A seismic shift is taking place in Britain with the victory of Andy Burnham of the Labour Party in the Makerfield by-election. The shift is twofold. First, it opens a path to a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer, and consequently to a general election conducted under new and unstable conditions. Second, it has produced a new electoral map on the conservative side of British politics.
How smoothly that change inside the Labour Party will unfold remains to be seen. Speaking on Friday morning at a housing event, Burnham told the BBC that he “will stand” in a potential contest for the party leadership. He added: “I’m not going to walk away from that.”
The newly formed Restore Britain came third in Makerfield, taking 7 percent of the vote, while Reform UK finished second with 35 percent. For a party so recently assembled, Restore Britain’s showing is a warning shot.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, declared in his victory speech: “The word Makerfield in the future must be known as a byword for the change that came to British politics. This is the moment.” But the change now arriving may not be quite the one he had in mind.
Until recently, Reform UK had been performing strongly in the local elections and was widely regarded as the only party on the conservative political spectrum with a credible route to Downing Street. Nigel Farage, once dismissed by the establishment as a fringe agitator and a pariah of right-wing politics, had for some time been spoken of as a potential prime minister. That was the configuration with which the British establishment had, however reluctantly, become comfortable.
Makerfield has disturbed that arrangement.
Restore Britain, led by MP Rupert Lowe, has entered the field with the backing of Elon Musk and with former Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen among its ranks. Its arrival complicates the right-wing insurgency. Reform UK can no longer assume that it monopolises anti-establishment conservative sentiment. The vote in Makerfield suggests that a portion of the electorate is prepared to look still further right, or at least still further outside the permitted boundaries of Westminster politics.
The instinctive response has been to denounce Restore Britain as “dangerous” and as a home for “white supremacy.” Yet this method of dismissal has not, so far, proved sufficient. Lowe has published a report on gang rape featuring the testimonies of victims, including young white women who say they were raped by Pakistani men. Whatever one makes of the politics of the report, it has placed before the public a subject that polite Britain has often preferred to discuss only through euphemism, evasion, or ritual denunciation.
The issue is incendiary because it touches the exposed nerve of race, ethnicity, religion, and party politics in Britain. The Muslim vote has traditionally leaned Labour, and Labour has long relied on that relationship in many constituencies. But the politics of silence has its own cost. When voters come to believe that certain crimes are treated differently because of the ethnicity or religion of the accused, the ground is prepared for forces far more radical than those the establishment already knows how to manage.
The vote in Makerfield suggests that a portion of the electorate is prepared to look still further right, or at least still further outside the permitted boundaries of Westminster politics.
Burnham may have won Makerfield. Labour may have taken the seat. But the more interesting fact is that Restore Britain has appeared on the map at all.
That is why Makerfield matters. Not because it settled the future of the Labour politics, but because it revealed that a new party its on its way and that has managed to get 7% of the vote without infrastructure and no prior history not only in Makerfield but the overall Britain.
The next question troubling many actors in British political life is whether Tommy Robinson will join Restore Britain and bring his movement with him. Rupert Lowe has already said that “it’s up to Robinson” to make that decision.
There is, in theory, another option: Reform UK and Restore Britain could join forces and build a victorious coalition at the next general election. But this remains highly unlikely, and in many ways almost incompatible. Neither Nigel Farage nor Rupert Lowe appears especially interested in such an arrangement. Farage believes Restore Britain took votes from Reform, which is a curious complaint from a man whose own party has spent years taking votes from the Conservatives and attracting defecting Tory MPs into its ranks.
To see Farage now surprised that someone else has borrowed from his playbook is not merely ironic. It is politically revealing. He cannot claim moral authority over an insurgent method he himself perfected. It is politics, folks.
The real struggle over Britain’s electoral future is now taking place on the conservative side of politics. The Conservative Party emerged from Makerfield with 3 percent of the vote — a figure so abysmal that it functions less as a defeat than as an obituary. The party has been consumed by its own infighting, by the collapse of the Boris Johnson project, by the implosion of Liz Truss, and by the exhausted managerialism of Rishi Sunak. It was a train crash conducted in instalments.
Farage saw the opportunity and took it. He finally entered Parliament and turned Reform UK into a serious electoral vehicle. But his party also missed an opportunity to act decisively on the issues that conservative and traditional voters most care about: public safety, social order, and the belief that the state has failed to protect the vulnerable.
Farage wanted to broaden his appeal, including to Muslim voters, and therefore avoided making the grooming-gang scandal a central cause. He knew perfectly well that, politically, the issue was able to catch fire. He also knew that race, religion, crime, and electoral politics form the most dangerous mixture in British public life. Farage likes to think carefully about what becomes his issue. Lowe, by contrast, had far less to lose. He took the subject on directly.
That decision has now made Restore Britain a player in British politics. After Makerfield, it can no longer be treated merely as a protest vehicle or an online agitation campaign. It is a party capable of taking votes, shaping the debate, and possibly electing several MPs at the next general election.
And after Makerfield, Elon Musk — and I say this as someone who watched what he did in the American elections — is unlikely to lose interest. If anything, he will see Restore Britain as a vehicle worth backing even more aggressively. With his support, his platform, and his apparently unlimited resources, Restore Britain now has what every insurgent party requires: a grievance, an audience, and the wealthiest man on Earth as its patron.
