Makerfield 2026: A Safe Seat No Longer?

On Thursday 18th June, constituents in Makerfield, just outside Wigan, will vote in a by-election to elect a new MP, but its outcome will be felt far beyond the constituency’s borders.

Earlier in May, Labour MP Josh Simons stepped down from his position as Member for the Makerfield constituency to allow for Labour colleague Andy Burnham to run for a seat in Parliament and potentially mount a leadership challenge.

Since then, 14 candidates have declared that they will be standing for the seat. A seat that has been considered a Labour safe seat since its creation in 1983.

However, the polls suggest that Labour candidate Andy Burnham might not be having an easy ride to election victory.

Andy Burnham served as a Labour Party MP for 16 years between 2001 and 2017. Within this time, he took on the roles of Health Secretary and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. In 2017, Burnham stood and won in the first Greater Manchester mayoral election, holding the position until now.

Burnham has long been tipped to be the main challenger to Sir Keir Starmer's position as Prime Minister, but he can only challenge if he wins a parliamentary seat. Burnham stated earlier this month that he will run against the Prime Minister if he wins; however, Starmer has stated that he will fight any challenge.

The Manchester Mayor has faced criticism for stepping down to run for Parliament, with critics arguing that his soft-left stance is too closely aligned with Starmer’s, making it difficult for him to meaningfully distance himself from the current government.

Polls by Survation show the Green Party candidate, the Liberal Democrat candidate and the Conservative candidate all sitting at 2% or less of the vote share. The remaining top 3 candidates are made up of the increasingly frequent meeting of the Labour and Reform parties, as well as a candidate from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain Party.

The polling may indicate that much of the left-leaning vote has consolidated behind Labour, with the Green Party not gaining the same traction that they did earlier this year in the Gorton and Denton by-election. However, the right appears to be splitting.

Restore Britain was officially launched as a party by Independent MP for Great Yarmouth Rupert Lowe in February of this year. The party saw success in the May elections, winning all 9 of the council seats that it stood in.

Restore Britain's candidate is local businesswoman Rebbeca Shepherd. Party leader Lowe said Shepherd "would fight for the interests of the community, rather than political careers".

With Restore gaining national attention and polling at 8% in this election, it could pose a threat to the vote share of Reform. Currently, Farage’s Reform are polling at 39% in the Makerfield election, with their local candidate Rob Kenyon being the centre of controversy.

Kenyon faced calls to apologise for a series of online posts in which he declared, “I’m sexist, sorry but I am”, and claimed that women “can’t ref, drive or give directions”. He also refused to apologise on the BBC's Question Time for a 2021 social media exchange concerning Carol Vorderman, in which he responded to another user's sexually explicit comment by saying: “He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.”

Despite the controversy, the Reform candidate remains within 10 percentage points of Labour's Andy Burnham in the polls, and with 11 days remaining until polling day, the outcome is far from certain.