Makerfield: Britain's political fault lines manifest

Having been thrust into the national spotlight, could Makerfield in the northwest become the place that highlights the emerging fault lines in British politics? The constituency, once considered part of the traditional Labour ‘red wall’, poses an uphill battle for Labour’s candidate Andy Burnham in the upcoming by election on June 18th. Labour suffered catastrophic losses in recent local elections in the area, with Reform UK winning 24 of the 25 seats up for grabs in the borough where Makerfield is located.

Some might presume that such a backdrop would lead to a two-horse race in the constituency between Labour’s Burnham and Reform UK’s candidate, Robert Kenyon. However, recent polling from Survation has shown that Rupert Lowe’s Reform UK splinter party, Restore Britain, has polled at 7%, the third highest behind Reform UK’s 40% and Labour’s 43%, with some anecdotal evidence potentially indicating even higher numbers. This marks the first time a tangible split has emerged between two parties claiming to usurp the mantle of the political right from the Conservatives.

Typically, political commentators stress that by-elections cannot be nationally representative. However, it is hard to ignore two overarching narratives emerging from this by-election, which do indeed hold national significance: whether Burnham’s vision for Britain can win back traditional Labour heartland voters who have shifted to Reform and metropolitan voters who have moved Green, and whether Restore Britain should be taken seriously as a contender on the right.

On the surface, answering the first question, polling by More in Common found that Labour would receive an eight-point boost to 30% if Burnham were to become prime minister, putting them in first place and three points ahead of Reform UK, clearly demonstrating that such a shift will be likely. Of course, this is speculative, with Burnham’s performance as prime minister unknowable for now.

The second question is whether Restore Britain poses a credible threat of vote-splitting to Reform UK. Whilst mainly ignored as a party confined to the far-right echo chambers of X, Restore Britain has slowly been building momentum in the polls and in local councils, making it harder to ignore.

Nationally, Restore Britain has been polling between 4% and 9%. In the most recent local elections, Great Yarmouth First, Restore's local affiliate in the borough, contested ten seats: nine for Norfolk County Council and one for Great Yarmouth Borough Council, and won all 10 seats, notwithstanding currently having seven councillors in Kent, two in Warwickshire, and one across many boroughs throughout the country, including Hertfordshire, York, Cornwall, and Argyll and Bute.

In any ordinary political climate, a party polling in the single digits and holding 21 council seats would be trivial. But in such a contested political space, with an electorate nearly equally divided across Reform, Labour, Conservatives, Greens, and the Lib Dems, and confounded by the ‘winner takes all’ nature of the first-past-the-post electoral system, even minor vote-splitting on the right could have tremendous ramifications for Reform’s pathway to No. 10. 

Makerfield may just illustrate Farage’s Achilles' heel: believing he could be the only populist figure to usurp the political right.