Makerfield by election poll
Burnham's the front-runner
Survation have a poll on the Makerfield by election:
It’s based on a sample of only 518 people, so you may want to take it with a pinch of salt. But I think the main thrust -- Burnham winning, Reform 2nd and Restore 3rd -- is broadly correct.
Amusingly the Tories and Lib Dems are both on 1%!
Manifold Market
I have a Manifold market on the Makerfield by election:
Some people might say that Manifold is play money only (which is true) and that therefore it is less accurate than real money markets such as Polymarket or Kalshi. This is not true, as Manifold typically produces very similar %age probabilities as those two markets. For example, I previously did a Manifold market on the outcome (seat shares) of the 2026 Scottish parliament election, and the market produced predictions similar to the final result of the election.
Burnham will probably win
Andy Burnham is likely to win the by election. Because Starmer is unpopular, and many Labour MPs see him as a liability, it’s likely there will be a challenge to his leadership and they will elect Burnham to be the new Labour leader (and therefore Prime Minister).
How will Burnham govern?
Burnham is too clever and competent a politician not to be aware that many socially conservative voters (including many who voted Labour in 2024) are concerned about immigration, two-tier policing and anti-white racism. But I doubt he will do much about these issues, for two reasons:
(1) Most Labour activists are woke, and they would prevent him doing much.
(2) It might not work anyway. Measures that attract socially conservative voters will also cause socially liberal Labour voters to move to the Greens, so they could actually lose more votes than they gain.
(Another possibility is that Labour out of clumsiness and incompetence manage to anger both woke and anti-woke voters; I’m reminded of the 2024 election where the Tories pissed off all sections of the electorate, causing their inevitable downfall. I suspect Burnham is more competent than Starmer, so is less likely to make that mistake.)
The 2029 election
Starmer’s strategy for the 2029 election, then, will be to try to be competent on economic issues (they will fail to make much progress with the economy), and to portray the other parties as unfit to govern. So they will probably say Farage is authoritarian and too close to Trump, while Polanski is a naive idealist who will fail to defend us against Putin.
So their pitch will be, in effect: “Vote Labour! We might be crap, but the others are worse!”
Will this work? Maybe. I can see Labour just scraping through with a wafer-thin majority. More likely, they won’t. But they’ll do better with Burnham as leader than with Starmer.
Who runs the country?
People think the Uniparty obey globalist influencers .
With so many Tory wets joining Reform they too are in the Uniparty.
So does it matter if Labour or Reform win?
No. They will obey their real bosses.
If Restore does well, despite the censorship, thats a win.
I'm very ‘pro’ Restore Britain. However, I fear that its presence in th Makerfield by-election is playing into the hands of Labour.
Lowe and Farage need pocket their personal differences to achieve an aligned strategy.
The social cancer of the Left is utilising a two pronged strategy via Labour and the hijacked Greens.
The Right (the ABSOLUTELY ‘right’) need to play a similar game.