Burnham Beats Reform in Remarkable Makerfield Victory

On the surface Andy Burnham’s victory in Makerfield is unremarkable, if anything the 20% gap over second-placed Reform is a shining example of how Labour has significant swathes of support in the constituencies where historically the Labour vote had to be weighed rather than counted. Makerfield, an ex-mining, working class seat that has voted Labour since 1906 saw 35% of its electorate vote for a right-wing party. The result seemingly represents the phenomenon that has been occurring all over Britain, Europe and the world for the past twenty or so years, namely the significant rise in support for right-wing populist parties in working-class areas, at the expense of social democratic parties who seemingly are becoming more and more out of touch with their former grassroots. Burnham secured a comfortable victory in Makerfield. Show this result to somebody in the 20^th Century and they’d be deeply concerned. But, be in no doubt, in the 21^st Century this result is remarkable. It demonstrates that the Labour Party doesn’t have to be a lost cause in its working-class heartlands, and there is a left-wing politics out there that is capable of holding strong against the seemingly irresistible rise of right-wing populism. 

As I outlined last month, Makerfield isn’t another of these seats in which Labour is losing grassroot support to Reform, it is the Labour epicentre of this phenomenon. Any and all forecasts suggest Makerfield would be one of the first bricks to fall out of the red wall, one of the first Labour seats to turn Reform. At the 2024 general election, across the entire country Reform achieved their sixth highest vote share in Makerfield. This constituency went to the polls just six weeks ago in the Wigan council elections and whilst direct comparisons may be crude, they are not imprecise. In those elections Reform won 46% of the vote to Labour’s 25%. Reform required just a 7% swing to take this seat from Labour, and having achieved by-election swings of 17% in Runcorn, 20% in Gorton and Denton and 34% in Caerphilly, one would expect this to be like taking candy from a baby. 

And if those facts didn’t present a serious enough challenge to Burnham, the nature of British by-elections further stacked the deck against him. Even very popular governments struggle during by-elections. Thatcher’s Conservative government suffered a 14% swing to the Liberals in the 1983 Penrith by-election having won a landslide at the general election just six weeks earlier. In 1997 Tony Blair had everyone convinced he could walk on water, but that didn’t stop Labour suffering an 11% swing to the SNP in Paisley that November and a 20% swing to the Liberal Democrats in Leeds two years later. The history of British by-elections is littered with popular governments bruised by double digit by-elections swings. Yet not only did Burnham weather the storm, but the performance in Makerfield is the best English by-election result of the 21^st Century, their best by swing since 1968 and their best by overall vote gain since 1945.

The reason for this is entirely down to Burnham. Burnham’s politics and his communicative style registered with voters in Makerfield. By positioning himself outside of the present party leadership, Burnham was able to deploy a coherent message throughout this by-election (something Starmer has proven entirely incapable of doing). Burnham’s message of decades of loss in areas like this, captured by his soundbite: ’40 years of Neoliberalism’, is one that has been sneered at by both the Westminster bubble and Labour establishment, yet, clearly, it has worked.

This soundbite alone demonstrates how and why Burnham was able to compete with Reform in a way that Starmer and Starmerism have proven utterly incapable. Burnham deploys a clear temporal narrative. He is not limited in his nostalgic deployment in the way that Starmer is. It is nostalgia that resonates so deeply with voters in constituencies such as Makerfield, and it is nostalgia that has so far been entirely monopolised by Reform. Starmer’s strange temporal narrative, one seemingly of a nostalgic impasse, in which his communications acknowledge a past that used to be better yet dismiss the action required to make it retrievable due to a mixture of economic constraint and fiscal caution has, predictably, failed to invigorate the public. His unremarkable managerialism and constant U-turning has delivered no coherent narrative at all, at a time when narrative is key. 

Nostalgia has emerged in today’s politics as a vibrant tool due to the mutually antagonising relationship between people feeling poorer and people losing faith in politics. When people have no faith in the future, the past becomes not only a source of comfort, but a source of opposition. Things used to work, Britain used to be a proper country, etc. etc. We hear it all the time, and we feel it all the time. Nostalgia is what has ignited the populist flame. Populism feeds on nostalgia and is excellent at using it to mobilise electoral support. Reform has, so far, been no different. The central pillar of Reform’s narrative is clear, it is coherent, it is nostalgic, and, until now, it has been untouched. 

Burnham’s coherent semi-nostalgic narrative has therefore made an enormous difference in Makerfield. Be in no doubt, had this been a normal by-election with some Starmerite nobody standing, preaching how the country has been fundamentally changed by breakfast clubs and a few more apprenticeships, then the result would have been similar to those of the local elections and the disastrous by-election performances of the past eighteen months. Burnham has told voters that the past was better and that he has a clear plan to make this past achievable once more. His narrative drove turnout up 6% higher than it had been at the general election and was able not only to keep the Labour vote strong against Reform but pinch a handful of right of centre votes whilst hoovering up the votes of the smaller left of centre parties. Two things no other Labour candidate has come close to being able to do. 

Ultimately therefore, Andy Burnham has won a by-election in a Labour heartland seat, not an impressive achievement on the surface, but considering that under normal circumstances Labour would have been destroyed here by a Reform tidal wave, it is crucial. Burnham’s semi-nostalgic left of centre politics has proved capable of defeating Reform in one of the party’s primary target seats. Burnham has withstood his party being in government and he has withstood his party being deeply unpopular. It stands to reason that having won this by-election then a Burnham-led Labour Party could withstand Reform in Red Wall seats like these all over the country, something that Starmer is incapable of doing. Whilst the resistance of Reform is not in itself enough to form a government, it does save the party perhaps 80 to 100 working-class seats. Burnham’s narrative will no doubt encounter resistance in some of the middle-class areas that Labour won in 2024, but in seats like these Burnham has shown his Labour brand can see off the Reform threat. This would give Labour a more secure grounding in an increasingly volatile political atmosphere. This victory does not suggest a Burnham led Labour Party would repeat the 2024 landslide, but it does suggest his leadership may be enough to save the Labour Party from the history books which, at the moment, it is seemingly destined for.

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