Andy Burnham has won the Makerfield by-election by a huge margin. The Mayor of Greater Manchester won more than half the vote with 55 per cent with 24,937 votes. His nearest rival, Robert Kenyon of Reform, received 15,696 votes (35 percent of the vote), leaving Burnham with a majority of 9,231.
Burnham won with a larger majority than Labor achieved here in the 2024 general election. In his victory speech, Burnham made his clearest statement yet of his intentions to use his new seat in the House of Commons to take the reins of power.
“This result will deliver a country that works fairly for everyone and everywhere,” he said, claiming the people of the Makerfield area had “voted for hope”. He called the result “a final chance for change” for the Labor government, which is hugely unpopular in the polls.
The UK reform, which had hoped to humiliate Burnham and Labour, failed to live up to expectations. While some pre-election polls had predicted that Kenyon would only lose to Burnham because of a split on the right, Burnham’s margin of victory was much more comfortable.
Restore Britain, the party set up by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe as a far-right opposition to Nigel Farage, had a surprise surge here at Makerfield during the campaign after heavy digital ad spend and a strong ground game.
But the party scored only 3,111 votes or 7 percent of the vote. This is lower as a percentage and a raw number than the total the British National Party scored in this constituency at its high point in the 2010 general election. The combined Reform and Restoration vote was 42 per cent, 13 points less than Burnham.
Meanwhile, the Tories won less than a thousand votes and lost their deposit, as they did in the Gorton and Denton by-elections. While that disappointment may be softened by the Conservatives’ victory in Thursday’s by-election in Aberdeen South, it shows that the Reforms are now firmly the dominant right-wing force in places like Makerfield.
Burnham admitted that voters from the Greens, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives had shored up their votes in the by-election after it became clear that the Greens and Lib Dem vote had fallen compared to the last general election, dropping from thousands to the low hundreds.
The new MP for Makerfield plans to hold a rally early Friday morning as the next phase of his political ascent begins. First he will have to resign as mayor of Greater Manchester, triggering an immediate snap election for the position in which Reform will hope to do well.
Keir Starmer and his allies, in a bid to delay a challenge from Burnham, have said he should focus on winning that campaign for the party rather than trying to unseat the Prime Minister.
How fast could he move against Starmer? This is now the question that will haunt Westminster. There was a clear expectation at Labor campaign headquarters today that a challenge to Starmer was imminent, but there were fears from Burnham’s allies of going too fast. In Labour, reminiscences of Starmer’s first hundred days as Prime Minister pervade. This period is now widely regarded as a series of disasters caused by a lack of planning: the winter fuel allowance cuts, the Rose Garden speech dwelling on national decline and the “free” scandal.
There is no appetite for a government free fall, triggered by a wave of ministerial resignations, as we saw at the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership. But the clear message from Burnham ultras is that the onus for avoiding that rests largely with Starmer, who must accept the new political reality after this result: that Burnham is electorally fit where he no longer is.
As my colleague Ailbhe Rea has reported, Burnham now has the numbers to launch a challenge – 81 Labor MPs, or 20 per cent of the parliamentary party – if he chose to, and could present evidence of this to Starmer as the start of negotiations for a transition of power.
(Further reading: Makerfield Days)
