A Labour MP resigned in late February, leaving the Ashton-in-Makerfield seat open and enabling Manchester mayor Andy Burnham to run. If he wins the June 18 by-election, he could become a major political figure and potentially challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Voters have not fully been convinced of Burnham’s suitability, and Reform UK plans an aggressive campaign to prevent his entry into Parliament. The constituency is difficult to categorize, combining characteristics of northern industrial towns, parts of the Manchester and Wigan area, and influences from Merseyside and Lancashire. It has been a safe Labour seat since 1983, but Labour lost all eight local council seats there to Reform UK’s broader political momentum.
"In a scenario few could have predicted, voters in a northern English market town near Manchester could determine the United Kingdom's future political leadership. The surprise resignation of the Labour Party's Ashton-in-Makerfield MP Josh Simons in late February left the supposedly safe seat open, paving the way for the popular mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, to step in."
"If he wins the seat in a crucial by-election set for June 18, he could ultimately topple embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Standing in his way are the voters, many of whom Burnham has yet to convince of his credentials for the job, and the right-wing insurgent Reform UK party, which has promised to throw everything at the election in a bid to block Burnham's path to the UK Parliament."
"The voters of Makerfield, he acknowledged, were the country's kingmakers or, ominously given Burnham's popular nickname of King of the North, the king destroyers. The constituency is difficult to categorise, political scientists said. It neither fits the stereotype of the declining industrial towns of northern England nor carries much of the metropolitan optimism typified in the soaring glass tower blocks of the nearby Manchester city centre."
"Instead, it is best understood as a place in-between, political science Professor Rob Ford wrote in his blog last week, describing an archipelago of separate and often poorly connected towns that feel only partly like Manchester or nearby Wigan; partly like nearby Merseyside, including Liverpool; and partly like the nearby county of Lancashire. Politically, too, it is hard to pin down."
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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