Hannah Al-Othman is a Guardian North of England correspondent. Lisa Nandy has said the Restore Britain vote “doesn’t seem to be quite at the level that the polls suggested”. ) She said: I think there’s a misunderstanding about the Restore vote here.
I’ve heard a lot of talk about how this is about Rupert Lowe and his profile, I’ve heard talk about how this is about them splitting the vote with Reform. Actually, they’ve always had a vote here, it’s not significant, it’s usually around six or seven percent of the vote, that if there’s an openly racist party on the ballot, will come out and vote for it. So the idea that somehow if Andy wins here tonight, it will be because Restore and Reform have split the vote, frankly, I can say it’s for the birds.
Related ↗Scottish Conservatives win Aberdeen South, ousting SNPThat group just stays at home if they don’t have an openly racist party to vote for. And so, it really is about whether the most popular Labour politician in the country can pull off a victory in one of the toughest seats, where we just lost in large numbers seven weeks ago to Reform. If Burnham does win, as expected, she said: I hope that we can find a way to pull together and turn our gaze out to the country.
I think it would be a tragedy if we were to descend into infighting and turn the conversation to ourselves. The reason that Andy has received so much warmth for the campaign that he’s run here is because it has been relentlessly positive, relentlessly hopeful. Andy Burnham has just arrived at the Makerfield count, Josh Halliday reports.
Read next ↗Polls close in Makerfield byelection as Andy Burnham eyes No 10He got a huge round of applause from supporters. Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor. Stop the press.
Rupert Lowe just gave an interview to the Guardian - after calling me “a reptile”. The Restore Britain leader said its vote was “somewhere in the region” of 10% which would be an “unbelievable” result for a party only four months old. Lowe said it looked like Burnham’s vote had held up “much better than I thought it would”.
Earlier, a senior Labour source said Restore Britain activists had been involved in several incidents involving harassment during the campaign. One of these incidents, witnessed by a Labour party member of staff, involved a taxi driver following a dispute with Restore Britain activists and local children, who then allegedly smashed the taxi driver’s windscreen. The incident is said to have taken place near Labour’s campaign HQ in Stubshaw Cross on Wednesday night, the eve of the byelection.
It has been reported to Greater Manchester Police, the Labour source said. A separate incident apparently involved a taxi driver in the constituency being repeatedly asked where he was from by a Restore Britain activist. When told he was from Pakistan, the activist allegedly said he was campaigning to deport people like that taxi driver.
Asked about these alleged incidents, Lowe said he had no knowledge of them but that he was sure “the police will deal with it appropriately”. “Today all I’ve seen is friendly banter amongst everybody,” he added. Labour sources are saying that they expect to win Makerfield with 54% of the vote, Hannah Al-Othman reports.
That would be a nine-point increase on their share of the vote at the general election – a big, decisive win. The SNP have held Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. Reform came second and Labour, who were in second place, less than 1,000 votes behind the SNP in 2024, came fourth.
Here are the results in full from the Press Association. 99%) Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary who has been one of the key figures running Andy Burnham’s byelection campaign in Makerfield, has told the BBC that, if Burnham wins (and she is clearly confident that he has won), Keir Starmer should stand aside. She said that in those circumstances Starmer should “reflect on the results”, and on how much better they were with Burnham as a candidate than they were for Labour in the local elections, and then “do what’s best for the party”.
Asked what she meant by this, Haigh said: I hope that he would consider an orderly and managed transition. We have said that [Labour] is in an existential crisis and things cannot continue. And it was quite clear after the local elections, unfortunately, that he considered that business as usual would suffice.
Andy has potentially shown tonight that what a change the Labour party can bring … Without that optimism and without that on the ballot paper, then we will see a Reform prime minister at the next general election. Asked how quickly she wanted the PM to depart, Haigh said that was up to the prime minister. Burnham would not be challenging in the immediate aftermath of the byelection, she said.
He would want to speak to the PM “in the coming days”, she said. Asked if she was talking about weeks or months, Haigh repeated the point about how this was in the PM’s hands. She also said that Wes Streeting was still threatening to trigger a leadership contest.
Asked whether there should be a contest, she said she understood the arguments in favour of one. But she went on: If an agreement can be made between potential candidates, then that’s all for the better. I think dragging any process out for any length of time would be difficult for the Labour party, but more crucially for the government.
I think if that can be avoided and all parties can come to an agreement, that’s all for the best. But of course, if we’re into a contest and people decide to trigger it, then that’s that’s where we are. Asked if Burnham could be the PM within weeks, Haigh said she did not want to predetermine the outcome of any discussions.
She said it was for the PM to decide. But she hoped he would reflect on what was best for the party and the country. Burnham’s allies have been saying this sort of thing in private for some time.
But it is significant that someone so close to Burnham is now publicly saying Starmer should agree to an “orderly transition”. The Conservatives have won a huge victory in Aberdeen South. 93%) The turnout figure given earlier for the Aberdeen South byelection was in fact the figure for the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry byelection.
) I’m sorry for the error. The Scottish National party (SNP) has conceded defeat in the formerly safe seat of Aberdeen South in a shock loss to the Scottish Conservatives, Severin Carrell reports. Sarah Pochin, the Reform UK MP, told GB News a bit earlier that her party would be “very happy” to come a strong second in Makerfield.
That is not technically a concession. But it is not what you say if you think you have a chance of winning. Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor.
A Reform UK source just told me they currently expect to lose to Burnham by around 2,500 votes. ” The spokesperson denied reports that Nigel Farage had left Makerfield, saying he had just been on the phone to him and he was still in the constituency. Separately, a senior Labour source said it did not look like Restore Britain had been able to turnout its vote to the level that some had predicted.
They said Rupert Lowe’s hardline anti-immigration party could “possibly” achieve 7% of the vote but it was very unlikely to be higher than that. Lowe, who is giving a series of media interviews, is believed to be claiming to have won 10% of the vote. The SNP have conceded defeat in Aberdeen South with a senior source saying it is the “Tories’ night”, but pledging to “win it back in 2029”, the Press Association reports.
And here is the turnout from the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry byelection. 9% at the 2024 general election. UPDATE: This has been corrected because the initial figure wrongly said these were the figures for the Aberdeen South byelection.
” Cook says: There are lots of glum Scottish National Party faces at the Aberdeen South count and plenty of Conservative smiles. The SNP candidate, Richard Thomson, looks particularly disconsolate. If victory for the Conservative candidate, Douglas Lumsden, is confirmed, it will be a boost for the party’s UK leader, Kemi Badenoch who visited Aberdeen South three times, campaigning hard on a promise to support the flagging oil and gas industry, which is based here.
We have the turnout figure for Makerfield now. 5% at the general election. There were 45,510 votes cast.
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary and MP for Wigan, the constituency next door to Makerfield, has told Sky News that Labour is “cautiously optimistic” about winning the byelection. She said: We’re cautiously optimistic. We always knew this would be a hard fight, but we are definitely seeing that Andy Burnham is able to pull some of our voters back from Reform in a way that just seven weeks ago at the local elections we would not thought was possible.
We lost every ward in Makerfield to Reform at the local elections just seven short weeks ago and not be a small amount – by thousands of votes … Whatever the result here tonight, the lesson is that we can actually change people’s minds, we can bring people back to us, we can defeat some of the division and anger that has been on display in this constituency in recent weeks. Sometimes you can read too much into pictures, but the smile on Nandy’s face suggests “cautiously optimistic” might be a bit of an understatement. Neither Labour or Reform camps were giving much away as counting got underway at the Edge convention centre in Wigan.
A Reform spokesperson said it’s close while a senior Burnham aide said it was too early to tell, Josh Halliday and Hannah Al-Othman report. Away from the official lines, Burnham supporters had been increasingly confident of victory and one of his team has just told reporters they were “really really pleased” with the campaign. The Burnham aide said his team had knocked every single door in constituency in a week and a half and gone to every one seven times across the five week contest.
He said Burnham appeared to have a “significant lead” among women, in part no doubt due to the offensive remarks about women posted by Reform UK candidate Rob Kenyon in recent years. And he said it was not clear yet how well Restore Britain would fare. Polls predicted the hardline rightwing party would win about 7% of the vote, which could be enough to split the rightwing vote in favour of Burnham.
The Makerfield turnout is reportedly very high. Sky News has said it could be 60%, and the BBC has said it could be between 60% and 65%. 5%.
Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s lead elections expert, said that the last time byelection turnout was higher than at the proceeding general election was at the Glasgow Hillhead byelection in 1982. But he also said that if the turnout ended up 11 percentage points higher than at the general election, this would be the first time that had happened since the Torrington byelection in 1958. That was a win for the Liberal candidate, Mark Bonham Carter, in a seat that had previously been held by a National Liberal/Conservative.
The Scottish Conservatives are optimistic about their chances of winning Aberdeen South, the BBC is reporting. Tom Gordon from the Scottish Daily Mail is hearing the same thing. Paul Hutcheon from the Daily Record says the SNP, who are defending the seat, are “anxious”.
Severin Carrell described the contest in Aberdeen South in this article earlier this week. Kemi Badenoch has said, if her party wins this byelection, it will be a vote for more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea. On the BBC’s election programme, Jess Phillips, the former safeguarding minister, said her ideal outcome from Makerfield would be for Andy Burnham to win and for Keir Starmer to be given the chance to make a “dignified” exit.
She said she did not want to see “chaos”, with lots of ministers resigning. Phillips resigned as a minister last month saying she wanted Starmer to quit. Sarah Pochin, the Reform UK MP, is at the Makerfield count on behalf of her party tonight and she has had to take questions about this video she posted on social media earlier.
In it she says: England won the football last night. And thank god they did because, on the occasions that England lose their football matches, the incidents of domestic violence go through the roof. So, boys.
Keep winning. Asked about this on Sky News, Pochin stressed her record as a magistrate dealing with domestic violence and defended the point she was making – that this is a link between teams losing, and increased incidents of domestic violence. But she did not seem to grasp that people are criticising her for not explicitly condemning the abusers, and instead suggesting it was somehow the England football team’s responsibility to prevent women being attacked.
Thangam Debbonaire, the Labour peer, was being interviewed at the same time and she told Pochin that in her remarks she “did not put responsibility on the men who do it”. Council officials in Makerfield say they expect the result around 3am, my colleague Josh Halliday, who’s at the count, tells me. Here are some more pictures from the count venue.
David Blunkett, the former Labour cabinet minister, has suggested that Keir Starmer should stand down after the Makerfield byelection. In an interview on the BBC’s Newsnight, Blunkett suggested that Starmer standing aside would be the best option for the party regardless of whether Andy Burnham wins tonight or loses. Speaking about what should happen if Burnham were to win, Blunkett said “the obvious and most beneficial outcome” would be an agreement between Starmer and Burnham about the timetable for a transition.
He said Starmer himself had said politicians should “put the country first”, and he said this would be far preferable to ministers resigning to force Starmer out. And, if Burnham were to lose, there would have to be “a complete rethink” by Labour, he said, suggesting Starmer would also have to go. Burnham used to be Blunkett’s parliamentary private secretary and Blunkett praised him as someone who had “grown in stature” over the past 20 years.
The Makerfield byelection has regularly been described as potentially the most consequential byelection in British history. People have written that on the assumption that Andy Burnham will win, and that he will replace Keir Starmer as PM. While those both seem to be reasonable assumptions, in a country with a history of parliamentary government as long as Britain’s a description of any event that involves saying it is the most consequential ever is probably not strictly accurate.
Here are just a handful examples of other byelections that have been similar to this one in some respects, or highly influential. Byelections involving potential party leaders In Makerfield Burnham supporters think they are voting for the next Labour leader, and Keir Starmer has had to support the Labour candidate while at the same time fearing him as a rival. Neil Kinnock was in a similar position at the 1984 Chesterfield byelection, which was won by Tony Benn, hero of the Labour left.
Benn might have beaten Kinnock in the Labour leadership election a year earlier had he not lost his seat in the general election. He was still seen as a rival in 1984 but the byelection win did not propel him to the leadership and, when there was a contest in 1988, Kinnock beat him easily. William Hague, the then Tory leader, must have had similar emotions when Michael Portillo contested the 1999 Kensington and Chelsea byelection.
Portillo too had missed a leadership election he might have won because he had been out of parliament in a general election. A few months later Hague promoted Portillo to shadow chancellor and deputy leader in the hope of neutralising a rival, but Portillo’s influence had peaked and in a subsequent contest he was beaten by Iain Duncan Smith. Byelections that choose prime ministers Makerfield might be electing not just a party leader, but a future prime minister.
This is not unprecedented because at the 1963 Kinross and Perthshire byelection voters elected an actual prime minister, Alec Douglas-Home. He had been chosen by the Tories as PM three weeks earlier, but at that point he was in the Lords. Taking advantage of legislation passed to help Tony Benn give up his peerage, he quit the Lords and entered the Commons after a Scottish Tory MP (George Younger – the Josh Simons of his day) sacrificed his seat for him .
There are other byelections that have been won by people who have gone on to serve as PM (like Robert Peel and Stanley Baldwin), but in British Byelections 1769-2025, a brilliant selection of essays on this topic edited by Iain Dale, Alex Puffette argues that it was losing the 1899 Oldham byelection that was really important for Winston Churchill because it meant he was able to make his name as a star war correspondent in the Boer war which did more to benefit his career in the long run. Byelections that bring down governments Makerfield may lead to the replacement of Keir Starmer at PM. But it won’t bring down the government, unlike the 1922 Newport byelection that led to Conservative MPs deciding to pull the plug on the Lloyd George-led coalition.
Austen Chamberlain, the Tory leader at the time, expected Labour to win, but the seat was won by an anti-coalition Unionist (Tory), and the party decided voters were fed up of the pact with the Liberals. In more recent times the 1990 Eastbourne byelection defeat helped persuade the Tories that Margaret Thatcher had to go, and the 2022 Tiverton and Honiton byelection defeat, and the Wakefield byelection defeat on the same night, helped to finish off Boris Johnson. Byelections that change policy If Makerfield leads to Starmer being replaced by Burnham, government policy may change.
But perhaps not be much. For a really consequential election, try going back almost 200 years to the 1828 County Clare byelection, which was won by the Irish Catholic Daniel O’Connell (later known as “the liberator”). As a Catholic, he was not allowed to take his seat in the Commons under the laws then in place.
But his win led to the governmment passing Catholic emancipation, opening up most public offices to Catholics at a time when all of Ireland was ruled by London, and most of its population was barred from public life. On Newsnight Nicholas Watt, the programme’s political editor, has said Reform UK are briefing that they think they will get their highest share of the vote in a byelection in Makerfield, beating the 39% that Sarah Pochin got when she won the Runcorn and Helsby byelection last year (by six votes). Runcorn and Helsby may have been a record for Reform UK.
But Ukip, which in many respects was its predecessor party, got 60% of the vote in the Clacton byelection in 2014. The second Survation poll from the Makerfield byelection had Reform UK on 39% – but Labour on 49%. ) Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate, says he is expecting a “big vote” in Makerfield.
) That’s a reasonable assumption. Two years ago, when he was the party’s general election candidate, Kenyon came second here with 32% of the vote. ) This time there have been five published byelection polls, from four polling companies, and all of them show Reform UK polling well above 32%.
But they also all show Labour winning. Here are the figures – in a chart posted by Mark Pack on his the Week in Polls Substack blog. The reason why Reform UK can do much better than two years ago, but still lose, is because there seems to have been a lot of tactical voting – especially on the Labour/progressive side.
People who may have voted Lib Dem or Green two years ago seem to have been voting Labour. For the record, here are the 2024 general election results in all three constituencies where byelections have taken place today. Makerfield Aberdeen South Arbroath and Broughty Ferry Andy Burnham has posted this message on social media.
A huge thanks to the people of the Makerfield constituency for your patience and good humour over the last five weeks. My thanks too to the many volunteers who came up to support my campaign. We ran a very positive one and can be proud of it!
Would Burnham be saying thank you to the constituency if he thought he had lost? And here is the message from Burnham’s main rival, Robert Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate. This photo was taken on the day I decided to stand in Makerfield.
I am confident of a big vote for Reform tonight. Thank you to everyone who placed their faith in me. From changing boilers to changing politics, this is something I will never forget!
Labour has just released this statement from Lucy Powell, the party’s deputy leader (and a friend and supporter of Andy Burnham’s), about the campaign. She said: Our great candidate, Andy Burnham, and our fantastic Labour team have run a positive campaign focused on the people of the Makerfield constituency. We knew this would be a tough fight, given Reform did so well here just a few weeks ago, but the Labour movement came together to show we are well up for that fight.
While it will be some hours before we know the result, I want to say a huge thank you to the hundreds and hundreds of activists and volunteers who have helped with this campaign. Together, we’ve spoken to a record number of residents and shared our Labour message of hope and optimism. Labour will continue working every day for the people of this country, putting our values into action and delivering the fairer future communities want to see.
It is hard to read much into this, but if the party was expecting to lose, there would be rather more about the “tough fight” in the statement. The line about speaking to a “record number of residents” is no idle boast. Earlier my colleague Jessica Elgot posted these about the campaign effort today.
Never seen anything like this as a Labour ground operation. 120 contacts a minute, three campaign centres, 3000 activists. ” Three economic heavyweights have been brought in to advise Andy Burnham as he attempts to reassure the markets before his possible return to parliament on Friday and challenge to Keir Starmer, Rowena Mason reports.
Burnham is understood to be getting advice from Andy Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist, as well as Richard Hughes, a former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Jim O’Neill, a crossbench peer and former Treasury minister who worked on George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse. Good evening, and welcome to the Guardian’s Makerfield byelection live blog. The polls have just closed and we may have to wait until around dawn (quite early in the summer, of course) until we get a result.
But, as the votes are counted, it should become clear well before then who is going to win. Andy Burnham, the Labour former cabinet minister, current mayor of Greater Manchester, and potential future prime minister, is widely expected to be the new MP, but at this point no one knows for sure. Here is our latest story about what has been happening today, and what may unfold in the hours to come.
This byelection has been widely described as the most consequential byelection in British history. That’s probably an over-statement, but more on that later. Nevertheless, it is definitely one for the history books, because it is expected to lead to the replacement of Keir Starmer as PM.
During the night we will get the result; ultimately democratic politics is all about numbers, and these numbers really will matter. In his Spectator cover story, Tim Shipman has a good explanation as to why. At the time of going to print, Op Makerfield is not a totally done deal.
’ But those advising the Manchester mayor think the scale of any win will determine the speed of events. ‘If he wins by low single digits, Keir Starmer digs in and says: “You can’t come for me until after the Manchester mayoral election on 30 July,” and it’s bloody trench warfare,’ one says. ‘If it’s a comfortable, single-digits win, the soft left will try to take power through a conversation, but they will probably discover that power has to be taken by force.
If Andy gets more than Reform plus Restore combined, start the clock. ’ Voting figures are very specific but, as for what happens next, there is a lot less clarity. Overnight, and during Friday, we might get a slightly clearer idea, but it is quite possible that by this time tomorrow there will still be considerable uncertainty as to how a Burnham/Starmer power struggle may unfold.
Pippa Crerar had a superb account of the state of play in her Guardian splash this morning. Of course, it is possible Reform UK could win. That would also lead to immense turmoil for Labour – with less prospect of a positive resolution for the party.
Although we will be focusing on Makerfield, there are two other byelections tonight, in Aberdeen South, and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. We will be covering those too. 10pm the BBC will be launching its byelection programme, hosted by Laura Kuenssberg.
30am for Aberdeen South, around 3am to 4am for Makerfield and around the same for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry. But these estimates are never very reliable. We hope to turn comments on in the morning.
Overnight, if you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too.
I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
