ROBERT HARDMAN: I've spent the week in Makerfield - and here's why I believe the vital by-election will be closer than everyone expects

Published: 23:35, 12 June 2026 | Updated: 23:42, 12 June 2026 At last month's local elections, it was Nigel Farage's war cry: 'Vote Reform. Get Starmer Out.' This month, here at the Makerfield parliamentary by-election, everyone else is saying the same. 'Vote Labour', 'Vote Tory', 'Vote Restore', 'Vote Count Binface' – take your pick – and you'll be getting rid of Starmer. Every single candidate – and, thus, every tick in every box – is a protest vote against Sir Keir. I can't recall any by-election in history in which a sitting PM has been opposed unanimously. There is only one issue still to be resolved. Will Labour's Andy Burnham distance himself far enough from his chaotic party and its doomed leader to be seen as a creditable harbinger of 'change' and thus grab the platform he needs to seize power and steer Britain even further to the Left? For now, the bookies certainly think so. Or will Nigel Farage's Reform juggernaut overcome the twin problems of a candidate with an embarrassing past plus a rival suitor for the hand of the angry Right? Last week's Survation poll put Labour on 49 per cent and Reform on 39 per cent. It also put Rupert Lowe's Restore insurgency in third place with 8 per cent. As for the Tories, Lib Dems, Greens and the rest, we're talking low single digits and a scrabble to save their deposits. Nigel Farage, pictured with Reform UK candidate Robert Kenyon, has rallied voters by telling them to vote for his party to ditch Sir Keir Starmer Those Restore votes, so the argument goes, could draw enough numbers away from Reform to pave the way for a Labour win. That would certainly seem the case according to a new (albeit questionable) poll putting Restore on a thumping 13 per cent. The view here on the ground is rather different. Restore's impact seems overstated. No one voices support for the party, whereas passers-by – and I've talked to dozens this week – instantly reply 'Reform', 'Andy' or 'Don't Care' when you stop them on the street. Or take a rainy-day tour of a heaving Wetherspoons. Another even three-way split with zilch for Restore. Brand awareness is low and the candidate, Rebecca Shepherd, is elusive. Presented as a local businesswoman (she runs a riding school half an hour away in leafy Standish), her team complained loudly when she was excluded from a BBC Question Time panel ten days ago. Word is that personally, she was mightily relieved. When invited to join this week's panel of all the main candidates at a sixth form college, her team said she was 'too busy'. She has refused repeated requests from the Mail and other outlets for a brief word ('too busy' again). I twice visited her makeshift campaign headquarters at a community club in Bryn this week to be told no one was in all day. It is Mr Lowe who does the talking, chiefly via social media, with the odd clip from Ms Shepherd. These are then amplified by US tycoon Elon Musk, who promotes Restore on his X platform. Mr Farage, meanwhile, is the only party leader who has been on the ground with his candidate this week – and open to questions from all sides of media. Rupert Lowe, pictured with Restore Britain's elusive Makerfield candidate Rebecca Shepherd, could prove a headache for Mr Farage if his party splits right-leaning voters I find him at an outdoor rally for sole traders and 'White Van Men' (plus quite a few White Van Women) where he is showing support for 'alarm clock Britain – yes there are still people left in Britain that do actually go to work!'. He is pledging to scrap the new quarterly demand for tax returns and raise the VAT threshold to £150,000. Afterwards, he tells me of his plans to reform benefits – 'we all get mild anxiety – I know I do – but I don't expect to be paid for it' – while accepting that reforming Whitehall will be a Herculean challenge. However, when I raise the idea of a truce with his former colleague-turned-nemesis Mr Lowe, forget it. 'Nothing Rupert does ever lasts,' he says firmly. 'And his vote is soft. It's mainly the remnants of the old BNP.' 'Palpable rubbish,' ripostes Mr Lowe down the phone from London. 'Nigel likes it when it's all going his own way. Well, it's not going to go his own way. And he brought that on himself by trying to politically assassinate me.' It's like a David Attenborough clip on rutting stags. The mutual loathing is bottomless. I point out to Mr Lowe that both Mr Farage and his candidate, Robert Kenyon, are here on the ground whereas Mr Lowe's campaign is largely online (he, too, tells me his candidate is 'too busy' to chat). Mr Lowe assures me that he will present a huge show of force on the streets on Saturday ahead of Thursday's poll. We should note that the latest opinion poll giving Restore its whopping surge has emanated not from a serious pollster but from the Labour camp. Civil war on the Right is all music to the ears of the bookies' favourite as he sells himself as a rock star-cum-saviour. Britain's ruling party is represented by a man who cannot bring himself to put the word 'Labour' on his literature, let alone the word 'Starmer'. Andy Burnham is not even using the word 'Burnham' either. Three households displayed three different party signs in Makerfield this week Such is the personality cult around the Mayor of Greater Manchester that his slogan, thus far, has been: 'Vote Andy. For Us.' And if that's not emetic enough, a new line of posters is going up this weekend, straight out of the Barack Obama/Messiah playbook: 'Vote Andy. Vote Hope.' It is all overlaid with a cartoon Burnham – big eyebrows, big glasses, droopy eyes, cool jacket on top of black T-shirt. To underline the ageing rocker vibe, he has even started producing circular leaflets in the shape of an old 45 record, with the words 'Keep The Faith'. Flip over to the B-side and it says: 'Northern Souls Stick Together.' Which do you prefer, folks? Easy listening with sensible, local, familiar, changey-hopey Andy or sound and fury from the Right? The main threat to Mr Burnham now is events beyond Makerfield. This week's attempted beheading in Belfast – apparently by a no-questions-asked asylum seeker on taxpayer benefits – is catnip for Reform and for Restore (Rupert Lowe is now pledging a referendum on the death penalty). Mr Burnham had previously called for 'safe routes' for asylum seekers – just like the one the Belfast suspect took on the bus from Dublin. The resignation of a Labour Defence Secretary over defence cuts plays terribly in an overwhelmingly white working class, flag-flying seat where patriotism is not shameful but trumpeted noisily (I find a flourishing 'Jubilee Club' opposite a war memorial decked in poppies – in June). 'This place is small-c conservative,' says the Tory candidate, ex-mayor of Wigan Michael Winstanley, and cheerful rank outsider. 'They might not like the Tory brand but they don't do woke.' This week Mr Burnham announced (and then unannounced) an extra £10billion for Waspi women but not for defence. Churchill he is not. Nor can it be overlooked that, ten years ago, this place was overwhelmingly for Brexit when Mr Burnham was not. No wonder he is avoiding press conferences and sticking to largely friendly hustings, the latest being this week's student audience arranged by the Manchester Evening News. Restore Britain stand to retain their deposit in Makerfield and could allow Andy Burnham to return to Parliament Mr Burnham knows he can play the statesman and leave the others, in particular the Green candidate, Sarah Wakefield, to gang up on his chief opponent. Straight out of Green Party central casting, she's from down South and runs a food charity which claims farming has a 'white supremacy culture'. Without a significant student or Muslim vote here, the Gaza-obsessed Greens have all but endorsed Mr Burnham. Ms Wakefield's core messages are that she is on maternity leave and Reform are simply ghastly. Reform's strategy here has been to pit grass-roots authenticity against the brazen careerism of Mr Burnham. Having lost the nearby Gorton and Denton by-election to the Greens, after fielding a smooth southern import against a local plumber, Reform has gone for its own local plumber here in Makerfield. Robert Kenyon founded the local branch of the party and was elected to the council in last month's Reform landslide. Chuck in his track record as an Army reservist (lance corporal in the Royal Engineers), rugby league coach and family man, and it was all looking good. Whereupon teams of data archaeologists started digging for social media nuggets and came up with gold. Mr Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has been reluctant to use his party's name in his election material, Robert Hardman writes Among the remnants of Mr Kenyon's pre-political past were one or two underwhelming links to far-Right 'influencers' but it was a string of sexist remarks that hit home, notably his endorsement of a sordid tweet about former TV presenter Carol Vorderman. Reform's response has been that a chap's bygone banter on a defunct rugby forum is a world away from the ongoing anti-Semitism of the Greens or far-Right. 'They're the sort of comments that you won't get if you're an Oxford-educated career politician living in a nice postcode in London,' says Mr Farage. 'But they're the kind of comments you'll hear in every pub in the country every evening. And we should be unapologetic that Rob is a patriot who likes the odd pint and said a few laddish things on social media ten years ago.' Mr Kenyon is not a natural public speaker and endured a battering when BBC Question Time staged that by-election hustings. Sarah Wakefield's outraged demands for an on-air apology to Ms Vorderman went viral, though more telling was Mr Kenyon's lack of policy detail. Some candidates might have folded there and then but I find him doggedly cheerful at party HQ on a Wigan industrial estate. 'My words were taken out of context as if I'd said it yesterday,' he says when I raise his deleted tweets. 'But they'd gone so far back they'd needed Indiana Jones to get me tweets. It's water off a duck's back. I grew up playing rugby league where you had 13 people trying to physically hurt you.' Might those remarks deter female voters and push them towards Restore's female candidate? 'We're the only party which says a biological male should not be allowed into women's changing rooms,' he replies. A woman on Bolton Road in Makerfield walks past Andy Burnham's campaign posters Mr Kenyon's tormentors also unearthed some awkward criticisms about Brexit, which he apparently called 'nationalistic pish'. He says it's all old hat but it points to a fact the party has perhaps undercooked. While Reform is constantly wary of attracting activists with sinister far-Right skeletons, Mr Kenyon is a former member of the Labour Party, with pit workers on both sides of the family, raised on tales of the miners' strike. In other words, he is what the party needs to make headway here in old Red Wall citadels. And if Reform cannot win here, then has Mr Farage now peaked? 'Going into this by-election, with the Labour government in disarray, Reform should be sweeping the board. And they're not,' says the Tories' Michael Winstanley. I find Reform HQ in buoyant mood as volunteers descend from all over Britain to help. Retired psychiatric nurse Will Forrow, 65, a former Tory district councillor, has driven up from Dawlish in Devon to spend two days knocking on doors. Coachloads from all over Britain are expected on Saturday. But it still feels like a start-up, amateurish operation compared to the vast Labour machine running seamlessly out of a community club a mile away. Canvassers fly in and out like bees to a hive. One senior official tells me they have knocked on every door in the seat five times. Andy Burnham, not Mr Kenyon, has the momentum – for now. 'I think Question Time said it all,' says Jonathan, 38, a bank manager and floating voter doing his shopping in Ashton. 'I can't imagine that Reform man representing this place.' However, if Reform can squeeze that nascent surge from Restore, it may yet sneak a surprise. 'I'd say it's 50:50 between Labour and Reform,' says Claire, a nurse, picking up her daughter from school. 'And so am I.' The comments below have been moderated in advance. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. 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