Burnham wins Makerfield

while Tories win Aberdeen South

We had three by elections yesterday: Makerfield in England and Aberdeen South and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry in Scotland.

Here’s Andy Burnham giving his victory speech in the Makerfield by election:

Makerfield

Labour candidate Andy Burnham won handily with 55% of the vote.

Reform came second, although their vote share was only 2.7 points up from 2024, so they will be disappointed by this performance.

It was Restore Britain’s first parliamentary election, and they came third on just under 7% of the vote. This was a solid performance for a new party that was only created this year.

Devolved elections (in Scotland, London, Wales, Northern Ireland) and local government elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland all use somewhat proportional systems, and 7% vote share is enough to be in with a chance of winning in these elections. 7% is however not enough to win Westminster elections.

Aberdeen South

The Conservatives won this, doubling their vote share.

This compares with Makerfield where the Tories only got 2%. Winning Aberdeen South means the Tories are still a force in parts of the country, and Badenoch will be pleased with this result, as it means she keeps her job.

I had expected the SNP to win here, as they won it in 2024 in what was a bad year of them.

Arbroath and Broughty Ferry

In contrast with Aberdeen, the SNP won handily in Arbroath:

The SNP’s vote share was up. In fact, everyone’s vote share went up, except for Labour, whose vote share collapsed. Coming on the same day as their emphatic win in Makerfield, I’m not sure what to make of this other than that the electorate are fickle.

Just a bit of fun...

Just for a bit of fun I put the changes in vote shares into Electoral Calculus, and it spat out a conservative majority of 48, on a mere 31% of the vote:

Do I think this is what will happen? Probably not, but with the volatility of the electorate and the disproportionality caused by FPTP it’s plausible that something like this might happen.

FPTP is clearly unfit for purpose, in a UK that has a 5 party system (or a 6 party system if Restore do well, or a 7 party system in Scotland and Wales if Restore does well in those countries). While everyone agrees that things are fucked up, they disagree on how to fix things, which is what is causing the increase in the number of largeish parties.

The next Prime Minister?

Back in 2024 I created a Manifold Market on Who will be the next UK Prime Minister after Keir Starmer.

Andy Burnham is currently at 83%:

Will Burnham become prime minister? Probably.

Will he make a better PM than Starmer? Burnham is more likeable so Labour will probably do better. I doubt that he will go very far in making any of the big changes urgently needed in Britain.