Meanwhile, Makerfield should have been prime territory for Burnham’s principal opponents, Reform. The party’s support is heavily concentrated among those who voted for Brexit 10 years ago, and as many as two-thirds of voters in Makerfield voted Leave in the referendum.
Failure to take the seat will thus be a particularly bitter blow for Nigel Farage.
His party’s support was up by just three points on 2024, well short of the 21 point increase it registered in Runcorn and the 15 point rise it enjoyed in Gorton and Denton, as well as the 12 point increase it currently has in the national polls.
At the same time, the by-election campaign saw emerge from the shadows another new challenger – Restore Britain, the breakaway party founded by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, that is campaigning for an even tougher stance on migrants than that advocated by Reform. It was the only party other than Labour and Reform to keep its deposit.
How many of the 7% who voted for Restore might otherwise have voted Reform is difficult to tell. But Farage will certainly not welcome the emergence of competition for the support of pro-Brexit, socially conservative Britain that Restore – currently running at 3% in the national polls – potentially represents.
But if the Conservative vote collapsed in Makerfield, the very opposite happened in Aberdeen South.
In a city that was once made rich by oil but which has now fallen on harder times, the party turned the ballot into a referendum on the net zero policy of both the UK and the Scottish governments.
It was rewarded with a 25 point increase in its share of the vote, a record for the party in a post-war by-election and its first by-election gain in Scotland since 1967.
Last night’s by-elections will reverberate around Westminster for a long time.
A challenge to Sir Keir Starmer’s tenure in Number 10 now seems inevitable. But just as importantly, the government’s energy policy could well now find itself in the midst of a serious political storm.
John Curtice is professor of politics at Strathclyde University, and senior fellow at National Centre for Social Research and ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’.
