Why Andy Burnham will fail his ‘Makerfield test’

Which Andy Burnham walks into Westminster? The Blairite centrist? The European Remainer? The man cheered on by uber-liberal luvvies like Hugh Grant and Carol Vorderman? The Guardian’s coverage of the Makerfield by-election, and of its new great white liberal hope, has been saccharine sweet. It is probably just as well the people of Makerfield do not read it – I am not sure what they would make of the praise.

Will Burnham do what so many Labour MPs have done before: use working-class votes to get to Westminster and never look back? Or will he be true to his acceptance speech in the early hours of 20 June, when he promised Makerfield would not be a ‘stepping stone’ but a ‘touchstone’? His ‘Makerfield test’, he said, would mean fairness for the places Westminster has neglected.

During the by-election, Burnham carefully courted Makerfield – a large, predominantly white, working-class area on the edge of Greater Manchester. Its people work in supermarkets, care homes and warehouses. This is the Red Wall: old Labour country, hollowed out by the closure of coal mines, engineering works and textile factories. Makerfield represents the English working class left out of the national conversation about who and what this country is for.

I know places like Makerfield because I know Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, where I was born and raised. It has the same story: deindustrialised, struggling to get by, and overwhelmingly Leave-voting in 2016. Ashfield voted Labour because it was working class, until people realised Labour was no longer for them. Like so many Red Wall constituencies, they learned that the party used their votes to send its favourites to Westminster, only to ignore them as soon as they took their seats in parliament.

Ashfield stopped voting Labour in 2019, backing local man Lee Anderson, who moved from Labour to the Tories and then to Reform UK in 2024. It now has a Reform MP and Reform councillors, alongside some independents. The message is clear: Ashfield has left Labour behind. Just over a month ago, when Reform replaced every Labour member on the Wigan council, Makerfield looked to be heading the same way.

So what does the ‘Makerfield test’ actually mean inside a Labour Party now dominated by liberal, middle-class, wealthy voters, who would not give the people of Makerfield the steam off their piss? Can it survive when the interests of the deindustrialised Red Wall working class are so often the opposite of Labour’s new electoral base?

The British Electoral study says Labour’s voter core has shifted towards higher-income, middle-class and highly educated voters. Its study, analysed by The Economist, showed a profound political realignment: the old pattern of the working-class voting Labour and the middle-class voting Conservative has been turned on its head. Labour’s support has collapsed among voters whose household income is under £30,000.

This is not just about income or education. It is about priorities. If Burnham becomes prime minister – and it is all but certain he will – whose priorities will the Makerfield test serve?

On the cost of living, Burnham has room to manoeuvre. Most people agree housing is too expensive and food inflation needs tackling. But energy is different. Apply the Makerfield test to Ed Miliband’s Net Zero zealotry and the commonsense outlook of the deindustrialised working class would tell him that the promise of well-paid ‘green jobs’ is a fantasy. As it turns out, there are no ‘green jobs’ for the people who kept Britain’s lights on for generations – only crippling energy prices and creeping poverty.

Then there is the small-boats crisis. In Red Wall communities, illegal immigration represents a deep unfairness: more than 40,000 undocumented men have arrived so far this year, a figure that will inevitably explode over the summer months, when illegal immigration is at its highest. They will live off the taxpayer, while working people struggle to get by – no amount of middle-class Labour voters shouting ‘racist’ changes that. To these communities, it isn’t only unfair – it represents the visible loss of control, and the blatant disregard of the one wish they have expressed in election after election.

Burnham claims to have a story about Britain – who we are and who we can be. But if that story asks the Red Wall working class to swallow the priorities of the urban, city-dwelling middle class, then he isn’t selling a story, just another stitch-up.

The Makerfield test will not be passed by slogans, selfies and least of all applause from the Guardian. It will be passed only if Andy Burnham is prepared to choose the people who sent him to Westminster over the people waiting there to claim him.

Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.