John Harris writes:

The day before the voters of Makerfield chose their new MP, I stood with my camera-wielding colleague John Domokos on the main road through the post-industrial town of Hindley. Every two or three minutes, a van or small truck drew level with us, and there it was again: a honked horn, and a full-throated shout of “Reform!”

But on our side of the street was an augury of the news to come: the house of a man called Les, who had views most Guardian readers would find deeply problematic, and no less than seven placards adorned with the logo of Rupert Lowe MP’s new mega-right outfit, Restore Britain. “Farage has lost it,” Les told us. In at least one sense, the result – Labour’s Andy Burnham triumphing with 55% of the vote, Reform on 35%, and Restore managing 7% – proved he was spot on.

So have we passed “peak Farage”, yet again? The first mention of the term may well have come back in 2014, when the UK Independence party won the most votes at that year’s elections to the European parliament – remember those? – and some deluded members of the political establishment wondered if it was all downhill from there. More recently, Reform UK’s average poll rating has fallen by around five percentage points from its late-2025 high and prompted the return of the same wishful phrase, amid suggestions that, this time, something is definitely up. Take your pick: the decisive arrival of Lowe’s proudly obnoxious party, more violence on the UK’s streets, or simple Farage fatigue: as a matter of political gravity, you cannot style yourself as the insurgent outsider for ever.

And now there is Burnham’s big win, and a vote tally that put him 6,100 votes ahead of Reform and Restore combined. On the face of it, Farage’s party was in with what its deputy leader this week called a “cracking chance”: Makerfield is reckoned to be 97% white British and replete with the kind of grievances that Reform feasts on. Back in May, with the usual caveats about low turnout, when eight council wards in the constituency voted in the local elections, the party managed a vote-share of 50.4%, with Labour trailing miserably on 22.7%. Without doubt, the Labour win was both a feat of tireless mass campaigning and a testament to Burnham’s extremely rare standing as a politician whom – and I choose my words carefully here – a lot of people quite like. For Nigel Farage and his people, by contrast, the result ought to be the cause of real worry: it is, after all, his party’s third byelection anticlimax in less than a year. Reform is visibly losing momentum – in the course of this contest, it looked disoriented and incompetent. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports:

Andy Burnham’s return to parliament has made the Greater Manchester mayor the frontrunner to succeed Keir Starmer as prime minister, and with him comes “Manchesterism”, his vision for Britain.

Burnham won a by-election in the northern English constituency of Makerfield after nearly a decade outside Westminster as mayor of Greater Manchester, one of Britain’s biggest cities.

The 56-year-old wants to ​draw on lessons from Manchester’s rapid economic rise to rewire Britain’s economy, dogged by stop-start growth and strained public finances.

Here’s what we know about his economic model, which ‌he describes as “business-friendly socialism”, and his wider plans.

DEVOLUTION

Burnham’s vision is clearest on devolution: accelerating the shift of power away from London, which has increasingly dominated Britain’s economy in recent decades.

While some power has been decentralised over the last 30 years – to parliaments for Scotland and Wales and elected city-region mayors among others – progress on shifting economic levers such as control over infrastructure spending or taxation has been limited.

That leaves Britain as one of the most financially centralised countries ​in the developed world, according to OECD data. Economists say this has widened inequality between London and elsewhere.

Burnham has vowed to reshape Britain’s financial architecture by giving communities direct control ​over the things that shape daily life: housing, utilities, transport and education.

He cites Manchester’s integrated Bee Network – a system that has drawn people back ⁠into public transport – as Manchesterism in action. [Continue reading…]