In the May local elections, Labour had been all-but wiped out in many areas, with Reform winning 13 council seats in Oldham, and an early poll ahead of the mayoral election showed Labour and Reform neck and neck.
Yet in the event, Labour won 47% of a vote split across seven candidates, way more than double the 21% vote for Reform candidate Astley who carried none of the women-hating baggage of the Reform candidate in the recent Makerfield by-election which returned Burnham to Parliament.
Labour’s Craig also won 56% of the second-preference votes in a run-off against Reform, required in the election as no candidate won an overall majority of first-preference votes.
The low turnout – just over 25% – means only one in 20 voters (5% of the total) turned out to back Farage’s candidate when Reform will have desperately wanted to mobilise supporters and put an end to a series of disappointing results for the party.
Labour beat Reform in all 10 boroughs but no room for complacency
Labour also comfortably beat Reform in all 10 boroughs, and in eight out of 10 was comfortably ahead of the votes for Reform and its rival Restore Britain combined.
But resounding as Craig’s victory was, it leaves no room for complacency.
The Restore Britain party of Great Yarmouth MP Rupert Lowe, who broke from Reform and Farage on the grounds that they were not anti-migrant enough and which allows fascist groups to campaign and organise openly within its ranks, captured almost 9% of the vote. More than 46,000 turned out to vote for this vehicle for Nazis.
Restore Britain won more than 9% in five of the 10 boroughs, taking 10% in Bolton and Wigan, 12% in Oldham and Rochdale, and 14% in Tameside.
Reform also did better in boroughs around Manchester than near the city centre – capturing 25% of the vote in Bolton, 26% in Rochdale, 28% in both Oldham and Tameside, and 30% in Wigan.
The combined Reform and Restore Britain vote in Tameside equalled Labour’s on 42%. It did so also in Oldham, where Reform and Restore together polled 40%. In Rochdale, Reform and Restore combined won 38% of the vote, just three percentage points behind Labour.
In Bolton, they captured 35% together, four points behind Labour, and in Wigan they polled 40% to Labour’s 47%.
We can presume it was primarily Restore UK voters who provided the 45,250 second-preference votes for Reform and, worryingly, Reform won more second-preference votes than Labour in six boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Tameside and Wigan.
Low turnout exaggerates performance of the racist parties, but the threat remains
The low turnout exaggerates the performance of these racist parties and their vote percentages combined. But the 25% turnout also means Labour won the first-preference votes of only 12% of those eligible to vote – hardly a ringing endorsement.
The turnout was well down on the 33%-39% recorded in local elections in England in May, and on the 60% at the 2024 general election. Bev Craig’s 47% of first-preference votes was also well down on the votes for Andy Burnham for mayor – 63% in 2017 and 2024, and 67% in 2021.
Craig may be less well known but will have benefited from the ‘bounce’ in the polls for Labour since Burnham replaced Keir Starmer on July 20.
We should assume also that Reform re-focussed its resources on Clacton where Farage is seeking re-election as an MP on August 13 after resigning his seat in early July to deflect attention from the growing scandal over the seemingly illegal sources of his and Reform’s funds.
Craig hailed her and Labour’s victory, saying Greater Manchester had rejected the “politics of hate”. That is true up to a point. But three out of four potential voters did not register a view either way on the politics of hate.
How long the ‘Burnham bounce’ continues, how long before a sense of crisis returns and Farage and Lowe seek to profit from it, we don’t know. But this is no time to relax.
Manchester – like the by-elections this year in Makerfield (won by Labour), Gorton and Denton (won by the Green Party), and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry (won by the SNP) – demonstrates Reform UK can be beaten. However, the threat remains.