The first person Darren Jones MP saw when he stepped out of Wigan North Western railway station was a voter asking for a selfie. It was June 18 2026, the date of what political reporters had quickly agreed was 'the most consequential by-election in modern British history', and the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was suddenly a celebrity on the streets of a town where such attention would normally be unthinkable.
Jones had come to campaign for Andy Burnham, the man on whom Labour’s hopes in Makerfield now rest. The constituency polls put Burnham ahead by between five and twelve points — a lead that exists almost entirely because of the candidate himself. In the most recent local elections every individual council ward in Makerfield went Reform’s way, with Nigel Farage’s party securing 50 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 25 per cent. Labour has never done so badly in Wigan. Without factoring in Andy Burnham or tactical voting, one model has Reform winning by 14 points.
“Andy Burnham leads polls in Makerfield by-election; Tories face oblivion as Reform surges.”
But Burnham’s presence on the ballot paper changes the maths. According to Survation for Datapraxis research, the ‘Burnham effect’ alone gives him a two-point win. Add tactical voting and the margin grows to three points. Factor in votes for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party and Burnham’s lead stretches beyond five points — a surge for Labour of 16 points, taking the party back to its 2024 General Election performance.
On the ground, the evidence of that enthusiasm was everywhere. Bright yellow Bee Network buses — Andy Burnham’s integrated transport system as Mayor of Greater Manchester — crisscrossed the town, each one feeling like a big 'Vote Andy' sign. A group of Burnham backers who had travelled up from London received supportive honks from passing cars and, more surprisingly, from Bee bus drivers. There was just one instance of a car passenger yelling a nasty word beginning with 'w' and ending in 'kers' from a window. 'I reckon the ratio would be rather different in any other Labour campaign,' observed one reporter.
But the Reform presence was equally visible. A turquoise Reform-branded double-decker blocked a bus stop on Wigan Road, much to the chagrin of schoolchildren. In the centre of Ashton, Reform campaigners had taken over all sides of a busy junction. The women there, also from London, were upbeat about their campaign but deeply negative about the state of the country, raising the plight of a yachting couple who faced warning shots from a Russian vessel in the Channel.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives were invisible. In 2019 they came second in the seat with more than 14,000 votes. Pollsters now have them within the margin of error of zero. In the Gorton and Denton by-election at the end of February, the Tories garnered less than 2 per cent. In Makerfield they are set for a similar fate, finishing third among parties of the Right — behind Reform and Restore Britain. For the first time in modern British history, the party of Wellington, Churchill and Thatcher will be an afterthought in a seat it once contested seriously.
Should Burnham triumph, he will likely be the next prime minister. If Reform upsets the odds, Nigel Farage might as well start browsing for Downing Street curtains. Either way, the Tories are already dead in this corner of Lancashire, and nobody seems to care.