The episode opens with Alastair Campbell delivering a crisp scene-setter: Labour has won the Makerfield by-election big, with nearly 25,000 votes and 55% of ballots cast for Andy Burnham — but the result reads less like a victory for Keir Starmer than a direct challenge to his leadership. The Aberdeen South story is flagged too, with the Tories beating the SNP in a result that has implications for UK energy policy. The Fuse Energy sponsorship read follows, promising listeners they can switch supplier in three minutes and save up to £200, with the code POLITICS unlocking a free Trip+ subscription.

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Rory Stewart opens the analysis by putting the result in its proper statistical context. Makerfield was prime Reform territory — two-thirds had voted Brexit — and Labour trailed by 20 points in the May local elections. Burnham not only reversed that deficit but won with a 20-point lead, increasing his party's vote share by 10 points against the national trend. Greens, Lib Dems, and Conservatives were each reduced to about 1–2% of the vote. Alastair Campbell reaches into historical footnotes: for a comparable increase in by-election turnout over a general election, you have to go back to Mark Bonham Carter's Liberal win in Torrington in 1958; for a governing party candidate actually increasing their raw vote totals, you have to go to Kevin McNamara's Labour victory in Hull in 1966 — the year more associated with England's World Cup triumph.

Alastair Campbell zeros in on the number that will animate every Labour MP's thinking: a 23% swing from Reform to Labour in the seats Reform had taken just weeks earlier. He credits Peter Kellner for the detail that Makerfield had the sixth-highest Reform vote in the country at the last general election, making the win still more remarkable. The key question — who can stop Reform — appears, for now, to have an answer. Campbell reports that as late as Wednesday Keir Starmer was telling MPs he would fight any challenge, but the by-election has transformed the arithmetic overnight. Burnham's acceptance speech contained a coded message — 'we'll get no second chance' — and all the Makerfield billboards said 'Andy', not 'Labour'. Campbell, having spoken to key insiders, believes Burnham could be Prime Minister by conference in late September.

Rory Stewart is unsparing: Keir Starmer cannot win the next election. He is not a winning phenomenon, his net popularity is terrible, he cannot make a speech, and in every room Rory visits nobody can articulate his economic policy. The analogy is stark — the ship is heading into the iceberg, and while getting off and boarding lifeboats may not work, there is no case for staying with Starmer. He is equally direct about what made Burnham's campaign impressive: he ran a pragmatic, progressive, laid-back operation without any temptation to steal Reform's language or sound right-wing. That, Stewart argues, is the recipe for British politics. He identifies Morgan McSweeney's strategy — sounding like a 'mini-Reform' on certain issues without being able to project Labour's traditional optimism — as the worst possible approach, delivering neither the Reform vote nor the centre-left base.

Alastair Campbell paints the human picture behind the politics: there is next to no trust between Starmer and Burnham, and the process around the Gordon and Denton candidacy block is why Burnham has refused the offer of a cabinet seat. Starmer will be feeling angry, Campbell says — he led Labour to a landslide, the economy was beginning to pick up before Trump's Iran war, the NHS numbers are moving in the right direction — but his anger is not translating into public awareness of his achievements. Rory Stewart then delivers his sharpest analytical passage: Starmer's reported private mood maps almost phrase by phrase onto Joe Biden's in his final weeks. 'I'm not getting credit for what I've done. The only reason this is going wrong is forces beyond my control. I'm essentially doing what my opponents want on the key issues.' That anger, Stewart concludes, is the anger of someone clinging on when party and country know they can't win — and you're not there for the gratitude, you're there to win.

The discussion turns to process: should Labour hold a full leadership contest or allow Burnham to walk in unopposed? Rory Stewart argues in favour of a contest — Kamala Harris never had one, Theresa May's coronation was awkward, and even a brutal contest like the 2019 Conservative race helped Boris Johnson emerge stronger. He suggests Wes Streeting should stand to offer a different vision, giving the party and public a genuine choice. Alastair Campbell is less convinced: a contest that forces Burnham and Streeting to say extreme things to appeal to different Labour electorates could be destructive and ultimately provide less democratic legitimacy than the 60,000 votes Burnham just won in a real election. His money is on a coronation, and Betfair — with Burnham at 94% — seems to agree. He also raises the question of what Burnham does differently on policy: non-doms, energy, foreign affairs, tech and growth all need clearer answers.

Alastair Campbell has been arguing for some time that we are through 'peak Reform' — and the Makerfield result, he suggests, is evidence. Despite topping national polls, Reform has now lost three parliamentary by-elections in a row: to Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly, to the Greens in Gordon and Denton, and now to Labour in Makerfield. The money scandals are doing damage, the Russia links are beginning to trouble voters, and the arrival of figures like Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman, and Nadhim Zahawi — Tory retreads who are now presenting themselves as insurgents — stretches credulity. Campbell notes James Cleverly is on the Leading podcast this week and highlights council by-elections in Essex where Reform won seats in May but subsequently lost them back to Conservatives, suggesting their candidate quality is thin. Farage's post-result statement, blaming Restore for splitting his vote, is itself an admission of weakness: the combined votes still wouldn't have beaten Burnham.

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Rory Stewart pivots to Scotland, where the story from Makerfield's night was very different: the Conservatives beat the SNP in Aberdeen South, reversing the general election result, while Labour's vote fell 19 points. Stewart frames this as a vindication of the energy sovereignty argument: Norway's Prime Minister is calling for Arctic drilling, Middle Eastern supply is vulnerable via the Strait of Hormuz, Russian gas has been cut off, and over-reliance on Donald Trump's LNG is politically uncomfortable. The argument isn't about price — it is about Britain having its own supply. Alastair Campbell agrees the result signals political risk for Ed Miliband's energy policy, notes likely tactical voting from Labour to Tory to stop the SNP, and flags that the episode's special Question Time next week will feature EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen. Kemi Badenoch's rising net popularity rating is noted, though Campbell cautions against over-reading a Scottish result for her UK prospects.

Rory Stewart asks whether the SNP's performance was dented by the lingering fallout from the Peter Murrell scandal — the former SNP chief executive and husband of Nicola Sturgeon convicted of stealing party funds to spend on personal luxuries. The SNP leadership is dismissive, pointing to their comprehensive Holyrood election win despite the scandal. Campbell makes a broader observation about five or six-party politics in Britain: voters are increasingly motivated by who they want to stop rather than who they want to elect. The large body of voters who find the prospect of Farage as Prime Minister 'truly horrific' represents a powerful force, and tactical voting against Reform is becoming a structural feature of the political landscape rather than an isolated phenomenon.

Alastair Campbell, writing from Paris, observes a striking international pattern: Chirac, Sarkozy, and Hollande were all mayors before becoming French president; Édouard Philippe is currently a mayor and a leading contender; Claudia Sheinbaum came from city government in Mexico; Matteo Renzi from Florence in Italy. The elected mayor model — which Britain adopted relatively recently — may be creating a new independent power base outside of the Westminster game. Rory Stewart builds on this: Boris Johnson figured it out first in British politics, using the mayoralty to choose selectively when to be loyal to his party and when to put London first, laying out an independent platform and coming across as a CEO who actually gets things done. Andy Burnham has taken this further, being non-tribal, accessible and non-political in a way Westminster politicians simply cannot be. The burning question remains: can Burnham preserve the Manchester version of himself once he walks into Downing Street?

Looking ahead to a Burnham premiership, Rory Stewart argues he must do what Boris Johnson did when he entered Downing Street: be absolute change, redo the cabinet, distance himself from his predecessor, and lean into the transformation. The worst thing Burnham could do would be to keep Rachel Reeves or Bridget Phillipson in post — and an interesting move would be shifting Ed Miliband out of energy and into a different great office of state. Alastair Campbell raises the complications: Andy Burnham arrives in Parliament on Monday with no mandate beyond a by-election of roughly 60,000 voters; right-wing media hostility will transfer automatically from Starmer to Burnham; Russian propaganda operations will retarget; and there is no economic miracle coming before an autumn budget. The Manchester mayoral by-election is a risk Labour must not bungle. And critically, Keir Starmer still holds the cards — he is not bound by any timetable, and his reaction in the coming days will determine everything.

Alastair Campbell reads Nigel Farage's defeat statement in full: disappointed, blaming Restore for splitting his vote, but unable to escape the arithmetic that the combined total still fell short. Most damingly, Farage acknowledges that 'vote Burnham, get Keir Starmer out' was Reform's own campaign message from May — meaning he was 'hoisted with his own petard', as Campbell puts it with a deliberately French flourish. Reform's three consecutive by-election losses are reviewed: Plaid in Caerphilly, the Greens in Gordon and Denton, Labour in Makerfield. Rory Stewart closes with a heartfelt plea: he would much rather have Burnham as Prime Minister than Farage or Rupert Lowe, and he sees in Burnham the possibility of a Mark Carney-style centrist unifier — somebody who can stand for democracy, persuasion and compromise against an increasingly brutal populism. Burnham just needs to hold on to the best version of himself.

Alastair Campbell wraps up with a scheduling note: given the significance of the Makerfield episode, 'Who Funds Reform: Episode 4' — originally planned for this week — will now drop next Friday. Listeners who haven't caught up on the first three episodes are urged to sign up at therestispolitics.com before it lands. He teases that much of Episode 4 concerns Nigel Farage's funding.

Gordon and David from The Rest Is Classified introduce their latest series on the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko — a former Russian security service officer living in London who was poisoned with a rare radioactive toxin. The series explores who gave the orders, how foreign agents pulled off an audacious murder that put the population of London at risk, and the extent to which the British state suppressed the truth to maintain political relationships with Russia. Listeners are directed to find The Rest Is Classified wherever they get their podcasts.