Andy Burnham appears poised to win next week’s Makerfield by-election as new polling added to suggestions a split in the Right-wing vote will gift him victory.
The Greater Manchester mayor is Labour’s candidate in the seat as he seeks a return to Westminster before launching a bid to replace Keir Starmer as Prime Minister.
Mr Burnham’s stiffest challenge at next Thursday’s contest is expected to come from Reform UK, as Nigel Farage’s party looks to add a ninth MP to its growing ranks.
But Reform is being hampered by the decision of Restore Britain, the Right-wing rival set up by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, to also stand in the constituency.
It has now emerged how a constituency-wide poll circulating internally within Labour shows exactly how far Restore is eating into support for Reform.
As reported by The i Paper, the survey from earlier this week found Mr Lowe’s Restore outfit is backed by 13 per cent of voters in the Greater Manchester seat.
This compared to 24 per cent support for Mr Farage’s Reform while Mr Burnham was backed by 35 per cent of voters, according to the newspaper.
It suggests, if Restore voters were to switch to Reform, then Mr Farage’s party would be set to win the Makerfield by-election and block Mr Burnham’s march to No10.
Andy Burnham appears poised to win next week’s Makerfield by-election as new polling added to suggestions a split in the Right-wing vote will gift him victory
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is being hampered by the decision of Restore Britain, the Right-wing rival set up by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, to also stand in the constituency
But, without Right-wing voters in Makerfield uniting behind a single candidate, then Labour and Mr Burnham are poised to clinch victory on 18 June.
Senior Reform figures attempted to play down the prospect of Restore enjoying a strong showing in next Thursday’s by-election.
One of the party’s MPs said: ‘Their vote is really soft. It’ll be nowhere near that on the day. I doubt they’ll get over 2 per cent.’
But others were more concerned by the threat being posed by Restore.
A second Reform MP told the newspaper: ‘My anxiety is that people think Nigel is old news by virtue of being around for years, where they think they have discovered some new brand.’
Speaking in Makerfield on Wednesday, Mr Farage said Reform was ‘unapologetic’ about its by-election candidate after they were revealed to have made offensive social media posts.
Robert Kenyon used a now-deleted X account to support an offensive post about Welsh broadcaster Carol Vorderman.
Messages published by campaign group Hope Not Hate showed that Mr Kenyon responded on Christmas Eve 2021 to another person’s post including graphic sexual language about the presenter who made her name as the maths expert on Channel 4’s Countdown.
Alongside a thumbs up and a laughing emoji, the plumber wrote: ‘He’s only saying what we’re all thinking.’
Vorderman has demanded an apology from Mr Kenyon, who she branded ‘cowardly’.
Mr Farage was asked about the comments during a press conference held in the Makerfield constituency, and dismissed them as ‘a few laddish things’.
He told reporters: ‘These comments were posted a decade ago. They’ve been taken wildly out of context, but they’re the sort of comments that you won’t necessarily get if you’re an Oxford-educated career politician living in a nice postcode in London.’
Mr Farage added: ‘But I tell you what, they are the kind of comments you’ll hear in every pub in the country every evening, and we should be unapologetic that Rob is an ordinary bloke who’s carved quite a career for himself, had the guts to set up a business, served as an army reservist, is a patriot, likes his rugby, likes the odd pint, and said a few laddish things on social media 10 years ago.
‘Do you know what I’d say to that? I’d say, so what?’
