Citizen Writes

Makerfield, Burnham and the future of Britain

29/06/2026

Tor Clark is Associate Professor in Journalism and a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at the University of Leicester. As a political journalist he has covered the last nine UK general elections.

The result of the Makerfield byelection was a seismic event in UK politics.

Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham won the byelection on June 18 in the northwestern former mining area with 25,000 votes, more than half the votes cast and 9,000 votes ahead of his main challenger, Reform UK.

This result gives us both a better insight into UK politics generally and specifically who might be running the country for the next few years, the former perhaps being more important for the shape of UK politics longer term.

Interestingly, and completely against precedent, the Makerfield byelection had a much higher turnout than normal byelections and at 58% it was higher than the turnout in that seat in the 2024 general election and much nearer the national average turnout in UK general elections, which hovers around 60 per cent.

That tells us the good people of Makerfield knew this poll was important and turned out to demonstrate their views. You can also tell by the tiny vote shares for other mainstream political parties – the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens – that their voters look like they switched to Burnham and Labour this time too.

So the importance generally is mainstream political parties can beat the Reform UK insurgency with the right candidate and the right approach. Reform UK have enjoyed a prolonged period of dominance in the opinion polls, polling up to 34 per cent in recent months, while recruiting high-profile former Conservative switchers to their Commons ranks,  so to a large extent, this is their first significant setback.

But they actually polled 34 per cent of the vote here and when their votes are added to the seven per cent won by Restore Britain, those two rival right wing parties collectively won 41 per cent of the vote, which might normally be enough to win a House of Commons seat if the mainstream parties’ vote was split two or three ways. The threat to the mainstream parties from Reform and Restore is not over.

So in a general sense, this result tells moderate politicians of all parties the surge of Reform can be resisted and Nigel Farage entering Downing Street after the next general election is not inevitable.

Whatever we think of Andy Burnham, he showed huge courage to take on Reform in a constituency where that party had won most of the local council seats recently. His victory was not easy or inevitable. If he had lost, Reform UK would have known its formula was working and would be planning a campaign to win hundreds of seats in the next general election and take power. Burnham’s victory gives hope to all mainstream political parties.

Governing Britain

It is now likely Andy Burnham will be the UK’s next Prime Minister, which is controversial because he did not win the 2024 general election, indeed, as we know, he was not even a candidate.

He would then have the last three years of Sir Keir Starmer’s government term to turn around the economy and make people feel they want to vote Labour again, unless he seeks to capitalise on his current popularity and have a snap election as soon as he enters Downing Street, something Gordon Brown failed to do when he succeeded Tony Blair in 2007 and came to regret when he lost the 2010 general election.

So we don’t yet know whether the Makerfield byelection and the return of Andy Burnham to national politics and possibly into Downing Street marks the point right wing populist politics was defeated or whether it was just a bump in the road for Nigel Farage and co.

The explanation of his deputy Richard Tice, that Reform voters voted for Burnham to get rid of Starmer, makes no sense when Reform was competitive in this contest. Why would Reform voters vote for their main rival when they could win the seat themselves?

Andy Burnham now offers the Labour Party and traditional mainstream politics a reset moment. The victory of the Conservatives in the Aberdeen South byelection the same night offers that party a rare and real sense of hope, which has been hard to find for them since the days of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. They have a policy and formula for regaining political significance.

Burnham has won the Battle for Britain that was this critical byelection. What he does with the power this gives him will now shape Britain’s future.

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