Burnham’s launchpad, Farage’s failure: All the winners and losers of Makerfield

WINNER: Andy Burnham

The King in the North reigns supreme. Any kind of Labour win in Makerfield would have been a statement – just six weeks ago every contested council seat in the constituency was taken by Reform. But the victory Burnham secured here was a landslide, with more than 50% of the vote going to the mayor of Greater Manchester.

By refusing to let him stand in Gorton and Denton, Keir Starmer delayed Burnham’s return to parliament. But a win in Makerfield – a Leave-voting, overwhelmingly white, suburban and rural seat – makes a much bigger statement than one in Gorton and Denton would have. 

Burnham has shown his soft left positioning can hold seats threatened by Reform (well, one such seat at least), and that his personal brand is stronger than Labour’s. He returns to Westminster after a decade away in a very strong position indeed.

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LOSER: Nigel Farage

There comes a point where if you want to continue to be seen as a prime minister-in-waiting, you have to actually win things – and Reform has not won a by-election since May 2025. Worse than that, Reform hasn’t polled at 30% or more since last year, having rarely polled below that threshold for much of 2025.

Farage’s personal popularity has taken a battering, he has been all but invisible for most of the last six weeks, following a scandal around a £5m personal ‘gift’ he received from Reform megadonor Christopher Harborne, and he is under investigation by parliamentary authorities.

Not only has Reform’s vote share capped out, albeit narrowly in first place in the polls, but real-world evidence shows that the anti-Reform vote is strong and motivated. Where voters can identify the right candidate to stop Reform winning, they consolidate behind them in great numbers.

Worse still, he is now facing a squeeze between a Conservative Party determined to chase his vote, and Restore UK to his right. Every previous political project led by Nigel Farage has stormed to around 25% to 30% in the polls, failed to turn that into Westminster power, and descended into infighting and chaos.

Farage needs to show that this time is different. With each day that passes, that task seems to grow more difficult. Still, he might soon get a by-election that his party should be expected to win – in his own seat of Clacton, should a parliamentary investigation go against him, triggering a recall petition. That might not be the win he’s looking for.

WINNER: Rupert Lowe

On its own, polling at 7% in a by-election is not a particularly impressive achievement, but it’s one Lowe – a one-time Reform MP who is now a bitter rival to Farage and his party – is likely to be quite happy with.

As one of only three parties not to lose their deposit in Makerfield, Lowe has proven his Restore UK movement doesn’t only exist on the internet – its openly far right agenda, which once would have been far beyond the pale of UK politics, can attract a substantial share of the vote and the public imagination.

Lowe and Farage mutually loathe one another, and Lowe knows that Farage now cannot ignore him. The share of the vote Restore UK could attract would potentially be enough to stop Reform winning in dozens of must-win areas. That will require a response. 

Beyond that, the national media is now awake to Restore – who have been huge online for nearly two years, even if they have only been registered as a party for a few months – in a way they weren’t before. Farage will now have to share the spotlight, and he will hate that. Another small win for Lowe, right there.

LOSER: Keir Starmer

Starmer has something of a gift for creating political firsts, and this must be one of them: the first time that winning a difficult by-election is bad for the leader of the governing party. Starmer and his team have spent most of the last two weeks denying what is obvious to absolutely everyone outside No 10: that his premiership would be over no matter what happened in Makerfield.

There has been a flurry of policy announcements, designed to make everyone think Starmer was making plans that would take months to implement – supposed to be a sign of his intentions. This was accompanied by endless briefings on ways Starmer would make a contest difficult for Burnham, how he would delay it, and dig in his heels.

It might take a few days, but in the wake of Burnham’s decisive victory in Makerfield, all of this will soon prove to be moot. Starmer cannot win a contest against Burnham, and neither he nor his allies would gain much from drawing it out. 

For all the talk from Burnham’s camp of trying to manage a dignified handover of power, this is likely to be over quickly. Starmer continues to insist that he will run in any leadership election, but he really has only the manner of his exit left to decide. And even that is barely in his power any more.

LOSER: Wes Streeting

The former health secretary’s prospects of actually becoming prime minister looked distant even before the Makerfield result. If he’d genuinely had enough supporters to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership, his best chance of doing so would have been before Burnham – who is vastly more popular with the party membership – returned to parliament. 

Mustering the numbers to get on the ballot once Burnham was back was always going to be a long shot. Streeting’s remaining chances relied on Burnham barely scraping a win, thanks to a right-wing vote divided between Reform and Restore. 

As it happened, Burnham tidily beat the combined vote of both parties by around 6,000 votes. The case that he must prove himself or his credentials in a drawn-out leadership challenge is simply much harder to make now. A coronation feels much likelier today than it did even 48 hours ago. 

Even Streeting’s fiercest critics acknowledge he is a clever man. He is likely to be able to see how this will go, and change his plans accordingly.

WINNERS: Carole Vorderman / women everywhere

Reform UK boldly set themselves an extra challenge in the Makerfield by-election, of trying to win the contest while alienating women, who make up around 51% of the British electorate. The party’s candidate, Robert Kenyon, had a history of ugly online comments on women and abortion that he failed to convincingly clean up at any time during the race.

One of the most prominent of these was a response he made to a sexually explicit ‘joke’ about Vorderman, for which he refused to apologise directly to the broadcaster and campaigner. 

Kenyon also left most of the women in a BBC Question Time special audience stony-faced after several of his old social posts on women or the issue of abortion were read out. Given the margin of his defeat in Makerfield – 9,000 votes fewer than Burnham – and its overwhelmingly white population, Kenyon cannot even resort to the desperate racial dog whistling that Matt Goodwin attempted after losing Gorton and Denton. Speaking of which…

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LOSER: Matt Goodwin 

Following his defeat in Gorton and Denton, blogger and would-be Reform politician Matt Goodwin was forced to return to his old gig of political punditry. Sadly for Goodwin, he doesn’t seem to be any better at that than he was as a politician.

Despite years of working as a politics academic, Goodwin’s ability to forecast election results doesn’t seem to have developed. His video – “WHY BURNHAM WILL LOSE MAKERFIELD” – now makes for fantastically entertaining viewing, but almost certainly not for the reasons Goodwin might have hoped.

WINNERS: Louise Haigh, Ed Miliband, and the soft left gang

If revenge is a dish best served cold, Louise Haigh is surely dining well today. Haigh was unceremoniously fired as transport secretary after the media got hold of a previous conviction she had declared to No 10 – a needless public humiliation after a strong early performance in the role, settling rail strikes.

Haigh has been one of Burnham’s most high-profile supporters, and was visible next to him at the count in the early hours of Friday morning. A cabinet return for her seems inevitable. Burnham also reportedly relied heavily on Ed Miliband for advice and support throughout the campaign, and Miliband is widely tipped for promotion to chancellor when Burnham enters No 10.

Wigan MP Lisa Nandy – almost universally regarded as a terrible culture secretary who has been almost invisible in the role, can nonetheless expect a promotion because politics is a ridiculous business, and she is a longstanding ally of Burnham. Shabana Mahmood, despite her unpopularity among Labour’s core supporters, expects to keep her job for similar reasons.

LOSER: Zack Polanski

The Greens can say that they didn’t seriously try to challenge in Makerfield, and this would be true – but it’s not what Polanski himself wanted. The Green Party leader promised the party would go all-out to try to win the seat, only for it to lose its first candidate amid an antisemitism scandal, and for calmer heads to prevail and call off plans to actually campaign.

A resurgent Andy Burnham, for now much more popular than Starmer, and visibly positioned to Starmer’s left, poses a whole array of headaches for Polanski and his strategy for the Greens, at least in the short term – over time, the realities of governing will likely take its toll on Burnham.

Polanski, though, has his eyes on his party winning the Greater Manchester mayoralty, and is trying to position the contest as a straight fight between Reform and the Greens. This is not likely to wash with anyone: the man about to lead Labour is the last incumbent, Greater Manchester is not inner Manchester, and the alternative vote system means it will be harder to mobilise a “stop Reform” vote behind a particular candidate.

Polanski is still well-positioned to lead the Greens to greater electoral success than any of his predecessors –cynics would note that’s a fairly low bar – but he may be finding that the honeymoon phase is nearing its end.

WINNER? LOSER? WHO KNOWS?: Kemi Badenoch

If anyone plays politics on easy mode, it’s Conservative leader Badenoch. In 2024, her party had its worst general election results since 1935, and yet ever since she won the leadership, their vote share has only fallen further still. They have managed no breakthrough in the polls against a historically unpopular government, and their local election results were disastrous.

Makerfield continued that long-standing trend. They were second in the red wall seat in 2019, third behind Reform in 2024, and in this by-election they lost their deposit. On the party’s current performance, they are set for electoral oblivion in the next general election, and if there is a plan to reverse that, no-one in the party can articulate it.

However, Badenoch is generally rapturously received by the media and the Westminster bubble, who insist that her performance is actually brilliant and she’s turning the party around. 

For months, they’ve had nothing except vibes to back up that thesis – until Thursday night. The Conservatives have finally won a by-election, albeit against the SNP rather than Labour. By turning the contest into a referendum on North Sea oil, the Tories convincingly won Aberdeen South, giving Badenoch a moment of triumph.

Makerfield? Never heard of her.