Andy Burnham Wins Makerfield In ‘Electoral Miracle’ Setting Up Fight For No 10

[00:00:00]Andy Bernham there saying that uh everyone knows that politics isn't working and that tonight could just be the turning point to bring back hope. He says I say to my own party this is a final chance to change uh but uh uh not really uh going beyond that beyond saying that it there needed to be change. uh and uh he we think is not going to say a great deal more of substance over the weekend as he uh seeks to speak to uh other senior Labor colleagues. Just to give you a recap of the result. Um first of all uh the only parties that uh maintain their deposit with more than 5% uh of the votes cast out of the 14 candidates are indeed the Labor uh party or the Labor and Cooperative Party. It's the first time uh potentially Britain has ever had a prime minister from the Labor and Cooperative Party, but only Labor and Reform UK uh retained uh their deposits. Just to give you uh those headline figures there, uh out of uh 77,462 votes cast, uh Andy Bernham won with 24,927.

[00:01:21]Uh Reform in second place uh with 15,696.

[00:01:28]uh Restore UK uh actually uh seemed to have come third with 3,11.

[00:01:37]Let's go back now uh to Daryl Morris in Makerfield.

[00:01:44]>> He may have just >> Daryl, are you there?

[00:01:48]>> No. [laughter] No, he he's not there.

[00:01:52]Okay. Um interesting. But my by my account, uh Luke Trill, uh Andy Bum didn't get what people were saying more than 50% of the vote.

[00:02:03]>> No, he did get more than 50% of the vote. He got um yeah, 55 uh% of the vote, almost 20 points higher uh than uh Reform UK. I mean, I genuinely think what we saw there was pretty much nothing short of an electoral miracle in an area where reform uh got over 50% of the vote in uh those local elections is a really good result for Labor and a really disappointing result for Reform UK barely increasing their vote share from the general election and Restore UK that party to their right taking seven uh% of the vote. So very like top end of Labour's expectations I think and a bad night for reform.

[00:02:43]>> So to give us the percentages again Andy Burnham >> uh 54.8% uh of the vote uh there uh and reform UK 345% of the vote. So uh 20 point lead for uh Labor over reform. So even on the close of poll predictions, Labor exceeding expectations and uh reform UK not reaching their target.

[00:03:12]>> Indeed. And look those um we were talking just before 3:00 about that expectation management and you know uh sources in Mefield thinking it would be around the 54%. In fact, Conor Naymith, the Labour MP we spoke to um about those numbers uh when we were speaking about them when they were simply speculative said um it would be nothing short of momentous if those numbers came true.

[00:03:35]Well, they have come true. And what's remarkable about it is if you add up uh the reform vote and the restore vote together, it doesn't get close to what Andy Bernham got. You know, so essentially uh Andy Bernham, this proof of concept, which is what a lot of Labour MPs have been talking about. Can Andy Burnham prove himself as a politician who can take on restore, take on reform in his own backyard and win the prevailing political winds are going in the entire opposite direction. Yes, Andy Bernham can do that. And that is the proof of concept. Absolutely proven.

[00:04:10]Um and u just just to clarify uh Rogers pointed out 45,000 votes cast in an electorate to 77,000 which gives you a turnout of uh 58. Uh that is um that is uh obviously uh over 50%. So apologies for my my poor mathematics on this this occasion.

[00:04:34]>> There's a lot happening.

[00:04:35]>> Yeah. Well, let's go back to the count now and we can uh speak uh to Daryl Morris, our man on the ground. I mean, Darren, it little bit messy that declaration, wasn't it? What what happened at the end?

[00:04:49]>> Yeah, really interesting that, isn't it?

[00:04:50]So, the the returning officer seemed to suggest that an agreement had been made before the reading of that result that the winning candidate there would be one speech and they found the winning candidate. I've been to some of these declarations where it goes on and on and on because every candidate wants to make a speech and that goes on for 15 minutes. But this one clearly did agree to do that and then what appeared to happen was one of the candidates um I wasn't sure I'm not sure who it was.

[00:05:12]Obviously in a bi-election like this there is traditionally a long list of independents all with various different causes. Uh one of them appeared to be a sort of wildlife cause. Uh he took to the to the microphone as well. So un uninvited really unprompted those two people went up to the microphone um and sort of made their protest. There were some jeers and some booze. Andy Bernham made his way kind of off stage. I actually thought for a moment if we weren't going to hear from him at all.

[00:05:35]Um that on reflection seemed very unlikely. He would no doubt have wanted to take the opportunity and is somewhat obliged to take the opportunity after um after winning a bi-election like this.

[00:05:44]But then he did come back on and he delivered um that speech. So after a little bit of kathuffle uh he thanked as you would imagine the people of Makerfield and then talked a lot about change and hope. It was the sort of um it was actually the sort of speech that you would imagine an incumbent party, a protest party, the party, sorry, not not an incumbent party, the the party not of government would make if their candidate had won this bi-election tonight.

[00:06:10]Listening to it, it was sort of hard.

[00:06:11]You have to sort of remind yourself that he was the Labour Party candidate and that the Labour Party were the party of government. Um it was it was so full of change and hope and stuff. Um and so then off they went. I think Andy Bernham, unfortunately for us, has got out the back door. he slipped out the back door. There is going to be there is a sort of planned event later on today.

[00:06:29]Um we would normally in these circumstances of course see Karma probably the the party leader uh would arrive at that party. He would do a big victory lap and would claim the victory for his own. I think it's probably unlikely that we will see Karma in Wigan today for fairly obvious reasons. Um and then people sort of filed out then and off they went. And so you can see now around me people uh packing things away.

[00:06:49]Um this is democracy. I mean it's it's beautiful really when you think about it, isn't it? that, you know, people spend all day putting little crosses in boxes and then they post them in a little box and then those box at 10:00 get driven into this sports hall and then they unpack them and we count through them and then we have a result and then it all gets packed away again um in a neat little box. Um and it's it's quite a privilege actually to watch all that play out. Um watching that with me is Constance Camper who is the Times's uh northern correspondent.

[00:07:15]Constance, hello there.

[00:07:16]>> Hello. Um quite a big night here and it's it's when you're in the sort of bubble of it, it can it can you can sort of forget just how consequential what we've witnessed may well be.

[00:07:26]>> Absolutely. I mean, as you were saying, this is a bi-election like no other.

[00:07:32]0.1% of the population had the task of potentially selecting the next prime minister or barring him from entry. As it happens, he won decisively. people here from Labour kind of senior people were feeling very confident pretty early on in the evening as voting got underway and were were briefing very heavily in the last hour.

[00:07:51]>> They were indeed and and and Lisa Nandandy was one of those. She was doing the rounds. I spoke to her earlier and she said to me, I said, "Look, the next couple of days could be quite messy, couldn't they?" You know, like this is a victory now for the Labour Party, but it could give way to a massive civil war and it's probably likely to give way to a war of sorts. Um, and that could be really, really messy. And she said to me, um, it could, but it shouldn't be.

[00:08:12]And so, and I sort of wondered if she was speaking directly to the prime minister there, Constance, about the about what he does next.

[00:08:17]>> Well, it was interesting when we spoke to her. She said a phone call would kind of come in the early hours of this morning. I mean, potentially it's happening now. I mean, who knows? You would imagine Karma probably would have wanted to stay up to to see this result.

[00:08:29]Um but as you say, you know, I mean, Karma has been kind of trying to offer an olive branch, uh offering Andy a a senior kind of position in cabinet.

[00:08:39]Obviously, we expect that that is not part of Andy Burnham's plan. Um but what happens next and kind of how long he takes before declaring that kind of uh leadership bid or whether as you say, he waits for a sort of more orderly transition, we will have to see.

[00:08:55]>> And look, you're you're very rooted in this area. You've spent a lot of time here as the Times Northern correspondent. How's it sort of been in Wigan the last couple of weeks. How have you how have you found it? What what are your sort of takeaways?

[00:09:05]>> I mean, it's been really interesting.

[00:09:06]One of the really interesting stories of this election was kind of the split on the right on the hard right um between restore and reform and seeing this kind of online only it seemed movement kind of be birthed onto the streets and see kind of how much that would translate at the ballot box less than we had thought it's turned out. But I think that has been uh very interesting to watch. This is, you know, this is a seat where reform had been nipping at Labour's heels. They came second here at the general election. They won uh most of the seats at the local elections in this burough. Um and you know, Andy Bernham has had a decisive when when he decided to run for this seat. Labour sourced a briefing. You know, this was sort of proof of concept. If he could win here, then he was the best hope Labour would have to fend off reform at the next general election. And that kind of proof of concept, as they would see it, has has been proved.

[00:10:02]>> Were you hearing reformminded people plumping for Andy Bernham, that political journey that Andy Burden is now going to go and say, "Look, I've proven I can take people on." I think there was a sort of um lesser of two evils thing going on here where people kind of maybe didn't like Labor, but they did see how having a kind of potential prime minister as their local representative might be quite useful. I mean the word stepping stone gets thrown around a lot and certainly reform were trying to use it. But actually I think people were smarter than that and people were saying well yeah obviously you know nobody thought that he was doing this just for the people of Makerfield as much as he might kind of want to support them. Um but people kind of saw through that sure but did actually think well you know what he is an effective politician and having him repping us is probably not a bad thing >> and and and following Andy Burden closely as you do you you're northern correspondent of the time so you've you've you've seen him at perhaps closer quarters over recent months and the last sort of year or so than others have in his role as as mayor of Greater Manchester. What what what do you think about what sort of politician he will be in Westminster, prime minister or otherwise? I mean look he is clearly a really effective communicator. You see that kind of when you watch him give speeches but also you know just chatting up close as we are right now. He is kind of what you see is what you get back that is who he is. Um the thing that is often said about Andrew Merdam is that he kind of finds policy decisionm quite difficult. Um and that actually you know Manchester he inherited a system that was working pretty well. You know he he gets kind of a lot of credit for some of you know what is often termed Manchesterism. the boom in productivity and in housing and all this kind of thing we've seen in Manchester and he has played a big role in kind of boosting Manchester's image on the national and even global stage but a lot of that was kind of set in motion by his predecessors he is inheriting potentially if he becomes you know our prime minister a very dysfunctional creaking country at the moment you know with a huge deficit how he deals with that that is the big kind of question mark >> yeah indeed all Um, constants, thank you. Good stuff. Some sleep maybe at some point soon for you. Maybe. No. Oh, no. All the way through.

[00:12:11]>> Sleep >> because there's a big Labour party event happening in the morning, right? You're gonna be at that as well, aren't you?

[00:12:15]Okay. 10:30 a.m. See you there.

[00:12:17]>> Excellent. Good stuff. Well, we'll have that for you on Times Radio as well.

[00:12:20]Anna Gray is going to be coming up soon.

[00:12:21]So, we're going to be here in Maker Field uh for the next 24 hours or so.

[00:12:24]There's plenty going on. It is going to be I mean, it's been a big night. It's going to be a big day uh in Wigan tomorrow as well.

[00:12:30]>> Okay, D, just give us a hint. At 10:30 tomorrow, what's that event going to look like?

[00:12:36]Yeah. Yeah. Professor, I I I we don't know the the sort of finer details at the moment, but as we understand it, there will be um a sort of victory uh party. There'll be party members. Uh you can expect some of those familiar characters that we've seen. Louise Hay, she'll be absolutely there. Lisa Nandy, who's been here as well. Um no doubt they will be there um to it's going to be we're going to get we're going to get um Andy Burnham saying a few remarks to the media in what we describe as a sort of pool situation. Right. So that means that he'll do sort of one interview and it'll be cast to everybody um as opposed to him doing separate interviews. Um I suspect he'll probably speak there. I imagine you will probably hear a relative echo of what you've heard tonight. I wouldn't expect him to link you wouldn't expect him to sort of broach anything leadership wise. Very interesting to hear a couple of people tonight actually more than one person mention reflection some time for reflection um over the next couple of days. I would expect Andy Burnham after a sort of moment of celebration tomorrow to [snorts] go away for a bit, speak to his family probably, no doubt speak to Karma, which may very well have happened already, might very well be happening as we speak, and then he'll be sworn in on Monday, of course, so he can't really do anything um until until Monday, and then presumably um the the timeline will kick in. One interesting observation is that Josh Simons was here too. Now, Josh Simons was the uh MP for this area that of course resigned. He gave his seat up for Randy Burnham. You might remember that he was embroiled in uh some issues around Labor Together um when he was chief executive. Um in any case, he resigned his seat. Andy Bernham has become uh the the new member of parliament. He effectively lost his job tonight. Basically, tonight was basically the night that his job ended and he looked extremely jubilant. He was very very happy greeting uh uh uh some um Labor activists and Andy Bernham himself as well. He'll be one to watch.

[00:14:18]I wouldn't be surprised if he was a part of Andy Bernham's team uh in some capacity. uh whatever team, whatever capacity that forms over the next couple of uh weeks, maybe days, maybe months.

[00:14:30]>> Daryl, thank you very much indeed. Thank you for all your on the spot reporting from Makerfield. Luke Trill's here.

[00:14:35]Luke, you've been uh already putting on social media some key conclusions from tonight. Would you care to share them with us? Well, I think uh I mean on top of that seismic win uh by Andy Bern and just as I say that total reversal from what happened in the local election six weeks ago, the other thing is if you look across these results, I would argue this is Reform UK's worst night since the general election. They make basically no progress in Makerfield, a seat which on paper they should have done very well in. you know, in all of the MRPs, it's a comfortable reform gain. But also on the battle for the right, the Conservatives prove that they're still in the fight with that win in Abedine South, and that gives them momentum. So, they can't say they're the only party of the right. And third, even though the margin between Labor uh and reform wasn't, it was bigger than the restore vote, restore still got 7%. And if that were replicated, >> yeah, I should apologize then they did keep their >> replicated across the country. That would make it very difficult for reform.

[00:15:43]You know, they've said they want to get a majority at the next. It would make it very very difficult. So, three factors which make this a really bad night for reform.