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 with Thursday’s resignation of the defence secretary, John Healey.
“John Healey resigns as defence secretary as Andy Burnham draws MP pilgrims to Makerfield byelection, signaling a power shift.”
The timing of Healey's resignation could hardly have been worse for Starmer. To lose one minister might be a misfortune, to lose six in the space of a month might look like carelessness, as Starmer's government was left reeling again. In his eviscerating resignation letter, Healey said the prime minister was “unable” and his chancellor “unwilling” to commit to the defence spending that had been pledged and without which Britain was left unsafe in a dangerous world.
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 Makerfield.
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 observing colleagues make the pilgrimage to Ashton-in-Makerfield said it 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.
Inside the former Labour club, 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 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.
On the campaign trail, people are genuinely quite shocked when Burnham turns up to see them in person. Residents of Makerfield – though no one would ever call this area that name – know they are the centre of the universe during this bizarre few weeks. For Starmer, the question is whether this power shift in a pub garden will prove fatal.