When a photographer is present, Nigel Farage will order a pint of bile, but privately the reform leader gin and tonic. Harold Wilson, who puffed a pipe in public, was a cigar smoker behind closed doors. Since the Representation of the People Act of 1918, the ruling class has been forced to at least act as if it represents the people. And so if you’re standing for the seat of Makerfield, you have to sound like you’re made of Makerfield: you have to talk, as Andy Burnham does, about where your kids went to get twisted, to express frustration about potholes. But as the televised Makerfield by-election debates have revealed, the other candidates are at least as Wigan as Burnham – and possibly muhhr.
In the BBC pre-election debate on 8 June, Burnham went straight for his safe haven: the Bee Network’s yellow buses which have brought cheaper and more frequent transport to Greater Manchester, a change brought about not by spending more money but by exercising more state control. The state’s broader problems can be addressed in the same way, he thinks, citing the disaster of our privatized water system as an example. This, he said, is “a situation… exactly like the buses in Greater Manchester when I came in as mayor”, although there is of course a significant difference in that you can suspend a bus service without everyone dying. Burnham was not alone in wanting greater state control of utilities. “We need to start drilling in the North Sea again,” said Conservative candidate Michael Winstanley, brazenly ignoring the fact that no part of the Makerfield site is within 100 miles of the North Sea.
Liberal Democrat candidate Jake Austin had his hair slicked back and his eyebrows permanently raised, as if he had just emerged from a heated debate in a wind tunnel. He had a question for Burnham: what if a reform candidate becomes the next mayor of Greater Manchester? It’s a good point: in all the talk about Burnham’s opportunism, there hasn’t been much recognition of how much he’s gambling at Makerfield. There is a non-zero chance he will win the seat but not the Labor leadership and spend three years on the backbenches, watching both his party and his city crash into the ground.
Before that, however, he also risks being humiliated by Reform’s Rob Kenyon, who considers himself a Makerfield man and is a plumber who has worked for the Greens in Gorton and Denton. Kenyon’s Wigan accent is much stronger than Burnham’s lilt. Kenyon says things like, “I would control it on a neighborhood basis.” He, he said, had “shopped in a German supermarket, starting with A, all his life”. (Same thing: I fly to Berlin twice a week to shop at Alnatura, my favorite German eco-market, for organic Fischstäbchen and zwei-minuten-reis.) “I know how much things cost,” Kenyon added, with a real sense that this might be an achievement.
At intervals during the debate, the BBC showed short videos made by candidates who were too crazy to enter the studio. These included: an asthmatic libertarian in a bright orange hoodie who believed “the government has no right to infringe on our liberties” (counter: yes, that’s what the laws are); and an independent candidate who asked: “Why am I dressed as a fox?” – although he had to take off his fox mask to say this, which immediately defeated his argument; and Rebecca Shepherd from the far-right Restore Britain, who described herself as “not a career politician”.
In his campaign launch video and during the previous Question Time debate on June 4, Kenyon also distanced himself from “career politicians” who do elite things like go to university and learn about politics, then “get a job at a think tank or as an MP’s assistant” before becoming a candidate. “You can read a book about something, but you don’t understand it until you actually do it,” he said, proudly asserting that he hasn’t read a book and doesn’t intend to. Of course, there is no such thing as a “normal person”: everyone is different, and this is a term used exclusively by harsh and narrow-minded people who want to imply that other people are abnormal. What these clowns are actually proposing is that people with zero qualifications be allowed to win positions of political responsibility because they don’t understand the job and have no interest in doing it properly. They think it’s a bad thing that many people in British politics study the same thing at university. Wait until they find out how many people in British medicine have got the same degree! Oh, we don’t want career doctors, we want normal people who have just decided they want to go under the knife.
Is it normal to be Facebook friends, as Rob Kenyon was, with a known fascist who is wearing a fascist uniform? Do you know any normal person who got X account suspended? How normal is it to publicly defend another man’s right to send very explicit, sexually aggressive comments to Carol Vorderman? During both debates, Kenyon was asked by the only female candidate present (Sarah Wakefield of the Greens) if she would like to apologize for this; he refused both times, saying it happened a long time ago (it happened in 2021).
Finally, the presenter, the BBC’s Annabel Tiffin, asked the question that would separate normal people from career politicians: what is their favorite delicacy in Wigan? The Lib Dems’ Austin made a strong start with a thick steak pie. The Greens’ Wakefield ruled himself out by choosing a hard-boiled mint which, although made in Wigan, is just a mint. Now it was Burnham’s turn, and an extremely safe choice: a babbie’s yed, which sounds exotic but is exactly what Wigan chips call steak and kidney pudding because they think it looks like a baby’s head (it doesn’t). So it’s a dish you can find anywhere, the same dish you’ve been eating for years, just traded in with a northern accent. On second thought, this might not have been the best choice for Burnham.
For a moment, Kenyon seems to have messed up the all-important food round. He’s talking about a fat steak pie, just copying the Lib Dem, but then he plays his trump card: he’s putting it on a barm! A pie sandwich! Fantastic Wigan Kebab! He may indeed have earned this one. Off camera, Burnham’s men are surely hitting on each other: a barm! Why didn’t Andy predict a lying barm!
Last of all comes Winstanley. Is that Wigan enough to order a wet smack barm pey? This is a dish so performatively Northern that it demands its own tongue, no conjunctions (conjunctions are too fancy for the likes of us, boy). It consists of a disc of battered potatoes on a bun topped with watery quills from some mixed peas (the actual peas are too fancy for the likes of us, boy). No: Winstanley chooses the same meat pie as the other men, with a mint for pudding, the most derivative choice possible. His political career is in ruins, and deservedly so. And that’s it, the debate is over and the audience has learned just one thing: none of these people are normal at all. But again, who is it?
(Further reading: Women who stand by their abusers XL)
