Keir Starmer told Labour staff today the party needs to pull together to take on Reform in the race to appoint a successor to Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester.

A by-election is expected next month for the mayoralty, which is now vacant after Mr Burnham was elected as MP for Makerfield. The PM thanked members across the country for their campaigning in Makerfield on a call today.

He said: “The tide is turning on Reform. If you look at the national polling, Reform are now only six or seven points ahead of Labour in the national polls, which two years into a five year parliament is a place that we can make huge advances from.

“The next opportunity is the Greater Manchester Mayoralty, which now will follow as a result of the Makerfield by-election. It’s a chance to go and take the fight to Reform.

“It’s really important, it’s a huge by-election, one of the biggest by-elections we’ll ever run. It is really important that we maintain that Labour mayoralty, and that we take Reform on.

“This is the fight in politics at the moment. We should relish the opportunity to take the fight to Reform and give them a hiding in Manchester, and frankly, expose them for who they are: divisive, inward, wanting to divide our country, the complete opposite values to us.”

He added: “We are the true patriots, they are plastic patriots. Let’s pull together as a party and a movement. The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement. That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”