went on to loyally serve in his shadow Cabinet for five years. Starmer insists he intends to fight on and will contest any leadership election triggered by Burnham and Streeting. But he’ll struggle to do that if members of his cabinet resign and tell him to stand aside.

All eyes will be on Miliband: if he quits to support Burnham, others may follow, making Starmer’s position potentially untenable. If Burnham makes it to Downing Street, Miliband’s absence from the Cabinet table is likely to be short-lived and a promotion awaits. Miliband, who served as an adviser at the Treasury during Tony Blair’s government, is predicted to become Burnham’s Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Rachel Reeves: The pro-Israel Chancellor

If Miliband becomes Chancellor (the UK equivalent of the US Treasury secretary), he will replace Rachel Reeves, the strongest and most senior openly pro-Israel member of the government. A former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel, she has spoken of her “dismay… and disgust” at the party’s failure to “stand with the victims of antisemitism” during Corbyn’s leadership.

Last year, she delivered what the Jewish Chronicle termed an “unapologetically Zionist” speech at LFI’s annual lunch. “Rachel Reeves did something rare in British politics this week: she voiced unqualified support for the Jewish state without flinching,” the paper warmly noted. If Reeves is moved from the Treasury, some media reports suggest, she could shift to the Foreign Office, a similarly senior role in the government.

Unlike in February’s special election in Gorton and Denton — where the anti-Zionist Green party triumphed after calling on voters to punish Starmer for supporting the Gaza “genocide” — Labour’s stance on Israel barely featured in Makerfield. That stance, however, may begin to shift if, following today’s result, Starmer leaves Downing Street — and especially if his potential successors end up jockeying for the support of left-leaning party members in a full-blown leadership contest.