For a few short weeks, the centre of political gravity in Britain has shifted from the Palace of Westminster to the bar of a former Labour club in Wigan. In London, even as Keir Starmer insists he will fight to stay in No 10, the walls seem to be crumbling around him – especially after Thursday’s resignation of the defence secretary, John Healey. Two hundred miles north, most mornings outside Stubshaw Cross community centre there is a queue snaking round the building as 20 MPs patiently wait to clock in to do their hours on the doorstep for Andy Burnham in the Makerfield byelection.
It is a seat that once looked so impossible to win that some of Burnham’s closest friends advised him to turn down the offer from Josh Simons to fight it. But now, if the polls are to be believed, Burnham looks on the brink of proving his own concept: that he is the only Labour party politician who can stand a chance at beating Reform UK. One MP said observing their colleagues make the pilgrimage to Ashton-in-Makerfield felt “like watching power change hands in a pub garden”: a few loyalist MPs looking at their shoes on the outskirts of the throng, while their colleagues eagerly sought praise from Burnham’s most influential fixers, Louise Haigh and Anneliese Midgley.
“MPs queue to canvass for Andy Burnham in Makerfield byelection as Starmer faces crisis after Healey resignation.”
Inside the community centre, MPs are pocketing souvenir stacks of beer mats printed with the ubiquitous Stanley Chow cartoon of Burnham, with the slogan “Brewed Round Here”. Standing in packs outside with activists, they are briefed to tell undecided voters on the doorsteps of Ashton-in-Makerfield and Orrell that they are from “Andy Burnham’s campaign” rather than the Labour party.
Over the next week, the party will target roughly 16% of undecided voters who have told canvassers they are still to make up their minds between Labour and Reform, though strategists say the number has narrowed since the BBC’s Question Time last week. At the weekend, 450 volunteers came to canvass. By the end of the coming week, Labour activists will have knocked on every door in the constituency five times over. Residents of Makerfield – though no one would ever call this area that name – know they are the centre of the universe during this bizarre interlude, as the battle for the soul of Labour plays out in a pub garden in Wigan.