Andy Burnham has won the Makerfield by-election with a significant majority, paving the way for him to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership. While Burnham has said Labour now has a “final chance to change”, the PM has said he’s “not going to walk away” and will fight any challenge.

The British public tend to feel this challenge should take place, with 44% thinking Burnham should challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership, relative to 19% who feel he should not.

Labour voters are even more in favour of a challenge, believing Burnham should launch one by 51% to 22%.

Where the public are more divided is over whether Starmer should walk away, with 36% thinking he should stand in any contest and attempt to remain prime minister, while 38% would like him to stand down from the leadership to allow someone else to replace him as PM.

Labour voters tend to feel Starmer has the right to defend his crown, believing he should contest any leadership election by 47% to 35%.

The big question, though, is whether Burnham can do a better job than Starmer.

On this question, 23% of Britons believe Andy Burnham would be a better prime minister than Keir Starmer, greater than the 8% would feel Starmer is a better PM than Burnham could be, but less than the 32% who feel neither of the Labour figures make for good PMs. A further 8% feel both would be equally good PMs.

34% of Labour voters feel Burnham would likely be a better prime minister than the incumbent, relative to 13% who feel Starmer is the more able of the two and 13% who rate their prime ministerial skills equally.

While Burnham has said this is Labour’s last chance to give the country the change it asked for two years ago, the public tend to feel that the Makerfield’s new MP represents limited change relative to Starmer.

43% of Britons believe that replacing Andy Burnham with Keir Starmer would represent either not very much change or even no real change at all, though 32% feel he represents at least a fair amount of change from the current occupant of Number 10.

Labour voters, though, tend to feel Burnham does offer a reasonable amount of change to the status quo, by 44% to 35%.

See the full results here

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