David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
It would have been all too easy to have assumed that there was only one by-election being held on 18th June. The Makerfield by-election was, to be fair, always going to be a consequential one, and is about to precipitate the resignation of a Prime Minister. But the extent to which the Aberdeen South and Arbroath & Broughty Ferry by-elections had escaped public attention was remarkable.
One might put this down to English parochialism, and conclude that Scottish by-elections fail to attract much attention south of the border. But according to one pollster I spoke to on the day of the vote, even focus groups held in Aberdeen South were more aware of the details of the Makerfield by-election than the one in which they had a vote.
This might have worked against the Tories.
Whereas everyone, with the exception of Elon Musk and the US online right, knew that Makerfield was a battle between Labour and Reform, there were reports of plenty of unionist voters who had not realised that the only way to beat the SNP was to vote Conservative. In the end, the Labour vote fell substantially (thanks to their policy on oil and gas) but the unsuccessful unionist candidates still amassed 18.8 per cent of the vote. Even that was not enough to stop Douglas Lumsden from a very comfortable victory.
Instead of the Conservatives having to defend a very low share of the vote in Makerfield (and, to be fair, there is an explanation – parties that are not plausible contenders usually get very squeezed in by-elections), they could point to a triumph in Aberdeen South. Throw in a couple of council gains in Essex off Reform, and the Tories had their best electoral night for five years. In the context of Kemi Badenoch’s improving personal rating (now the least unpopular party leader in the country) and the growing evidence that the air is leaving the Reform balloon, there are genuine grounds for optimism.
Before we get carried away, it is fair to acknowledge that there was a specific issue – oil and gas policy – that moved votes in Aberdeen South which will not do so elsewhere. Scottish voters are also entitled to be furious with the SNP over the Murrell affair and the convenient timing of his guilty plea, just days after the Scottish Parliamentary elections. But it was the Tories who benefited, not Reform. And looking in the round, it was Reform who were the big losers in all the elections of 18th June.
The Burnham factor was clearly decisive in Makerfield. He was very high-profile, had strong local links, is personable and empathetic, and successfully represented a pro-Labour position with being the anti–Starmer candidate. His habit of saying whatever the audience in front of him wants to hear will, I fear, make him a poor Prime Minister, but it is an annoyingly successful approach to winning elections. Nonetheless, the demography of Makerfield is such that Reform should be doing much better.
To give one example, Makerfield was the 75th most leave constituency in 2016 and Burnham was recently on record as wanting to re-join the EU. Surely Reform ought to be able to take advantage of that? Even though Burnham quickly retreated on the topic, there was ample opportunity to exploit his Remain instincts – assuming the issue still resonates. The fact that Reform did not focus on the issue demonstrates that the public opinion has either moved on, or switched sides (current polling suggests that Makerfield would today narrowly favour Remain).
There is now a run of by-elections in which Reform have under-performed expectations and the consistent reason is tactical voting, something not picked up by most polling models. The Liberal Democrats and Greens were brutally squeezed, presumably with their voters switching to Labour. The Tories were also reduced to a tiny vote, despite fielding a very impressive candidate, but it would be wrong to assume that all their supporters went to Reform. My former colleague, Nigel Evans, for example, spent a day canvassing in Makerfield and reported that he “came across a large number of Tories who felt that whilst they love Kemi – big thumbs up for her- they feared Reform winning so they are voting tactically at this by election for Andy Burnham”.
For Reform, tactical voting is proving to be a very big problem. If a candidate can establish themselves as the best means of stopping Reform from winning (and it does not appear to matter if that candidate is representing a party of the far-left Greens or the centre-right Conservatives), that candidate is likely to get support that is north of 40 per cent. On current polling, there are very few seats where Reform will be able to exceed that. For Conservative MPs worried about the threat of Reform, as long as they do put off tactical voters (which is one reason why Badenoch is spot on in ruling out any deals with Farage), there are now good grounds for optimism.
By-elections are, of course, untypical. The level of voter knowledge is much greater than in a general election, but the understanding of tactical voting has got greater over time. The efficiency of the anti-Tory vote in 2024 demonstrates that even in general elections it can make a substantial impact, and there is every chance that it will be to Reform’s detriment.
This is all the more likely if Reform goes chasing after Restore’s voters. We saw plenty of signs of this in recent weeks. The call from Nigel Farage for cold rage following the sentencing of Henry Nowak’s murderer, and his failure to condemn the riots that followed, was behaviour of an agitator not a statesman. His increasingly racialised rhetoric, appeals to a minority but is repugnant to most. It will only motivate the electorate to vote in the most effective way to defeat his candidates.
Where does this leave Reform?
We are not likely to see a reversal of political fragmentation and, in a world of four or five party politics, there is always much greater uncertainty as to the election outcome. I have always been sceptical that Reform could win a Parliamentary majority, and thought that their ceiling at the next election was about 250 seats. But I also thought that their floor was still substantial at about, say, 150. Even this would be a seismic change in British politics. Now, however, matters are less certain. There is still a route to them winning 250 seats (Labour – under new leadership – continue to perform badly; the public mood worsens etc), but there is also a scenario where Reform loses their way completely, adopts far-right positions to see off Rupert Lowe, and sees tactical voting destroying their chances in all but a couple of dozen seats.
Maybe in even fewer.
It is a risk that I think Farage can already see.
His message on the morning after the results (not an interview, but a clip of him standing in a field amid the alien corn, escaping hard questions) was measured, referring to his party as being “centre-right”. But he is a leader of a party that is now on the defensive. If he does not recover momentum quickly – and that means winning the Greater Manchester mayoralty – his party may have peaked.
If that turns out to be the case, this is very good news for both the country and the Conservative Party.