The By-Election That Could End Keir Starmer

[00:00:00]Last month, I sat here and told you Restore Britain couldn't win the Makerfield bi-election. They might play spoiler, I said, but they wouldn't take the seat. The comments, as ever, were lively. A few told me I'd be eating my own words by polling day, and at least a handful announced on the way out they were unsubscribing because I was about to look very silly. Well, the votes were counted. Andy Bernham won comfortably with a bigger majority than Labour managed here in 2024. Restore came third on 6.8%. 8% and saved their deposit. The call held up. Before anyone runs a victory lap on my behalf, though, let me be honest. I didn't want to be right. A restore win in a Red Wall seat would have been the most exciting thing in British politics for years, and I'd have made that video grinning like an idiot.

[00:00:49]The thing I got right is the exact thing I was hoping wouldn't happen. What I'll do instead is walk you through what happened. how Burnham managed to flatten every poll in the country, whether the spoiler theory I built half the last video on came true, and whether third place for a four-month-old party counts as a good night. The maths at the end settles an argument that's been running in the comments for a month. The numbers then, because they earned it, Andy Burnham took 24,927 votes. That's 54.8% of everything cast.

[00:01:20]Robert Kenyon for Reform came second on 15,696 or 34.5%.

[00:01:27]Rebecca Shepard for Restore Britain came third on 3,111 votes 6.8%. Then a long sad drop to the Conservatives on 2.2%, the Greens on 0.7% and the Liberal Democrats on 0.4%.

[00:01:43]The majority was 9,231.

[00:01:46]For context, when Labour last won this seat in 2024, they did it by 5,399.

[00:01:53]Burnham nearly doubled it. This was a thumping, not a nervous hold, scraped past the line. Turnout came in at 58.7%, the highest at any UK parliamentary bi-election in nearly 7 years. People came out and they came out for him. And the Conservatives, the official opposition, the party that used to fight Labour for seats like this, managed 2.2%.

[00:02:17]Lib Dem 0.4% reportedly their worst bi-election showing since the party was founded in 1988. Restore 4 months old.

[00:02:26]Beat the Tories, the Greens, and the Lib Dems. Put together and then beat them again for good measure. Spare a thought for the establishment. Actually, no.

[00:02:36]Don't don't do that. But this is the part that should make every pollster in the country wse. Not one published poll had Burnham above 50%. Servation had it 43 to 40. Opinium 46 to 41. A June poll 49. The forecasts modeled a tight, sweaty 3 to 5point race. He finished on nearly 55. Every single pollster undersshot him. And we'll get to why because the why is the whole story. So why did he beat everyone's sums by 10 points? One reason mostly him. Burnham is the rarest thing in British politics right now. A senior politician people actually like. He's the only big name in Yugov's favorability tracker who isn't underwater and the only one a majority of Labour voters say they're fond of.

[00:03:28]For comparison, K star sits at around -46, which is the sort of number you post when you've personally inconvenienced an entire country. And he ran a clever campaign. He barely mentioned the Labour brand or his leadership ambitions. The slogan was Andy for us. He ran as the insurgent from inside the building, a localish lad. People around there have been voting to make Manchester mayor for the best part of a decade. The rosette said Labour, but the vote plainly said Andy. John Curtis put it best before a single ballot was cast. He said Labour would have less than a 5% chance in this seat with anyone other than Burnham.

[00:04:11]Strip Burnham out and this is a reform gain. Drop him back in and it's a 20 point Labour win. One man's name worth something like 25 points of swing. Call that what it plainly is, a cult of personality with a rosette on. Before the reform lads start filling the comments, hold on because this part is for you and it might actually surprise you. Reform's vote barely moved. Up just 2.7 points on 2024 after all that. Nigel Farage promised to throw everything at this seat and he did and the vote went up by less than three points. Luke Trill at Moore in common called it a very difficult result for Faraj's party because if reform can't grow its vote in a 66% leave red wall seed against a tired Labor government with momentum and money behind it. Then where exactly can it? The throw everything strategy it turns out throws about as far as the end of the drive. Okay, so the party you came for. Was I right? In the last video, the call was simple. Restore can't win this, but they could be a spoiler. Splitting the reform vote and handing it to Labor. Headline first.

[00:05:26]They couldn't win, which is confirmed.

[00:05:28]Third place, exactly as called. But the spoiler question is where I have to be straight with you because the real answer is more interesting than a clean I told you. So the spoiler scenario was real on paper with the polls showing a 3 to five point race. Restore share could have decided it. That was a live credible reading of the numbers as they stood. It just didn't happen. The mechanism was sound. The magnitude killed it. Burnham blew the forecast apart by 10 points and made the whole question academic. The spoiler theory needed a close race to matter. And a close race is precisely what nobody got.

[00:06:09]Burnham turned it into a landslide. So was the analysis wrong? Well, it was right on the mechanism, but wrong on the magnitude. Had the polls been accurate, that 6.8% would have been decisive. It only became irrelevant because one man massively overperformed. And I'd rather tell you that plainly than pretend I read it perfectly because pretending is what the people we covered do for a living. The maths that settles this once and for all. and I won it on screen so nobody can wriggle out of it. Burnham's majority over reform was 9,231.

[00:06:43]Restore's entire vote was 3,111.

[00:06:47]So, let's play the spoiler game properly. Take every single Restore vote or 3,111 of them and give the whole lot to reform. Every last one. Kenyon goes from 15,696 to 18,87.

[00:07:02]Burnham still got 24,927.

[00:07:06]Reform still loses by 6,120 votes. The combined right-wing vote, reform and restore together, comes to 41.3%.

[00:07:16]Burnham was on 54.8%.

[00:07:19]That's a 13.5 point gap. There was no arrangement of these votes, no clever transfer in which the right-wing split decided the seat because the right was never within touching distance of winning it, which is the second time the comments call back get to earn its keep.

[00:07:35]To everyone who left last month certain Restore would hand Burnham the win, you were wrong. To everyone who insisted Restore was a complete irrelevance, you were also wrong. You were both wrong in the most boring way imaginable. The seat was never close enough for either of you to have a point. Now, nobody's perfect.

[00:07:56]Some of us are just imperfect in public on camera with a thumbnail. Now, this part matters, and I'm going to do it with a straight face. Restore Britain registered as a political party on the 13th of February this year. This bi-election was the first time they had ever stood a candidate in a Westminster contest. Four months old, with no counselors in the seats and no local machine to speak of, none of the leaflet years or inherited support the establishment lot take for granted. They turned up from nothing, finished third, and saved their deposit ahead of three national parties that have been around for generations. I think that's a pretty good result. And I don't say that to make anyone feel better about a seat they didn't win. I say it because it's just true. Think about where everyone else started. When UKIP first stood seriously at a general election in 97, they got 0.3% nationally and lost almost every deposit they put down. Restore cleared the deposit at the first time of asking. They beat the Conservative Party, the official opposition, a party older than most of the buildings around it, by more than 3 to one. There is one fair caveat and I'll give it to you because you deserve the full picture.

[00:09:13]The Brexit party did better at its first bi-election, Peterbara 2019 nearly 29%.

[00:09:19]But that came straight off winning the European elections outright weeks earlier. Restore had no launch pad like that, no national springboard. They built this from a standing start.

[00:09:30]Different circumstances entirely. So the comparison rather flatters the Brexit party. A four-month-old party beats the Conservative Party by a factor of three.

[00:09:40]The party of Pit, Peele, Churchill, and Thatcher. More than 200 years of history, a 2.2% finish and the deposit in the bin. If I were restore, I'd frame that result and hang it in the hallway.

[00:09:54]So, what does Burnham do with it now?

[00:09:57]What he didn't have until Friday morning was the one thing that changes everything, a seat in the House of Commons. Under Labour's rules, you can't lead the party unless you sit in parliament. Now he does, which means for the first time, Andy Bernham is eligible to come for Kier Dharma's job. This is where excitable coverage gets ahead of itself. As of the result, no formal leadership challenge had been triggered.

[00:10:22]None. To trigger one against a sitting leader, a challenger needs nominations from 20% of Labour MPs, which is 81 of them. Sources suggest Burnham can get there, though suggest is doing a fair bit of work in that sentence. Starmmer, for his part, is vowing to fight. He's reportedly sitting on a six-f figureure war chest of private donations and said at the G7 that he'll fight if there's a challenge. Wes Streeting, who walked out as health secretary back in May, is hovering with the starting pistol.

[00:10:53]Bernham's victory speech told his party it had a final chance to change and that there would be no second chance. Subtle, he is not. And there is a loose end almost nobody reported. The moment Bernham became an MP, he was automatically disqualified as Manchester mayor because the mayor also holds police and crime powers and you can't hold both. His deputy Paul Dennit steps up as acting mayor. But a full mayor or by election now has to happen by the 6th of August at the latest. So sit with that. Labour engineered an entire bi-election to get Burnham into parliament so he could threaten the prime minister and in doing so triggered a second bi-election for the job he just vacated. Two bi-elections, one ambition.

[00:11:36]Smooth as ever this Labour party. Like a shopping trolley with a dodgy wheel.

[00:11:41]Which brings us to the real question.

[00:11:43]Where does this leave Restore?

[00:11:44]Makerfield proves one thing beyond argument. restore can pull a real deposit-saving vote out of the ground from a standing start. The spoiler dynamic I talked about hasn't gone away.

[00:11:56]It just didn't bite this time because the seat wasn't close. But take a marginal seat. Reform against Labor decided by the narrowest of margins. In that seat, a 6 to 7% restore share is exactly the margin that flips it away from reform. That's what to watch. And before you come for me in the comments for that comment, this does not mean I think you should be voting reform. Let's just get that out there, right? The tests are coming quickly. The Manchester mayoral bi-election by the 6th of August, the local elections in 2027, then a general election. Restore claims over 100,000 members and 13 councilors, most of them defectors from reform. The feud between the two. Low Musk, the open contempt for Farage, is not cooling down. Okay. So, is Restore an established force now or a Muskf funded flash in the pan? Honest answer, one good debut in one seat doesn't tell us.

[00:12:51]The jury is out. And I mean that literally, not just as a turn of phrase.

[00:12:55]The answer comes from whether they can do 6 to 8% again and again across lots of seats and start winning council elections. Watch the Manchester by election. It's the next data point. And one last thing, back in February, Nigel Farage said Restore won't be on 1% anywhere.

[00:13:14]Well, they've since won every seat they contested in Yarmouth and saved a Westminster deposit at the first attempt. At this point, his next prediction should probably be treated as a buy signal. So, Burnham won and won big. The spoiler theory was a real scenario that never happened because the race was never close. and Restore's debut. Third place, deposit saved, 4 months after the party legally existed, is a pretty good night for them. Even if a win would have been a lot more fun for all of us, which means you can now explain to anyone who will listen why a third place finish, which means you can now explain to anyone who will listen why a third place finish is a launch and not a defeat. Why the right-wing split didn't matter this time, but absolutely will in a closer seat and what to keep an eye on next. And what's next is pretty busy. A Manchester mayoral bi-election has to be held within weeks and the bigger question hanging over Westminster. Does Burnham pull the trigger on Starmmer? Does Starmer stand aside without a fight? Or do they knowing this lot manage to make a meal of even that? You know what to do. Get in those comments. Tell me honestly, was Makerfield a launch for Restore or a one-off? I want to hear what you think.

[00:14:32]And to anyone who unsubscribed last month on the firm promise I'd be wrong, the kettle's on. No hard feelings. And the resubscribe button is right there next to the one you used on the way out.

[00:14:43]Subscribe for the Manchester Mayoral coverage and the Stara leadership bid because both of those are coming and both are probably going to be a real mess. I'll see you in the next one.