The meaning and meaninglessness of Makerfield

So there we have it: Andy Burnham has romped home in the Makerfield by-election, securing a majority of almost 10,000 votes and just shy of 55 per cent of the vote. This is what polling suggests would be a top-30 target for Reform UK nationally and where Nigel Farage’s party won every council seat going just last month.

It is an excellent result. Whilst it never seemed very likely that Burnham would actually lose (right from the beginning polling suggested he was the difference between Labour holding or losing the seat) the margin is greater than anybody seems to have expected. The question, of course, is what that means — and how much of that is particular to this by-election as opposed to national politics more generally.

The bull case for Burnham, as summed up by Jessica Elgot of the Guardian, is that Makerfield represents a “proof of concept” for his pitch to the Labour Party: that he can revitalise the progressive vote, win tactical support from liberals and greens, and see off Reform.

On one level this is fair enough, as that is literally what he did in Makerfield. But the particular conditions of any by-election always make it difficult to read too much into them, even when they go your way. On the day, Labour put together a genuinely extraordinary voter mobilisation effort — a benefit of being able to concentrate the resources of a national party in one constituency.

This suggests a medium-term danger. For starters, concentrating resources to that extent always has its price. There were two other by-elections yesterday, both in Labour’s former heartland of Scotland: Aberdeen South, and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. At the 2024 election, Labour finished a strong second in both seats; last night it placed fourth in both, whilst in Aberdeen the Tories, whose risible showing in Makerfield is naturally the centre of attention this morning, won their first Scottish by-election in half a century.

But the bigger issue is that concentrating resources like this is simply impossible in the conditions of a general election. That might not be too bad, on its own: much of the result surely owes to Burnham’s presence as the candidate.

Except that Burnham is almost certainly going to be prime minister whenever Britain goes next to the polls – meaning that even if his personal ratings have held up to that point, he won’t be able to spend much time in Makerfield. This trap has claimed high-profile figures before; in 1992, Chris Patten was so busy overseeing the Conservatives’ successful general election campaign that he neglected, and lost, his own seat in Bath.

I would not, at this point, say the odds of Burnham losing his seat are especially likely. As Labour leader he could divert enormous resources to Makerfield if he chose and people tend to like having famous MPs represent their area. He could even, in extremis, try a chicken run, although given the symbolic significance his supporters are attaching to his winning Makerfield that would basically be a last-chopper-out-of-Saigon moment.

But it would be remiss not to note the danger of having a left-wing prime minister holding a seat which leans very heavily to the right by dint of an organisational effort it will be extremely difficult to replicate and strong personal ratings which aren’t likely to endure.

He shows no sign of having the answer to Britain’s problems

And that is the real problem with the “proof of concept” theory of Makerfield. I have written quite a lot about Burnham recently, and the golden thread running through those pieces is that he shows no sign of having the answer to Britain’s problems. His popularity is based on his time in a mayoral role where he has very little executive responsibility at all, and none for the really controversial issues that divide British politics; he u-turns so often because he thinks much harder about being liked than about policy.

If Burnham becomes prime minister, as now seems likely, he will inherit the same trifecta of angry voters, childish backbenchers, and radioactive public accounts which has destroyed Sir Keir Starmer’s government. His personal ratings would be strategically significant if they allowed him either to sell voters on endlessly increasing taxes or his backbenchers on cutting spending, but neither seems likely. There does not in fact seem to be any reason not to expect Burnham to get very unpopular quite quickly.

Which leads to the question of whether or not he might call an early election, and this is a fun topic because it’s an excuse to use the word zugzwang. This refers to a situation, usually in chess, where every move a player can make worsens their position in some way.

The problem for Burnham is that as I’ve noted on previous occasions, Westminster is a bit like professional wrestling: it operates as much, if not more, on narrative than on analytical logic. Starmer’s enormous majority in 2024 was built on an extraordinarily efficient distribution of the Labour vote (in terms of seat majorities, this is the most marginal Parliament since 1945). 

As such, it would be extremely difficult for Burnham to repeat that performance with even a good election result, and there would be every likelihood of his falling well short of it. In that event, he would be the next Theresa May, the man who threw away an historic majority on a vanity-fuelled error of judgement. But if he doesn’t call one then he will be damned, once his popularity decays as it almost certainly will, as Bottler Burnham, the man too chicken to capitalise on his honeymoon, the next Gordon Brown.

One might argue in principle that the real utility of an election would be winning a mandate for Burnhamism. But we don’t know what Burnhamism is. If it means higher taxes, it would be an extraordinarily unpromising basis for a general election campaign, however honest; the 2017 election continues to cast a long shadow over the idea that even very popular politicians can ask the voters to pay for things.

I suppose there is a universe out there somewhere where Burnham uses the election to do what Starmer and Rachel Reeves refused to do ahead of 2024, which is prepare their MPs psychologically for painful decisions and get them to dip their hands in the blood on painful but necessary cuts and reforms. But even if he were the man to try it, it’s far from clear Labour backbenchers are minded to be led on such matters — especially if Burnham pitched left during a leadership contest.