❓ WHAT HAPPENED: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has attributed Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield parliamentary by-election (special election) on Thursday to strong voter sentiment against Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. Significantly, while Burnham and Starmer are both Labour Party politicians, Burnham is expected to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership and, by extension, the office of Prime Minister, when he returns to Parliament. Farage also urged supporters of the Elon Musk-backed splinter party “Restore Britain,” which came a distant third in the by-election, to “think again,” stressing that the Makerfield results show Reform is the only viable right-wing force against Labour.
📺 DETAIL: On Thursday, residents in Makerfield, a constituency (electoral district) in Greater Manchester, England, headed to the polls to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) in a by-election (special election). The seat became vacant after Josh Simons, the area’s now-former Labour MP, stepped down to pave the way for then-Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham’s return to Parliament. Burnham’s return to Parliament is widely seen as laying the groundwork for a leadership challenge to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose government was plunged into crisis after Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party emerged victorious in local elections last month. In the early hours of the day after, it was officially announced that Burnham had won the by-election. In a Friday morning response to Burnham’s resounding victory, Nigel Farage attributed the Manchester mayor’s decisive win to anti-Starmer sentiment. Farage also argued that the results show that former Reform MP Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain splinter party, backed by Elon Musk, cannot present a viable challenge to the left. Lowe’s party secured only around seven percent of the vote, insufficient to swing the result in Makerfield but possibly able to damage Reform in a wider election. This was in line with pollsters’ expectations, and far short of Restore’s claims that it could possibly take as much as 25 percent of the vote. Farage urged Restore voters to “think again” and consider what they really hope to achieve.
💬 KEY QUOTE: “What really happened here was, it was vote Burnham, get Starmer out, which, of course, was our campaign message leading up to the [local elections] on May 7, so we were slightly hoisted with our own petard.” – Nigel Farage
💬 SECONDARY QUOTE: “I would say this: there’s a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted Reform that voted Restore. And I would say directly to them, what do you want? We are the challenger party to the left in this country, and I would urge you to think again. I really, really would.” – Nigel Farage
🎯 IMPACT: Burnham’s election means that he will cease to be Mayor of Greater Manchester—setting up another special election—and will officially be sworn into Parliament later this month. After officially becoming the MP for Makerfield, Burnham, or a sympathizer, will likely trigger a leadership contest to oust Starmer. Burnham was previously an MP and government minister under former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but left the House of Commons to become Manchester’s mayor after losing a previous party leadership contest to the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn.
📺 FLASHBACK: At the local elections in May, Reform UK won 24 out of the 25 seats available in the Wigan area, where Makerfield is located. Commanding performances like this from Reform across the country in May prompted Josh Simons to resign his seat so Burnham could campaign for it, in hopes that the Manchester mayor could boost the Labour government’s collapsing popularity.
