LONDON: For Andy Burnham, Makerfield is starting to look a lot like Frank Sinatra’s New York.
If he can make it there, he’ll make it anywhere.
That’s because this area of northern England is about to provide a crucial test of the Manchester mayor’s ability to repel Reform UK Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer’s own failure to halt the right wingers’ advance has his party openly baying to replace him with Burnham, the most popular man in the Labour Party.
The only catch is that Burnham doesn’t have the parliamentary seat he would need to mount a challenge.
So if Burnham can win somewhere that just came out emphatically for Nigel Farage’s party in last week’s local elections, his tilt at the top job will start to look nailed on.
The contest has opened up because the local Member of Parliament resigned to give Burnham a route into No 10 Downing Street.
It puts Makerfield, known historically for coal-mining, in the peculiar position of determining the future of Britain.
At a time of great upheaval, the UK’s economic and foreign policies are in the hands of the constituency’s roughly 75,000 voters.
It’s an unprecedented situation, according to Julian Gallie from polling company Merlin Strategy.
“This one constituency will have an outsized influence,” he says.
“This by-election will be about national change and really changing the government much more so than any other by-election has been in the past.”
Makerfield encompasses a cluster of areas previously known for its pit-side villages, coal-transport railways, pubs packed with miners sipping lukewarm pints of bitter, trade union politics, and a version of rugby – known as League – rooted in the north.
Today, you will see logistics hubs instead of mines. Factories include a plant where Heinz makes beans.
Almost half the population are aged 50 or above, with many retired.
Nearly 97% are White, and the area strongly supported Brexit at the 2016 referendum.
An ally of Burnham’s said he is intentionally going for a Reform-curious seat to show he can beat them on the national stage.
But if he fails, the Labour Party will have to pick another of Starmer’s rivals, or decide to give the PM a final chance.
Farage wants to ruin Burnham’s coronation and throw the government into disarray by repeating the victory his party chalked up in another northern English by-election, Runcorn and Helsby, last year.
His chances aren’t bad: Labour’s majority in Makerfield shrunk from more than 26,000 under Tony Blair to just over 13,500 by 2017, and then down to around 5,000 at the last election, when Reform came second.
To arrest that trend, Burnham “will need to convert Reform voters back to Labour, and not just change turnout or bring Green voters over,” Gallie says.
Victory would prove that Burnham’s “the only one that can really push Reform voters back into Labour.”
Burnham became known as Labour’s King of the North because of his lengthy and economically successful tenure in Greater Manchester.
The 56-year-old Liverpudlian, a fan of Everton Football Club, adapted to the role despite a traditional rivalry between the two cities, and polls extremely well across northern England.
Makerfield is sat halfway between the two, although falls within the region of Greater Manchester administratively, and people there have backed Burnham in mayoral elections.
Still, as a constituency it presents a challenge.
Its demographics are very different from the metropolitan parts of Manchester, with their young and more ethnically-diverse electorate.
In the closely watched campaign, scheduled for June 18, Burnham has to balance the demands of two very different audiences: the local electorate, and the countrywide Labour members who he hopes will choose his as the party’s next leader.
The latter are more likely to favour closer ties with the European Union (EU).
Burnham previously said he wanted Britain to rejoin the EU, a view he may need to explain on the doorsteps around Makerfield.
While Reform came second in the 2024 general election, it achieved its sixth-highest share of the vote – 31.8% – out of any constituency in the United Kingdom, and recently extended its nationwide lead in national opinion polls.
Expect Farage to be singularly focused on winning it this time around. — Bloomberg
