Burnham, Binface and the sexist plumber: A guide to the Makerfield by-election candidates

The British by-election: an archaic tradition as beloved as cheese-rolling, bog-snorkelling and scapegoating minorities for long-term strategic failures.

Typically, an MP resigns in disgrace, or thoughtlessly dies early in a floundering government’s term, and thereby opens the door to a four-week media circus which centres on candidates who squabble about small boats in landlocked constituencies, single-issue tickets who want to repeal decimalisation, and self-identified ‘characters’ pursuing the uniquely British thrill of hearing their name read out in a provincial leisure centre, followed by a single-digit number.

In the Lancastrian town of Makerfield, Josh Simons MP has stepped aside to facilitate the latest stage of Andy Burnham’s journey from Westminster politician to anti-Westminster politician to Westminster politician again. Will he succeed?

Here, we assess the candidacies of all 14 Makerfield runners before the town goes to the polls on June 18.

AUSTIN, Jake – Liberal Democrats

The Lib Dems’ long-term strategy of waiting for the electorate to become disillusioned with absolutely everyone else continues apace. Winning here (at 1000/1).

BINFACE, Count – Count Binface Party

Say what you like about the Count, this professional by-electioneer knows how to recycle a bin joke.

BURNHAM, Andy – Labour and Co-operative Party

Few politicians have worked harder than Andy Burnham to convince voters they are not looking at a politician. With his short vowels, ill-fitting running shorts and habit of answering questions as though he’s heard one before, Burnham is the closest thing Labour currently has to a normal human.

His reputation was forged during the pandemic, when he turned daily television appearances into a one-man siege of Whitehall. While ministers broadcast PowerPoint presentations projected onto the side of the Westminster wine fridge, Burnham stood outside Bridgewater Hall looking like a man who had just been told somebody was trying to charge him £9.50 for a pint of Boddingtons. It was the moment that transformed him from former cabinet minister into patron saint of the M62 corridor.

By taking buses into public ownership, fighting on behalf of Hillsborough victims and picking fights with successive Tory administrations, Greater Manchester’s mayor has spent the last eight years constructing a modest but demonstrable track record so rare in UK politics that it can be independently verified.

He is the favourite, but his main rival, the saddle-sniffing plumber Robert Kenyon, who is also northern and likes rugby league, has well and truly parked his storage tanks on Burnham’s lawn.

That this contest, set against a backdrop of neglected public services, seething resentment and racially motivated pogroms, might boil down to which candidate looks more likely to pour gravy on his LinkedIn profile, is both uniquely reassuring and one of the main reasons we’re in this mess.

Ultimately, the King of the North’s desire to become the UK’s next prime minister has created the curious spectacle of him fighting to prove he’s sufficiently authentic to win a constituency whose greatest political utility lies in his eventually having to ignore it.

Can Andy reignite the national economy while filling Makerfield’s potholes with his bare hands? The scene is set for the greatest Northern-Off in a Greater Manchester postcode since Vera pretended she’d cooked one of Jack Duckworth’s racing pigeons in a pie.

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CLARKE, Dan – Libertarian Party

Clarke believes the free market to be the solution to all the world’s problems. Convinced of his own freedom while reliant on a system he doesn’t appreciate, he is like a goldfish, but with a shorter memory for all the problems caused by deregulation.

DYER, John – Independent

Enjoys a 100% approval rating within his own party.

GEMMELL, Ed – Climate Party

Unlikely to overturn a national mood that, when it hears “We’re cooking ourselves inside our own atmosphere”, replies “Yes, but did you drive here?”

GOULD, Paul – Independent

Gould is objecting to a £5bn pipe being built to take CO₂ from the Peak District to the Wirral. For his next trick, when he gets four votes instead of five at the count, he will try not to look like he’s furiously trying to work out which family member failed to vote for him.

HOPE, Alan “Howling Laud” – The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

British society owes a debt it probably never fully repay to The Monster Raving Loony Party. The reflexive indignity suffered by a Tory candidate when compelled to stand next to a forty-seven-year-old man in a novelty bow tie, ginger wig and bottle top glasses, never fails to raise the spirits.

KENYON, Robert – Reform UK

The authentic voice of the working man, if the working man is a self-confessed sexist who thinks women make up false rape claims to access abortions for “vanity purposes”.

Kenyon’s propulsion into the spotlight hasn’t been without difficulty. His history of social media posting has provided internet sleuths with a rich seam of material that would automatically exclude you from every job in Britain, bar lawmaker.

Then, following a Question Time performance akin to watching someone try to win a chess match by eating the pieces, Reform’s leadership realised they needed a distinctive by-election strategy: keeping their candidate away from the press.

Hence, beyond peddling Covid conspiracy theories and dismissing climate change as a “middle-class problem” (a view which prompts unresolved questions about whether the laws of thermodynamics suspend themselves on entering council estates), little is known about Kenyon’s policy positions, including, one suspects, by the man himself.

So, while it is true that Kenyon is a plumber, supports “The Wigan Club” and once served as a military reservist, a basic question about Reform’s selection process remains: shouldn’t they have chosen someone who can string a sentence together?

That said, for much of the electorate, the edifying sight of Reform grandees Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick tying themselves in knots on television attempting to defend Kenyon’s proclivities for smelling and licking Carol Vorderman’s sphincter did restore some much-needed faith in British politics. Which is, of course, Reform’s raison d’être.

POWNALL, Robert – Independent

Has built a campaign on the premise that the ballot paper didn’t have enough Roberts on it. The technical term for trying to persuade lawmakers to support policies in the interests of Roberts is called Bobbying.

SHEPHERD, Rebecca – Restore Britain

Promising to deport millions and backed by doughy human calamity Elon Musk, Restore Britain is busily galvanising the extreme fringes of British politics. Local lass Rebecca Shepherd is the cheerful face of fascism on the ground, carefully avoiding the awkward supplementary question: “Restore Britain, to when, exactly?”