Ashton-in-Makerfield, North of England —
Far from the gilded halls of Westminster, an unassuming community center, squat and utilitarian, with a parking lot that overflowed when it rained, became the center of power in British politics.
Here, in a room used to hosting bingo nights, dance classes, sports viewing parties and weddings, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s campaign team is planning his return to parliament. If he succeeds, he is likely to challenge British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for the leadership of the centre-left ruling Labor Party and, by extension, the post of prime minister.
Mr Burnham is widely regarded as the most popular politician in the country, but unless you are a sitting Member of Parliament (MP) you cannot challenge Mr Starmer’s crumbling authority. And without Mr Burnham, a Labor leadership election will not actually happen, despite seven ministers having resigned from Starmer’s government since the party’s disastrous defeat in May’s local elections. Although local elections do not affect the central government, they are an important indicator of the public’s mood.
Burnham has been cycling through candidates for seats near Manchester for several months. In February, the party’s executive body blocked Mr Burnham from standing in another by-election. But with Mr Starmer’s political capital eroding more than ever, there was nothing he could do when Mr Burnham’s ally Josh Symonds resigned as MP in the Makerfield constituency last month. Mr Burnham was immediately chosen as Labor’s candidate, making Thursday’s by-election perhaps the most consequential election in British history.
Around 76,000 voters now control the fate of the British Prime Minister and the direction of the Labor Party. Many Labor faithful believe that only a new leader can save the party’s shaky electoral prospects, as its traditional voter base collapses and gravitates towards the populist left-wing Greens and populist hard-right Reform Britain in once-strong Labor constituencies like Makerfield.
For Labor to stand as a candidate under these circumstances is an existential subtext. If Mr Burnham, also known as the “King of the North,” cannot defeat Reform candidate Robert Kenyon in Makerfield, there is little hope for the party’s other candidates in similar constituencies.
Burnham and Kenyon both declined to interview CNN, saying they are focused on talking directly to voters rather than the media.
Such high stakes have made this usually overlooked region the de facto center of Britain’s political world. Activists and MPs have flocked from across the country to support the canvass, and senior government ministers have traveled “up north” from London to support the campaign, tacitly supporting Mr Burnham, who has all but promised to oust his current boss Mr Starmer.
Journalists in suits flock to local cafes, calling to update the London office on the latest gossip, exchanging snippets of information about how many MPs they think support Mr Burnham’s leadership ambitions, or about his plans to formally announce a leadership campaign if, as many predict, he wins this election. Outside shops in Ashton-in-Makerfield town centre, anti-reform and pro-Labour activists are stopping weary residents from talking politics.
But life in other small towns that make up the constituency remains much the same, with the exception of Ashton, which attracts national journalists with its rail links to London and large numbers of people. The importance of elections here is only attested to by the residents complaining about the amount of election leaflets posted through their doors and the few signs peeking out from hedges and living room windows (they shout: “Vote for Andy”, “Makerfield needs reform”, “Restore Britain”).
By-elections are important because they typically serve as bellwethers, providing an incomplete snapshot of voter preferences between general elections. They are not usually the means by which prime ministers are elected. But these are extraordinary times in British politics.
Since Labor won a landslide victory to power nearly two years ago, Starmer has been on a spiral of unpopularity that appears to have finally come to an end. Despite ruling with a supermajority, he has been unable to articulate the exact nature of the “changes” he has promised to bring about, leaving him with few tools to reverse course on some key policies and increase government spending.
Reflecting the fate suffered by the centre-right Conservative Party, Labor’s popularity has fallen accordingly. These two parties have dominated British politics for more than a century, but a decline in their dominance could emphasize an electoral system accustomed to balancing two or three parties, rather than the five that currently account for the lion’s share of the vote. Nigel Farage’s reform agenda currently leads in most national opinion polls, but is Mr Burnham’s main opposition in Makerfield.
So far, Burnham’s current position on the outskirts of Westminster has largely kept him out of government contact.
His affable personality and intuitive communicative skills have sustained his popularity despite the party’s turmoil, creating a narrative the party lacks, even if the national policy positions it has advocated during this election campaign are largely in line with the current government.
Burnham’s identity is wrapped up in her upbringing in the north-west of England. He was a keen supporter of Liverpool-based football club Everton as a boy, and his taste in music is decidedly Manchenian.
This has helped position him as an outsider, despite spending 16 years as an MP for the neighboring Leigh constituency under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Westminster. He eventually became health minister under Brown, but ran unsuccessfully for the Labor leadership twice, in 2010 and 2015.
In 2017, he left the council to become mayor of Manchester, where he effectively reinvented himself. “There’s a running joke about Burnham that he’s a bit of a chameleon,” said Lotte Hargrave, a political scientist at the University of Manchester.
His argument in this election is that “Westminster doesn’t work” for many communities. Instead, he points out that Manchester has become the fastest growing economy in the country under his mayoralty, and proposes introducing “Manchesterism” nationally.
This set of ideas includes “repairing the foundations of the economy, bringing essential services back into public control to ensure affordability, pushing power out of Whitehall and Westminster and into towns and cities, and a pro-corporate culture,” explains Matthew Lawrence, founder of the Commonwealth think tank, considered one of Manchesterism’s intellectual architects.
Makerfield doesn’t actually exist, despite being the most important place in British politics right now. It does not appear on maps, other than as a suffix for the towns Ashton-in-Makerfield and Ince-in-Makerfield, and locals never refer to the area as such. This is simply the name of a constituency just south of Wigan, about midway between Manchester and Liverpool, which includes several small towns, each with a distinct character.
Despite officially living in Greater Manchester, the character of the area is more Liverpool than Manchester, says Peter Gray, a former trade union representative who volunteers at the Bryn Community Shop. “Liverpool is a warm city,” he says. “If you sit on a bench in the park, someone will sit next to you.”
The region has voted Labor for more than a century. Under the old rules of British politics in the 20th and early 21st centuries, workers, especially unionized workers, broadly voted Labor, and landowners broadly voted Conservative. These small towns previously relied on coal mining, steel mills and manufacturing for jobs, local historian Peter Fleetwood told CNN. One resident, Shirley Clark, 66, started working at a textile factory “in and out of jobs,” she told CNN.
But like other northern towns, the region’s economy has been reshaped over the past 50 years. These major industries are gone, and jobs in construction, retail, education, and healthcare are now the most common. Local residents say there are few opportunities for young people.
“Demographically speaking, this is a typical post-industrial constituency,” said Hargrave, a political scientist. “It’s older than the average place in the UK. It’s overwhelmingly white, British-born, has relatively few graduates, has high rates of home ownership and, crucially for reform, supported Brexit.”
Politics in the region is also changing. In last month’s local elections, which were disastrous for Labor nationally, Reform UK won 24 of the 25 seats contested in the Wigan area. The results were “seismic,” Fleetwood said. “It came with a bang.”
There is a sense of weariness here, an almost complete disillusionment with mainstream politics, and deep skepticism about whether Westminster politicians can bring about meaningful change. Some locals remain skeptical of Mr Burnham’s ambitions, claiming he does not prioritize his constituency, an easy line of attack for reformers.
One of the residents, Alex Moyo, 18, a home care assistant, says she probably won’t vote because she doesn’t understand politics. “From what I’ve seen so far, I probably won’t vote for reform…They’re saying what people want to hear, not what they need to hear,” he told CNN.
Another undecided, David Young, says that while “Labour is a joke”, forgetting its roots as a Labor party, “the central figures for reform are precisely the Conservatives, who took us out of the EU and damaged Britain”.
Some are drawn to the reformers’ simple narrative that reducing immigration is the antidote to Britain’s problems.
“We stopped German troops from crossing the Channel, but we can’t stop dinghies,” says Grant Fryer, 64, who trains service dogs and works with people with disabilities, noting that some French migrants cross in small boats.
In recent weeks, the far right has been accused of using two separate stabbings to advance anti-immigrant causes. There is fertile ground for such discussions. Reform candidate Kenyon, a plumber and local councillor, has campaigned on a promise to fight for close-knit local communities, combining anti-immigrant rhetoric with thinly veiled references to defending “our Christian traditions”.
But questions over historic sexist and homophobic social media posts have dogged his campaign. Kenyon claims they were created before he entered politics. And the rise of Restore Britain, another far-right party backed by Elon Musk that advocates mass deportations of immigrants, has also siphoned off some of the support for reform.
“This is the first test for Reform in terms of the emergence of more right-wing forces…If they do well in this seat, people will take notice,” Hargrave said.
Mr Burnham, meanwhile, has avoided explicitly stating his leadership ambitions, and his campaign insists he is not taking anything for granted before Makerfield voters head to the polls.
But if he wins, it appears to be a question of when, not if, he will challenge Starmer. Whether he can make the changes that Starmer has not yet made is another question.
