The day before the voters of Makerfield chose their new MP, a man named Les stood outside his house in the post-industrial town of Hindley. His front garden was adorned with no less than seven placards for Rupert Lowe's new mega-right outfit, Restore Britain. 'Farage has lost it,' Les told the Guardian's John Harris and John Domokos. In at least one sense, the result proved him spot on.
Labour's Andy Burnham triumphed with 55% of the vote, Reform UK managed 35%, and Restore secured 7%. The victory puts Burnham 6,100 votes ahead of Reform and Restore combined, and brings him closer to Downing Street. The byelection was triggered by the death of the previous MP, and the contest was seen as a key test of whether Nigel Farage's party could break through in a seat it had targeted.
“Labour's Andy Burnham wins Makerfield byelection with 55%, crushing Reform UK's hopes from local election highs.”
Reform had entered the race with high hopes. Its deputy leader had described the constituency as offering 'a cracking chance' for the party, given that Makerfield is reckoned to be 97% white British and replete with the kind of grievances Reform feasts on. In May, when eight council wards in the constituency voted in local elections, Reform managed a vote share of 50.4%, with Labour trailing miserably on 22.7%. The reversal was stark.
But on the streets of Hindley, the noise was misleading. Every two or three minutes, a van or small truck would draw level with Harris and Domokos, and there it was again: a honked horn, and a full-throated shout of 'Reform!' Yet the result tells a different story. Reform's candidate, Robert Kenyon – pictured with Nigel Farage as polling began – could not turn that noise into votes. The party's average poll rating has fallen by around five percentage points from its late-2025 high, prompting talk of 'peak Farage' once more.
The Guardian's John Harris, who reported from the constituency, argued that the defeat exposed all of Reform's weaknesses: from a hopeless candidate to botched strategy. 'As a matter of political gravity, you cannot style yourself as the insurgent outsider for ever,' he wrote. The decisive arrival of Lowe's party, more violence on UK streets, or simple Farage fatigue may all be factors.
For Labour, the win was both a feat of tireless mass campaigning and a testament to Burnham's extremely rare standing as a politician. But Harris warned that there is still 'a long and arduous journey ahead' for the party. Burnham's Britain, as the Guardian's video series calls it, is a place where people's lives back up his insistence that the economy and society need radical change – but where an infectious spirit of optimism also prevails.