If Reform can’t win Makerfield, where can they win?

I backed them to win Makerfield because everything was in their favour. Everything.

Labour’s polling at 19% nationally. Around 45% of those who voted Labour in 2024 now say they won’t. Reform has surged since the general election.

Importantly, Makerfield is a Brexit-supporting area. It’s natural Nigel Farage territory.

Even the Burnham factor, which some predicted could be worth 15 to 20 percentage points, should not have been enough to save Labour. This was Reform’s seat to lose.

And they lost it.

Of course, Reform will point to local factors. Every defeated party does. But Makerfield exposes a deeper problem, one that Farage and Tice will privately acknowledge.

We saw something similar in Gorton and Denton. Reform threw a lot at it. Farage even launched the campaign personally. While they increased their vote dramatically, many expected them to win. They lost badly.

Losing two is the beginning of a pattern. I have said before that what Tice and Farage have built is a political phenomenon. A party that barely existed three years ago now leads the polls, week in and week out.

Well, it’s actually Nigel Farage who leads the polls, isn’t it? Not a political party.

And that’s the problem. The moment you look beyond Farage, the cracks are everywhere.

Reform is losing the councillors it won in May at an extraordinary rate. Within days of its huge local election gain, councillors were already resigning, defecting or being suspended. Political scientist Mark Pack has identified Reform as a clear outlier compared with mainstream parties. Only the other insurgent party, the Greens, comes close.

Any organisation that haemorrhages key people so quickly is unstable.

Farage’s own explanation of this bleed is the most damning part. The ones who left, he says, never passed vetting in the first place. That’s horrendous. He is admitting that Reform cannot reliably identify which of its own candidates are fit to serve.

That might be enough to build a protest movement. It is not enough to build a government.

British politics is full of people who can win attention. Far fewer can build the teams, structures and discipline needed to run a country.

Burnham is indeed an exceptional candidate. But a genuine twenty-seven-per-cent party beats strong opponents in winnable seats. It doesn’t just flatten weak ones.

Reform’s standing in the polls reflects Farage’s popularity more than voters’ willingness to put Reform into power.

Voters may be happy to use Reform to send Westminster a message. Handing it power is another matter altogether.

Makerfield suggests many of them understand the difference.

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Andy Preston is a political commentator and former Mayor of Middlesbrough.

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