If you spent the last fortnight listening to Reform UK, you could have been forgiven for thinking Makerfield was already in the bag. The win was supposed to be inevitable. One of those places where history had stopped, Labour had collapsed and Nigel Farage’s troops merely had to turn up to collect the keys.
Momentum is a wonderful thing while you have it. The difficulty comes when it slows. A movement built on inevitability suddenly has to answer questions about competence, discipline and substance
I’d wager Reform’s top brass couldn’t believe their luck when Josh Simons, the Labour Together alumnus, stepped aside to clear the way for Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster. This was, after all, Reform’s sixth strongest target according to the MRP models – the very same models that the likes of Zia Yusuf delight in waving under the noses of my Conservative colleagues while informing them they’re not long for this world.
Then Thursday happened. Burnham strolled home with 54.8 per cent of the vote. Reform’s Robert Kenyon managed 34.5 per cent, 20 points adrift. Hardly the revolution.
Further north, something rather less noisy happened. In Aberdeen South, the Conservatives quietly took the former constituency of the SNP’s Westminster leader on a swing approaching 15 points. Reform, meanwhile, finished fourth on 8.6 per cent. One result made the headlines. The other told the more interesting story.
