Makerfield Exposes Reform’s Limit

It is somewhat rare for an election to proffer signs that are simultaneously encouraging yet brutal for a party in British politics, but the Makerfield by-election proved just that for Reform UK. The result, while confirming that the party has decisively supplanted the Conservatives as the premier force on the British right, nevertheless exposed the possibility that Reform’s rise has itself birthed a coalition capable of stopping it.

The encouragement is obvious; Reform amassed north of 15,000 votes, almost 35% of the total share, while far-right Restore, exiled Reform MP Rupert Lowe’s own insurgency project, accrued a comparatively paltry 7% to finish a distant third. The Conservatives, on the other hand, were beaten into a position barely deserving of a footnote. In Makerfield, a post-industrial, heavily pro-Brexit constituency, Nigel Farage’s cadre proved beyond doubt that it has become the principal vehicle for right-wing discontent. 

Yet the brutality lies in the result that understandably dominated headlines. Andy Burnham claimed 24,927 votes, comfortably more than half the total, vanquishing Reform by more than 9,000. In the process, Burnham effortlessly dispatched a populist challenger who, according to a litany of polls, was in close enough proximity for Burnham to feel breath on his nape.

In this sense, Makerfield exposed, with unusual clarity, a limit far more consequential than Reform’s raw vote share. The closer the party approaches the precipice of triumph, the more effectively its opponents appear able to coordinate against it.

Burnham’s victory was not cultivated exclusively from Labour loyalists, nor those loyal to the proverbial King of the North either for that matter. The soon-to-be former Greater Manchester Mayor attracted support from across the political divide, binding together voters with not only infectious zeal and the promise of a Labour rebirth, but a shared determination to curb a Reform victory. 

Indeed, this précis does not represent a mere retrospective reading of the result; tactical voting groups had long identified Burnham as the candidate best placed to halt Reform’s advance, and the subsequent collapse of popular support for both the Liberal Democrats and Greens suggests that many voters acted accordingly. Some former Conservative voters also appear to have regarded Burnham as the least objectionable instrument through which Farage’s advance could be arrested.

There is now a paradox confronting Reform. Its extraordinary success in hollowing out the Conservative Party (and enticing several former Tory grandees into its ranks) appears to have simultaneously fortified the resolve of its political opponents. Under first-past-the-post, a system which has long received the chagrin of populist leaders of every ilk, a party dominating political conversation while wielding a ferociously committed base can nevertheless be shut out of power should the remainder of the electorate coalesce behind the candidate most aptly placed to defeat it.

If I may turn your attention to France to elucidate this point; for decades, the far-right National Rally has expanded its support while being repeatedly confronted by a so-called  ‘republican front’. This improvised alliance of voters and parties, willing to suspend their usual antagonisms in the service of obstructing the radical right, has substantially hindered the National Rally’s electoral successes, undoubtedly ensuring that the Parlement français remains free of a populist right government.

Of course, it should be said that Britain possesses no formal equivalent to the republican front, nor is London’s electoral architecture comparable to that of Paris. Yet Makerfield presents the embryonic outline of a distinctly British variation to this French strategy; perhaps less a formal alliance but a tactical anti-Reform reflex nonetheless.

For Farage, this possibility presents a more robust roadblock to Downing Street than the enfeebled Conservatives could hope to muster. Reform may continue to whet its rhetorical blade on the narratives of immigration, national decline and political betrayal, and in doing so, consolidate its command of the right. But if that language secures the loyalty of 35% of the electorate, while simultaneously alienating the remaining 65%, then inheriting Britain’s right-wing chalice may come at the cost of poisoning its contents. 

Makerfield did not reveal a receding Reform; a right-wing party winning in excess of 15,000 votes while demoting the Conservatives to electoral irrelevance cannot be dismissed, but neither does it suggest that the party stands on the cusp of power. It is an immutable fact that Reform has become strong enough to unite the British right, but it may also have become strong enough to unite almost everyone else against it.

Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

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