Burnham starts as underdog – but has secret weapon to beat Farage

I’m searching for Andy Burnham. And as I pull up in St Oswalds Road in Ashton-in-Makerfield, I sense I may have come to the right place. Staggered along the right-hand side of this quiet cul-de-sac are a series of yellow and red Vote Labour billboards, something of a rarity in modern by-elections.

Although St Oswalds Road isn’t quite the haven of tranquillity it was a few days ago. ‘It’s doing my head in,’ Graham, who is out working on his car, tells me. ‘We’ve already had three lots of canvassers round today.’

Was the mayor of Greater Manchester and putative next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom among them, I ask hopefully?

Graham shakes his head. ‘And it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been. I haven’t voted for 20 years. Makes no difference to anything.’

Undeterred, I move on to Warrington Road, recently made famous in Burnham’s slick and well-received campaign launch video. Anne, a former NHS and private sector nurse, is cleaning her gate-post. So did she spot him and his camera crew, I wonder?

She did not, she confirms, but would like to have done. ‘Andy’s a good lad,’ she tells me.

‘Always worked for us round here. We all know him. We’re going to look after him.’

Encouraged that I’m getting warmer, I pop into Rose’s Cafe a few doors down. Yasmin, the owner, explains that the establishment – recommended to me as the best in the area – is named after her late mother. And while she hasn’t seen Andy Burnham herself, she retains a family connection to him. ‘My aunt knew him,’ she reveals. ‘He used to pop round to hers for tea.’

Fortified by Yasmin’s baked potato, I decide to spread my net wider. Ashton is home to a series of neat semis and cosy bungalows. But a couple of miles up the road is Bryn – where the character and political leanings of the constituency change.

People don’t act like they’re meeting a celebrity, writes Dan Hodges. They act like they’re meeting an old friend. And Burnham reciprocates

Walking up Wigan Road, many of the lampposts are festooned with Union flags. They do not feature in the Burnham video.

Claire, a checkout worker, underlines why. ‘Yes, I’ll be voting. But it won’t be for Andy Burnham. He’s Labour. And people here have had it with them.’

Who will get her vote, I ask? ‘Nigel Farage,’ she replies.

On paper, Bryn should be a rock-solid Reform area. But, as I soon learn, there are complicating factors at play.

As I walk past the petrol station, its giant electronic advertising billboard lights up with the face of Rupert Lowe, maverick leader of the Reform breakaway party, Restore. Then I notice a small posse of ten to 12 activists assembled outside the Bryn community centre. These, I quickly realise, are Restore’s local foot-soldiers. I’d been sceptical about repeated claims made by Lowe on social media that Restore would have an impact on the race in Makerfield.

But then I pass a small terrace with a Restore poster propped prominently in the window. Below it is another, sporting an image of Donald Trump. It declares: ‘Wanted: For President.’

Just as I’m processing this slightly surreal crossover between the leader of the MAGA movement and the former chairman of Southampton Football Club, my phone rings. Andy Burnham has been found.

I arrive amid the detached new-builds of Moxon Way to find Burnham – clad casually in jeans and a navy jacket – deep in conversation with a man and a greyhound. ‘It’s going to be a fight for you here, Andy,’ Paul – the man, not the greyhound – tells him. ‘I’m not flinching,’ he replies.

I’ve done several of these by-election door-knocking sessions. And I know the tricks. Pretend to ring the doorbell of the house that was canvassed before the journalist arrives. Then move on to the one where you have a firm supporter.

But this time something strange begins to happen. People aren’t waiting to be introduced.

Up ahead a door opens. ‘Hi, Andy. You probably don’t remember me but you gave me an award at my school’s presentation day.’

Labour’s candidate does remember. And he knows the school. ‘Blimey, that’s dated me,’ he laughs.

A second door opens. ‘Andy, how are you? We met a few months ago in Lidl.’ The laugh echoes around the close once again. ‘Yeah. I didn’t have all this palaver with me then, did I?’

A third door. ‘Andy! You bumped into my sister and her friends yesterday!’ ‘Aye, yes! They’re great.’

Before I came to Makerfield I had been told by several people that Burnham had ‘the X-factor’, similar to Boris or Farage. But this is a different phenomenon.

People don’t act like they’re meeting a celebrity. They act like they’re meeting an old friend. And Burnham reciprocates.

The golden rule of canvassing is to keep conversations down to three minutes at most, to avoid tricky questions and maximise the number of engagements.

Not the King of the North. Much to the frustration of his team, Burnham happily chats to Steven and Anne-Marie for the best part of quarter of an hour. ‘You’ve got a difficult job,’ they tell him. ‘Nobody seems to listen to us.’

‘That’s why I want to get down to Westminster, so I can start to change things,’ he replies.

All parliamentary by-elections are billed as major historic waypoints. But it’s no exaggeration to say that the decision the voters take here on June 18 will almost certainly reshape British politics for a generation.

And my first brief visit to this electoral crucible has revealed a number of things. The first is that despite the bookmakers’ odds, Andy Burnham starts this contest as the underdog.

This is a Reform seat. The symbols of seemingly inexorable economic decline, the sense of political estrangement, the palpable anger at a perceived malign, southern British elite, are all present and real.

But those odds are being dramatically shortened by a number of factors. One is the unpredictable challenge of Restore, which may have more influence than I’d previously appreciated.

Another is that Burnham is cleverly turning Farage’s messaging against him. It’s Burnham who is now the insurgent. He is the anti-establishment candidate. He is the one able to run on the – unofficial – slogan of ‘Vote Burnham, Get Rid Of Starmer’.

But most significant is his own personality and biography. Familiarity, not stardust, is Andy Burnham’s secret weapon in this contest. Half the voters in Makerfield know him. And the other half think they know him.

As he is finally saying goodbye to Steven and Anne-Marie, she pleads with him: ‘Don’t leave us behind when you get the top job, will you?’ ‘I won’t,’ he pledges.

He’s going to need all the help he can get from his friends in Makerfield if he’s going to secure it.