Squeaky Burnham time: it’s too close for comfort for Labour in Makerfield

The man who would be PM appears to have a lead in byelection polls, but does he have what it takes to hold onto it?

- Ceri Thomas

By Friday afternoon, the most important byelection in a lifetime had a strangely lifeless feel.

The high fever of the early days of the Makerfield campaign seemed to have passed, and when The Observer called a Reform UK official to check the temperature on the doorsteps, he was downbeat. “To be honest,” he said, “I’m not sure I can help very much. There’s nothing to say. Nothing has changed.”

The betting markets had Labour as a shoo-in: you could get 7-1 on a Reform victory, and those are rare odds in a two-horse race. And, privately, Labour and Reform were saying the same thing: they had fired their best shots, and now they feared they may lose more from messing up than they could gain from throwing a last-minute firework.

Then, long after the day’s canvassing was done, came an opinion poll that put the two parties only 5 percentage points apart, and Reform’s rightwing rival Restore Britain on 8%. Suddenly, there was electricity in the air and everything to play for again.

The three opinion polls that have been carried out suggest Labour is leading Reform. But last month’s council elections are a bracing reminder that the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, can take nothing for granted.

The eight Wigan council wards fought in May do not exactly mirror the Makerfield parliamentary seat, but nearly do. Across them, Reform got a total of 14,223 votes to Labour’s 7,686 (all the other parties combined got just over 6,000). The numbers also contained important clues about the commitment of voters. Turnout was down sharply compared with the general election two years earlier, yet more people turned out to vote Reform last month than in 2024, while the numbers showing up for Labour dropped off a cliff.