Andy Burnham has secured a historic victory in the Makerfield by-election, paving the way for him to return to Westminster and challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership.
Labour’s newest MP secured more than half of the vote and almost 10,000 more votes than Reform UK candidate Robert Kenyon.
The seismic result comes just a month after locals pivoted to Nigel Farage’s party at the local elections, which saw it take almost every seat in the area.
It was a period of fierce campaigning following the resignation of Labour MP Josh Simons, who stood aside to allow Mr Burnham to stand as the party’s candidate in the area.
The now-former Mayor of Manchester achieved a much larger win over Reform than Mr Simons did in 2024, taking a 20-point lead. Labour recorded its two lowest ever vote shares between this election and 2019, both at around 45 per cent.
The ‘Burnham effect’ has seen this boosted to 55 per cent.
Reform UK also boosted its vote share, rising from 32 per cent in 2024 – also with Mr Kenyon as candidate – to 35 per cent in 2026.
The newly-formed Restore Britain are understood to have eaten into a large part of Reform’s support base, taking around 7 per cent of the vote share with candidate Rebecca Shepherd.
Officially launched by former Reform MP, Rupert Lowe, in February, the right party recorded its best ever national election result from the contest, perhaps setting the stage for future competition for voters between the two parties.
While the result will come as a blow to Reform, which would have been hoping to see a result similar to Sarah Pochin’s election in Runcorn & Helsby last year, the Makerfield result marked the second-highest ever vote share for the party at any by-election.
In overall votes, this translates to 24,937 for Labour, 15,696 for Reform and 3,111 for Restore. No other party secured more than 1,000.
While this result bucks a recent trend for Labour, it is by no means a return to the comfortable wins seen in previous years.
In 2017, the party recorded 28 point lead over the Conservatives – eight points higher than Mr Burnham’s victory. In 1997, 2001 and 2005, Labour’s lead remained above 50 points, hitting a high of 58 at its landslide 97’ victory.
And it is the Conservative Party that arguably suffered one of the hardest blows from the 2026 Makerfield result, recording not just a 9 point loss at 2 per cent, but the second lowest by-election vote share in its history.
It comes above only February’s result in Gorton and Denton for the party, where it took away 1.9 per cent.
Attracting less than five per cent of the vote at a parliamentary election or by-election means that the candidate or party’s £500 is forfeit and donated to the Treasury.
The Liberal Democrats similarly will likely be unhappy with their performance, taking 0.4 per cent – the lowest by-election vote share in its history.
It is harder to account for the Greens which, while not seeing similar success to the victory in Gorton and Denton at 0.7 per cent of the vote, are understood not to have run a full-scale campaign in the area.
The collapsed vote share of these two parties also likely contributed greatly to Mr Burnham’s success, with their combined 10 point loss matching Labour’s gain almost exactly.
As is usual at high-profile by-elections, many new candidates entered the race in Makerfield for its 2026 election. Nine new contenders made it the largest in the constituency’s history, with most not recording over one per cent of the vote.
Amongst those losing their deposit was Count Binface, who came fifth with 0.2 per cent of the vote, and the Monster Raving Loony, coming fourth with 0.1 per cent.
Leading polling expert, Professor John Curtice, said the Makerfield election represents a “remarkable personal success” for Mr Burnham, adding that the result “will reverberate around Westminster for a long time.”
“[Mr Burnham] managed to persuade many of those who voted for the party in 2024 to return to the fold,” he wrote for the BBC.
“Polls published last weekend suggest that four in five of those who backed Labour two years ago voted yesterday voted for Burnham.”
His victory comes despite declining popularity for Labour in the national polls, currently tied with the Conservatives at 19 per cent while Reform enjoys a 5 point lead at 24 per cent.
Mr Burnham has made clear his intention to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for leadership of the Labour party on his return to Westminister – it’s likely that his ability to bring wavering Labour voters back on side in Makerfield could now bring more political allies to his side.
