The road to Makerfield

In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell fixed Wigan in the national imagination as a byword for industrial hardship and neglect of the working classes. Today, nearly 90 years on, the ‘lunar landscape of slag-heaps’, the ‘smoke, shale, ice, mud, ashes and foul water’ have thankfully disappeared. But those feelings of abandonment and dissatisfaction remain strong in this north-western town.

In just a few days, on 18 June, voters in and around the post-industrial town of Wigan, Greater Manchester, will be responsible for deciding whether or not the UK might get a new prime minister. But the mood on the doorstep feels far more local than national.

Last Saturday, I took the train from London to Wigan to canvas on behalf of Reform UK. Campaign HQ – a unit on an unassuming business park – was already overflowing with eager activists by 10am, many snapping pictures in front of the very on-brand turquoise double-decker campaign bus, or waiting to catch a glimpse of the man of the hour, Rob Kenyon. Reform’s parliamentary candidate was running late on account of him coaching his under-7s football team.

You’d struggle to find a better illustration of the contrast between Labour and Reform than in the profiles of their own candidates. Kenyon is an ex-Army reservist and self-employed plumber who was born and grew up in the local area. In the 2024 General Election, he ran for Reform for the first time and came in second with 32 per cent of the vote.

The same can’t be said for Labour’s Andy Burnham, a career politician who would have stood in any constituency going if he thought it would get him one step closer to Westminster and, by extension, to challenging Keir Starmer’s premiership.

In terms of numbers, this by-election really does boil down to a two-horse race. Polls repeatedly show Reform just a few points behind Labour, with the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats barely getting a look-in and all polling at dismal single figures. But former Reform MP Rupert Lowe’s fledgling party, Restore Britain, has thrown a spanner in the works by deciding to stand its own candidate. That’s Rebecca Shepherd, a local woman who runs a business providing ‘horse whispering and equine-assisted therapy’. It’s difficult to say much else about her or her positions, because Restore HQ rarely lets her out for interviews.

Despite this, Restore has made enough gains in Makerfield to split the right-wing vote and give Burnham a clear advantage. Setting off for the first canvassing session of the day, we were greeted by the sight of a massive Restore flag attached to a fence along the main road. It felt like a bad omen.

There is something surreal about seeing real-world manifestations of what many had assumed to be a purely online phenomenon. Of course, people in Wigan don’t really know who the likes of Connor Tomlinson, Harrison Pitt or Charlie Downes are. Nor are they aware of their hokey brand of convert Catholicism, or understand their various wacky policies – like banning usury, abortion and contraception or tying nationality to Christian faith. I’m not convinced that many of them could even pick Rebecca Shepherd out in a crowd. But voters in Makerfield certainly know who Rupert Lowe is, and are fed a steady supply of Restore content via their Facebook timelines.

One of the first voters we spoke to said that the choice for her was between Reform and Restore, but that she was leaning towards Restore because she didn’t trust Reform with healthcare. She told us she was concerned that a Reform government would privatise the NHS and make seeing a GP unaffordable for people like her. (Actually, Reform has repeatedly pledged to keep the NHS free at the point of use.)

Speaking to a man in a bungalow with an immaculately kept garden, we learnt that he had already sent off his postal vote for Reform. And his wife had voted Restore. Some streets were an even split of teal and navy blue Correx boards and window posters.

I later learnt that the area we were canvassing on Saturday was unusually Restore-heavy. It’s no coincidence, then, that these areas are also some of the most deprived in Wigan. In some of the labyrinthine estates we visited, as many as half of over-16s were out of work. Large percentages, too, were in social housing. As a constituency, Makerfield is overwhelmingly white and working class – around 95 per cent are white British, with higher-than-average shares of people working in manual, industrial and skilled-trade jobs. In the 2016 referendum, 66 per cent voted to leave the EU, comfortably above the UK-wide Leave vote of 52 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, Farage as a figure generally plays well here, and plenty of residents were enthusiastically pro-Reform, too. One woman told us that she, her whole extended family, and neighbours were planning to vote for Reform. We visited one cul-de-sac where every household was supporting Reform. At one point, a man slowed down as he passed our team in his car to ask who we were canvassing for. When we said Reform, he stopped to wish us luck and to repeat some choice words about Labour and where, exactly, Burnham could stick it.

The other major battle was convincing people to vote at all. There was a great sense of apathy among many and a general sense that no one in Westminster could be trusted. One woman complained that she particularly disliked Andy Burnham for using the Makerfield constituency as a stepping stone on his way to No10 – one of the attack lines that Reform has been pushing hard, and one that really seems to have cut through. She was much warmer towards Kenyon, who she felt was a local lad looking to give voters here a voice in Westminster.

Her priorities were typical – immigration, the NHS and the cost-of-living crisis. She told us she knew many families who were unable to feed their children properly. Although she was retired and relatively comfortable herself, she was worried about her family and neighbours not being able to get by.

Another young couple we spoke to said that not only were they refusing to vote, but that they were also planning on leaving the UK entirely. They were, predictably, disappointed in the state of the NHS, especially with mental-health services. Their other priority was immigration, but they believed that things were now basically beyond repair. They, like so many others here, did not feel they could trust anyone in politics – although they did admit that if they were to vote, it would probably be for Reform. In any case, they saw the situation in the UK as being so dire that their only option was to emigrate as soon as possible.

That feeling of betrayal and being left behind by the mainstream parties is exactly what both Reform and Restore are looking to tap into. After having been virtually ignored for years, these voters now have two parties that are actively vying for their attention.

Restore has very clearly been pouring everything it has into this campaign. Rupert Lowe (or rather, the person writing his social-media posts) claimed on Facebook to have upwards of 1,000 activists out in the constituency last Saturday, though the real numbers on the ground were less clear. Plenty, at least, were bussed up from London. We ran into a few teams, who looked to be targeting mostly Reform-voting households – multiple people told me that they had been tailing the Reform teams because they were unfamiliar with the area.

For what it’s worth, Labour seemed to have a few activists out and campaigning, though they were notably thinner on the ground in the less affluent areas. I have it on good authority that there were at least five Tory canvassers in Wigan over the weekend – although I certainly didn’t see any myself.

The vote on Thursday will be crucial for two reasons. Nationally, it will tell us whether we might be in for a new prime minister – one that is likely to be even worse than Keir Starmer. But on a local level, it will decide whether this constituency will finally be given a voice.

Regardless of the outcome, Reform has proven it has the momentum to take the fight to Labour in what was once a deep red heartland – no small feat in a constituency that has been voting Labour since its creation over four decades ago. We got a taste of this in the local elections last month, where traditional Labour voters across the former Red Wall voted en masse for Reform. In the Makerfield constituency, Reform won every local council seat up for election.

That alone should terrify Labour. If somewhere like Wigan can no longer be taken for granted, then nowhere in the Red Wall is safe.

Lauren Smith is a writer based in London.