In the damp, dispirited terraces of Makerfield, where the ghosts of pitheads still murmur grievances to the wind, one beheld last night a spectacle as quintessentially British as warm beer and cold feet: a by-election.
Andy Burnham, that genial Mancunian mayor who styles himself the King of the North (a title one suspects he awarded after a particularly successful session with the focus groups), sauntered into Parliament with 24,927 votes—54.8% of the turnout, no less. Reform UK’s Robert Kenyon trailed some 9,231 votes behind, a result greeted in certain quarters with the sort of hollow cheer usually reserved for a football team that has avoided relegation by the skin of its teeth. Turnout, at a giddy 58.8%, represented the highest by-election participation since the days when Maggie was still terrifying the unions. One almost expected bunting.
Yet beneath the modest statistical uplift lurks the true story of our benighted polity: voter apathy so profound it makes a Trappist monk look like a gossip. Thousands of of eligible souls simply could not be roused from their sofas, even with the prospect of sending a message to the Westminster circus. They stayed home, these noble abstainers, presumably to binge-watch box sets or contemplate the rising cost of central heating while muttering that “they’re all the same.” One feels a certain dry admiration for their consistency. At least they are reliably useless.
This, dear reader, is where the Australian model beckons like a stern but fair-minded relative. Compulsory voting. Yes, the very notion sends shudders through the libertarian wing—those delicate flowers who prize their 'freedom' to do nothing above all else. But imagine it: every citizen frog-marched to the polling station under pain of a modest fine. The ballot boxes would overflow not merely with ticked boxes but with the glorious effluvia of a truly engaged electorate. Millions of comedic cocks and balls, exquisitely rendered in biro. Crude caricatures of party leaders. Shopping lists. The occasional heartfelt poem about the price of bread. Democracy, in short, laid gloriously bare. Far better this riot of vulgar self-expression than the silent, sullen void we currently endure. At least the nation would be heard, even if in the language of the urinal wall.
The centre-right, meanwhile, continues its time-honoured tradition of self-immolation. Conservatives scraped a pitiful 997 votes. The right-wing vote, such as it is, splinters like a cheap wine glass at a wake: Reform here, some Restorationist splinter there, a few lonely Lib Dems wandering in the wilderness. One pictures a dozen well-meaning chaps in tweed arguing over doctrinal purity while Labour’s machine simply hoovers up the disaffected. It is less a political strategy than performance art for masochists. If the right wishes to win again, it might consider ceasing to treat electoral politics as an exercise in purist fragmentation. But old habits, like bad hangovers, die hard.
And what of the victor? Burnham, the change candidate who promises—oh, how he promises—to be the final chance for Labour to alter course. The irony is thicker than a Wigan pie crust. Here is a man who has long positioned himself as the authentic voice of the North, the antidote to metropolitan slickness, the fellow who actually gets the post-industrial heartlands. Yet one suspects the change he delivers will be largely cosmetic: fresh slogans, perhaps a more northern accent in the dispatch box, but the same creaking machinery of high taxes, open borders, net zero zealotry, and cultural lectures from people who have never changed a fuse. No fundamental reckoning with the failures that produced Reform’s strong showing. No serious course correction. Just more of the same, served with a side order of regional pride.
One watches the prospect of Prime Minister Burnham with the queasy fascination of a man observing an oncoming bus. The country, already wearied by one set of managerial progressives, may soon exchange them for another who knows the words to “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” The blind Labour voters—those tribal loyalists who would support a lamp-post if it carried the rose—will cheer. The apathetic will continue not voting. And the rest of us will be left pondering whether compulsory voting, cock-and-ball doodles and all, might at least force the polity into something resembling honest confrontation with itself.
Makerfield has spoken, after a fashion. The question is whether anyone in Westminster is capable of listening through the fog of their own complacency. One rather doubts it. The circus rolls on.