Owen Jones sees Makerfield byelection test Andy Burnham
owen jones is putting Andy Burnham at the centre of the Makerfield byelection test, arguing that a Labour win would show the party can talk about working-class insecurity without scapegoating minorities. Burnham, Greater Manchester mayor and Labour’s candidate, is being cast as a possible answer to Reform UK’s pitch in a seat where voters are due to choose next week.
editorial says Burnham has not disguised his leadership ambitions if he wins the seat and enters parliament. It also says he styles himself as Labour-but-not-this-Labour, presenting himself as a party insider who stands outside Westminster.
Burnham and Makerfield
The editorial describes the vote as the most consequential byelection for decades and a test of Burnhamism. In its telling, the question is whether a more rooted, regional, public-service politics can reach people whose lives are precarious while still holding together Labour’s support among voters who once made it a mass party.
That challenge comes in a constituency whose coalmining heyday is long past. The Lancashire pits that George Orwell once wrote about in The Road to Wigan Pier have long closed, and warehouses and logistics hubs have replaced them.
John Healey’s resignations
This week, John Healey and his deputy resigned from the heart of government, and the editorial says those departures will deepen the anti-Westminster mood before the byelection. It links that mood to a wider argument over Labour’s competence and whether the party can reconnect with working-class voters without leaning on the language of blame.
Makerfield voters include carers, tradespeople, the self-employed and families living with ill health. The editorial says many people work hard but do not feel secure, and that is the setting in which Burnham is trying to make his case.
Reform UK’s challenge
Nigel Farage of Reform UK and Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain are described as conduits for a politics of paranoia and racialised resentment. The editorial says immigration is cast as an invasion by those figures, setting up the contest as a direct test of whether Labour can answer anger without copying its terms.
The result next week will show whether Burnham’s message can travel beyond Greater Manchester and whether Labour can still speak to voters in places shaped by industrial decline and newer forms of work. For Burnham, the seat is a route into parliament; for Labour, it is a test of whether the party can find a language of change that does not depend on scapegoats.
