𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Reform UK activists fighting to stop Andy Burnham scoring a victory in the Makerfield by-election which could propel him into Downing Street say this once-safe Labour seat has not shared in the prosperity which has transformed the Manchester skyline. Labour will be plunged into a new crisis if the Mayor of Greater Manchester fails to win the seat and Robert Kenyon is instead elected as Reform’s latest MP.

Mr Kenyon insists that the people he wants to represent in Parliament have not shared in the new wealth in the city centre.

“Absolutely not,” he said, before delivering three words that Reform campaigners argue sums up the Makerfield’s experience under Mr Burnham’s mayoralty: “We’ve been ignored.”

The 41-year-old plumber said that if Labour is ousted from Makerfield for the first time in the seat’s history, this will be a demonstration of “democracy in action” proving “you can’t take people for granted”.

Mr Kenyon argues the voters he needs to win over “don’t see themselves as being from Greater Manchester”.

He said: “If you met anyone from Wigan on holiday, [not] one of them would say [they came from] Greater Manchester. They’d say Wigan or Lancashire. That’s our identity that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Paul Watson, a Wigan Reform councillor, gave a scathing assessment of Mr Burnham’s track record on “levelling up” the wider region. He said the “reality is that his investment rarely seems to travel beyond the inner ring of the M60”.

Wigan council’s own figures show the number of jobs has fallen from 129,000 in 2019 to 110,000 in 2024. The share of pupils attaining a 4-9 GCSE grade in English and Maths has dipped from 71% in 2019-20 to 60.8% in 2024-25.

“The further you get from Manchester city centre, the less attention communities like Makerfield receive,” he alleged. “While Manchester enjoys new developments, transport investment and economic growth, our towns have been left behind through years of neglect and underinvestment… Our once-thriving town centres have been hollowed out, replaced by a revolving door of vape shops, barbers and charity shops, while many of our brightest young people are forced to leave the borough in search of better jobs and better prospects.”

Fellow Reform councillor Lee Moffitt claimed “peripheral” towns and villages had been “bled” dry while “vanity projects” were pursued in the the city centre.

He said: “Whilst Manchester enjoys its wonderful Manhattan-style skyline our town centres are universally dying a slow and very painful death.”

Aspiring MP Mr Kenyon said the sense of being ignored is the “common theme that runs throughout this campaign”.

Mr Burnham’s campaign was invited to comment.