The case against Andy Burnham would be a powerful one in any by-election, but in Makerfield – a constituency in which two-thirds voted to leave the EU – it is more powerful still. “I want to rejoin the EU,” Burnham said at Labour conference in Liverpool last September. “I hope it happens in my lifetime.” He didn’t think there was a prospect of joining any time soon, but said “we should be honest with people” that Brexit had been a mistake. He asked the rhetorical question, “Shouldn’t we start calling out the disaster that Brexit has been more directly?” And answered it: “We absolutely should.” His “allies” have apparently been trying to play down these comments, saying “he is not going to start talking about rejoining the EU”, but he is going to be asked about it. If he is going to be “honest with people” he is going to have tell his would-be constituents that they got it wrong.
He has tried to turn the choice of what should be a strong Reform seat to his advantage, and it is true that if he wins, his claim to No 10 as the Farage-slayer rampant will be irresistible. High risk, high reward. But I doubt that he can defy the odds. It would have been completely different if he had been allowed to be the candidate in Gorton and Denton in February. That seat split 50-50 in the EU referendum. Burnham would have won it, according to a poll by Survation after the by-election asking people how they would have voted if he had been the Labour candidate. Makerfield is close to Andy Burnham’s old Commons seat of Leigh.
Survation has projected the result in Makerfield from that poll, adjusting for the different electorate, including on the Leave-Remain issue, and the result puts Burnham and Reform neck and neck, within the margin of error. But I think the awkward questions will bear down on Burnham during the by-election campaign and the sky will darken with the chickens of the past coming home to roost. Related to Brexit is his view of immigration. True, one of the things he said in September about leaving the EU being a mistake was: “Immigration control has weakened as a result of Brexit.” As a description of what happened under Boris Johnson’s government, that is undeniable, but he also supported Angela Rayner when she criticised home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans to make settled status harder to obtain as “un-British”. He said: “I do have a concern about leaving people without the ability to settle. It may leave people in a sense of limbo and unable to integrate.” As for what he would do about the small boats, no one knows.
His problem on policy is that he has to defend what the government has done, and when he departs from it, it is likely to be in a direction that takes him further away from the voters of Makerfield. But he also has problems explaining to his would-be constituents why they are being asked to vote at all. They have been chosen by the desperate tombola of Burnham begging MPs to give up a seat so that he can pursue his ambition in London. They are being used as props for the drama of Andy Rides to the Rescue, their votes being borrowed by someone who abandoned Westminster, let everyone else do the hard work of winning the general election and now wants to come back and take over someone else’s mandate. In doing so, he intends to break his promise to the people of Greater Manchester to serve out his term as mayor – and if he succeeds he will leave a vacancy there that is likely to be filled by Nigel Farage’s candidate.
If the cynical manoeuvring of an unnecessary by-election isn’t already too much for the people of Makerfield, the anti-politics mood of the times is likely to seal Burnham’s fate. He can try to run on Reform’s local elections slogan, “Get Starmer Out”, which poses enough tricky questions for the campaign, but the voters know that if they really want to give the establishment a kicking, they should vote for the real thing. Against all that, Burnham has his record as mayor (everyone likes the buses), as champion of the north during the pandemic, and his image as a regular guy. The biggest unknown in his favour is whether the voters of Makerfield are as moved by the excitement of electing the likely prime minister as political obsessives think they should be.
This brave attempt to achieve Mission: Impossible has electrified the Westminster village, but the villages of Makerfield might be less thrilled to be used as a stepping stone to No 10 by Labour’s soft left. If he loses, Burnham will return to his desk as mayor – he does not have to give up his post unless he becomes an MP – knowing that all the residents of Greater Manchester know he would rather be somewhere else. He would leave Starmer even weaker, knowing that Labour MPs and Labour members preferred him as prime minister. Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner would still be available, with Streeting’s lesser unfavourability with the wider electorate giving him the edge. But if Streeting did finally prevail, he would inherit a smoking ruin.
