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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey guys, it's Mark.
Chapter 2: What is the significance of the Makerfield by-election?
Next week, there's a local election in the UK that could be the most consequential in recent British political history. Voters in Makerfield, just outside Manchester, head to the polls to choose a new member of parliament. Among the candidates is former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. He's widely seen as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Labour's future leader.
Burnham is the bookmaker's favorite, but there's a catch, a strong challenge from Reform UK, the insurgent party that continues to disrupt British politics.
Chapter 3: Who are the main candidates in the Makerfield race?
If Burnham wins, attention would be on what his return to Westminster would mean. But if Reform pulls off an upset, it would send shockwaves through the political establishment.
In this episode of the FT's Political Fix podcast, Lucy Fisher and her panel look beyond the headlines and they ask, what's really driving voters in Makerfield and how could the result shape the future of British politics? Enjoy. I just want somebody fresh, somebody new, somebody from here, somebody who gets it. A flavour there of what voters are saying in Makerfield.
We need somebody with a backbone. With all people in, they're supposed to do what they said they're going to do.
None of them have so far. Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Now we are recording this in a pub in Makerfield where I've been on the ground for two days now trying to take the political temperature ahead of the by-election next week. It is shaping up to be potentially the most historic by-election in British history.
It could change the course of the country if Labour candidate Andy Burnham wins and successfully challenges Sir Keir Starmer as we know he's planning to do for the premiership. And we're just sitting down to record as John Healey, the defence secretary, has sensationally resigned in protest over the financial settlement for Britain's military.
So, so much to discuss here with Jennifer Williams, the FT's Northern England correspondent.
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Chapter 4: What issues are influencing voters in Makerfield?
Hi, Jen. Hi, Lucy. And Jim Pickard, the FT's deputy political editor. Hi, Jim. Hey, Lucy. So to set the scene first, I should say we are in the Buck's Head pub in Abram in the Makerfield constituency. So big shout out and thanks to Chris, the landlord, for letting us record here, especially as there is a bingo game going on behind us that you might hear. We're having a bit of lunch.
Jen, you've fallen prey to stereotype. You're eating.
Chapter 5: How does Andy Burnham's candidacy impact Labour's future?
I am doing the Andy Bedman special.
I'm having chips and gravy.
That's a reference to Andy Burnham being asked what his favourite biscuit was. Can you remember his reply?
It was chips and gravy and you think also a pint of beer, don't you?
I think he also had a beer just to max the northern cliché.
Okay, but you're on the orange juice.
What are you having, Lucy?
I've already had some fish fingers in the pub, but I have procured, for your deletion, Jim, what I'm told is a Wigan pie. It is a minced steak party pie inside a soft white bap, known locally, I'm told, by Galloway Bakery as a bam. So it's... It's a bam.
Sorry, a bam. It's a wig and kebab.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of John Healey's resignation?
So I'm sort of not hugely surprised by that. I think, I mean, there is a gender divide from what we can see in the polling and from what Canvases is sort of picking up on the doorstep. Whether it's necessarily any more pronounced between Labour and Reform than it is nationally, it may be sort of roughly in line with it.
But I think what Labour have identified is something that they can pounce on in terms of his past remarks. And I think you could see from the looks on those women's faces in the Question Time audience when Robert Kenyon was sort of pushed on what he had said previously and kind of didn't really make a very good fist of defending himself.
You know, those clips have been clipped up and sent around social media and amplified and amplified and amplified over the last... week or so.
It's interesting. I noticed at the Hustings, Robert Kenyon was at pains to say that he and reform totally back women's rights. He said that women's rights would be safest under reform than any other party. And then you could tell he was sort of reaching for a single right of women to name. And he sort of said, like pregnancy. And honestly, there was a titter that ran through the audience.
I think he Right, you're going to protect women's rights to pregnancy, are you? And I think, in a sense maybe, that unvarnished nature is something that's a little bit appealing next to the glossiness of Andy Burnham, who's obviously a much more eloquent practice performer. And I was interested to see them sat next to each other at the Hustings and the different reception that they got.
I think what's quite interesting, I think, about Andy Burnham and the risks that he's now going to be taking, I suppose... is that as mayor, he has thrived off this idea that he's got outsider status. So he has built his brand around the idea that he's gone up against the initially, particularly against the Conservative government. But he's maintained that brand while Labour have been in power.
Right. And and people have responded to that. I think it's a large part of his popularity.
one of the things I've noticed and this is more probably from online comments than it is necessarily from talking to people in the street but I suspect it may be true in the street as well is that there may just be a little bit of a risk that that outsider status is just beginning to wear off a little bit because you know how do you maintain that in a circumstance like this when you are clearly the polished politician with the money well I say with the money but certainly with the machine behind you right that becomes harder again to maintain if you then go into number 10.
So one thing I picked up talking to people in Makerfield this morning was that even the ones who were voting Reform don't mind Andy Burnham, I guess reflecting the fact that he hasn't had to take any responsibility for national government decisions over the last decade.
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Chapter 7: How are local sentiments shifting towards Reform UK?
I was chatting to a reform voter when I was out talking to people here last week. He said exactly what you were saying, you know, I were worried about keeping girls safe from what these gangs are doing, even if there aren't any local gangs necessarily, there is a salience to the issue, right? So the gender issue also plays into that.
Jim, I've also been struck by how much Belfast is playing out here. People have brought up, unprompted, the word beheading, obviously referring to
the heinous scenes we saw in belfast in recent days and some of the violent disorder that's erupted since then people talking a lot about stabbings that are taking place throughout the country them feeling scared have you picked that up and people you've been speaking to
So, I mean, it's a very fraught backdrop on the national picture that this by-election is taking place with all that in the news every day. And, you know, the crime that occurred in Belfast was obviously completely horrific and this poor guy losing his eye and all the rest of it.
But equally upsetting is the subsequent carnage we saw with people's cars being burnt out, homes being burnt out, the local police having to evacuate a two-year-old child from a house because this kid wasn't safe. And all of that anger...
is a legitimate response to a horrific crime, but it is being stoked by people like Elon Musk, thousands of miles away, and far-right agitators online, wanting this fury in a way that when a white person murders another white person... They are not quite so exercised.
And how on earth the Westminster establishment deals with that sense of grievance and sense of anger, they don't seem to have worked out how to counter it. And it feels like a very responsive way that they're dealing with it, just lurching from one riot to another, basically.
And Jen, I mean, the word pogrom has been used about some of the activity we've seen in Northern Ireland with people, I think nurses, non-white nurses being stopped trying to enter a hospital where they're on their way to work and ask for their nationality with some being allowed in and some not. I mean, that is a shocking kind of scene we've not seen in this country for a very long time.
We saw it in the riots in Middlesbrough in 2024. There was footage of men stopping cars in the street during those riots and asking, checking whether people were white or not. Like it was a really, really dark thread that kind of runs through all of this.
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Chapter 8: What challenges does Burnham face if he wins?
And I think it's also worth pointing out quite an interesting element of the row is that when Healy won an initial uplift for defence spending last year, he managed to get that promise over the line from Starmer by saying to him, look, if we do this early in the parliament and bank the win, I promise I won't do what defence secretaries always do, which is come back with the begging bowl.
And yet he's had to do exactly that within months. His argument has been that, in fact, Starmer's gone ahead and committed the UK to all sorts of other military initiatives, including the UK taking a leading role in post-peace deal international forces in Ukraine, in the Strait of Hormuz. The UK has just taken up a leading role in a new mission for NATO in the Arctic.
At the same time, the threat picture is rising. So we're seeing increased Russian malign activity that the Navy and others are having to respond to. So the demands on defence are going up. So Healy said, you know, when the facts change, you have to respond to that.
And your profile dropped literally five hours before he quit. So perfect timing by someone on the news desk got it right.
Quick update for post-resignation. This is I mean, this is pretty nightmarish, isn't it? Because I think I'm right in saying like this is as much as we're talking about him wanting to fight on. There also seems to be a kind of legacy vibe currently coming out of number 10. And this was sort of supposed to be some kind of set piece part of that. Right.
So it's about, you know, this is not ideal for that.
So let's fast forward ahead to next week. Let's imagine if reform loses the polls and the bookies think they're going to. I wondered whether that will mean, especially after losing Gorton and Denton by election earlier this year, a second loss. Will that mean them losing momentum as a party? And I put that question to Farage when he was in Makerfield on Wednesday.
Lucy Fisher, Financial Times.
Mr Farage, thank you. Firstly, I wanted to ask you, Reform lost the Gorton-Edenton by-election earlier this year. If the party loses next week, are you concerned that it might be losing momentum?
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