𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour is accused of changing election rules to stop a candidate from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK succeeding Andy Burnham as the Mayor of Greater Manchester if he wins Thursday’s Makerfield by-election and enters Parliament.

The First Past the Post system will not be used in the next mayoral election. Instead, the Supplementary Vote system will allow people to choose their first and second choice candidates. Conservative peer and election expert Robert Hayward blasted the move, saying the change had been brought in because “the Labour Party has got itself into an almighty mess in the North-west.”

He claimed First Past the Post was being scrapped in “an attempt to prevent Reform winning the possible Greater Manchester mayoralty by-election”.

“There is no other justification for the haste with which this order has been introduced, other than that it solves the Labour party’s problems and prevents Reform winning a mayoralty,” he said. “It does not do British democracy well when the position is as blatant as that – nothing more, nothing less.”

Fellow Conservative peer and veteran Brexiteer Lord Jackson said the move looked “like a cynical stitch-up to avoid embarrassment in the combined boroughs of Greater Manchester”.

However, Labour minister Baroness Taylor denied the change was made for “political advantage”.

She said the Government was restoring the voting system originally introduced by the Conservatives and then changed in 2022.

However, a Reform UK spokesman said: “Labour know they can’t beat us at the ballot box, so they’re changing the rules in a desperate attempt to keep themselves in power. Perhaps if Labour hadn’t raised taxes, punished wealth creators, attacked farmers, opened our borders and made Britain less safe, it wouldn’t be so terrified of facing the voters.”