BEV CRAIG WINS GREATER MANCHESTER MAYORAL BY-ELECTION FOR LABOUR

Bev Craig has been elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, securing victory for Labour in a by-election triggered by Andy Burnham's departure to become Prime Minister. Ms Craig won 309,525 combined first and second preference votes, defeating Reform UK candidate Sian Astley, who received 157,178 votes, under the Supplementary Voting System. The count took place at Co-op Live arena and took more than 13 hours from verification to declaration, with the result announced at 11pm on Friday, 31 July 2026.

Seven candidates stood in the election across the 10 Greater Manchester boroughs, including Bramhall, Bredbury, Cheadle, Edgeley, Hazel Grove, Heatons, Marple, Offerton and Reddish. Ms Craig secured 47.15 per cent of first-preference votes, just short of the 50 per cent needed for outright victory, with Reform's Sian Niamh Astley on 20.99 per cent. Other candidates included the Conservative Phil Eckersley, the Green Party's Geraldine Coggins, the Liberal Democrats' Richard Martin Kilpatrick, Restore's Marlon Scott West, and Independent Marcus Jonathan Farmer. Stockport had around 223,000 eligible voters across the borough.

Turnout was recorded at approximately one in four eligible voters across Greater Manchester's more than two million electorate, marking a historic low for a mayoral election in the region and falling below the 28.9 per cent recorded in 2017. Ms Craig, who has led Manchester City Council since 2021, will assume control of strategic governance across health, transport, housing, strategic planning, waste management, policing and the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service. This was the first mayoral by-election held for a strategic authority mayor and the largest by-election ever held in the country.