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- [00:00]
Luke Trill
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Adam
Visit your nearby Lowes. Hello, we're launching a new limited miniseries off the back of the success of electioncast and we are calling it by electioncast so you can guess what the theme of this series is about. Some news has actually happened since we recorded the first episode on Thursday afternoon. The Green Party has said that its former Makerfield by election candidate has apologized for sharing social media posts which describes an attack on ambulances run by a Jewish charity in North London as a false flag. Chris Kennedy had been announced as the party's candidate on Thursday, but withdrew just a couple of hours after that announcement, with the Greens citing personal and family reasons. So we will be recording these episodes every Friday for the next three weeks. But here is a primer which we recorded on Thursday afternoon about why this election is so important and some of the themes and some facts about Makerfield the constituency as a place. And if we're launching a new series, then that means we need to launch some new trademark newscast, in this case by election cast opening titles. Newscast Newscast from the BBC. The political circus is coming to town.
- [01:46]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Makerfield has given one heck of a responsibility.
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Luke Trill
We're in this sort of holding pattern until that by election.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
I don't remember a by election like that. Every man and his dog's gonna be there.
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Luke Trill
The most important by election contest in the past 50 years. Makerfield.
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Adam
Blimey. Hello, it's Adam in the by election cast studio. Gonna have to get used to saying that. And one of the voices in that sequence was Luke Trill. For more in common. Hello Luke.
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Luke Trill
Great to be here.
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Adam
And congratulations for making it into the trademark newscast opening titles. That means you're a very significant person in British politics. Just before we drill into the details of this by election in Makerfield, why did you say it's the most consequential one of the last 50 years? Well.
- [02:26]
Luke Trill
Well look, I mean often I actually spend my time talking about by election saying look, they're often local factors, they're a bit unusual. Don't read too much into them. Swings end up being weird in this by election, we're essentially going to get as close to the run of a general election that you can get in one single area. And the reason that I say that is on the one hand you've got, and we'll talk a bit more about the csc, which should be prime reform territory. On the other hand, you've got Labour's most popular politician in, in the country. And which of those two kind of prevailing factors comes out on top, basically, I think will chart a lot of the course of the next election. If Andy Burnham wins on reform turf, all bets are off. If, on the other hand, he is defeated by reform reforms, momentum is going to go gangbusters. So, you know, and of course, underlying all of this, or the sort of, you know, the sort of what comes after the by election is likely a leadership contest. This is Andy Burnham's audition for Prime Minister.
- [03:29]
Adam
And I think a lot of those elements have played out in previous by elections that we've lived through over the last few decades, but never quite to the extent that you just described there. We have experienced important, pivotal things where big, important theories about politics of the day are tested or people who maybe would be successful crash and burn or whatever, or it leads to big changes in government policy afterwards. But yeah, it's never been quite on this scale. I can see why you went for the 50 year timeline. Also joining us from the BBC in Salford is Kevin Fitzpatrick, who is political reporter for BBC Radio Manchester and Politics Northwest. Hello, Kevin.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
Hello.
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Adam
Restful week for you after the elections.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah. A bit of excitement, isn't there suddenly in my patch, which is always good if you're a political reporter. You want things to be happening, don't you? And I think there's certainly a bit going on at the moment.
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Adam
And what's it been like this week as sort of campaigning has firmly got underway?
- [04:18]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Well, it was a bit crazy last week I was down at Westminster with a whole drama about will they want the. Will an MP stand aside for Burn really have one, or is it all talk? And then as soon as Josh Simons in Makerfield announced he was going, well, all the focus came up here, didn't it? And I think people in the constituency a little bit bemused, really, to suddenly be in the eye of the media storm. Also slightly amused by the fact that the whole world of media have just arrived in Ashton, in Makerfield, which is just one part of quite a wide and varied constituency, all these other different towns. But I think the feeling there is that the media are going to once they get sick of the main town centre, they're going to spread out and be asking people what they reckon in every single part of Makerfield constituency.
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Adam
Yeah and Kevin, do a bit more of geography for us. And I'm always aware of when I was a very junior political reporter being sent out to cover by elections and the first thing I'd do would be like where is the place that really symbolizes this constituency? And it turns out it's actually very hard in Britain to go to a place and find one spot that reflects a whole constituency because everywhere has got lots of different aspects to it. So broaden out the picture of Makerfield for us.
- [05:27]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that really is the case down in Makerfield and it's different to. We had the Gorton and Denton by election here only a couple of months ago, didn't we? And there was a real clear definition there. You had a white working class area in Denton and then down in the Garton area it was much more multicultural and, and varied with a big Muslim population here the whole constituency is 97% white British. There's areas of affluence, areas of deprivation, but it's just in the Wigan borough just on the edge of Wigan and St Helens, real rugby league town if you know your sports. And across the different areas of the constituency there's particular challenges. There's one area which Ashton and Makerfield town centre really been struggling with antisocial behaviour from youths recently. Just up the road there's a place called Platt Bridge and they had some devastating New Year's Day floods last year. You go across other areas and they've got issues with transport. There was a huge illegal tip that the authorities are trying to get a grip of. So across the piste it's a really interesting constituency and the idea that like you say you can just drop into one place and, and get a sense of what everybody who lives and will be voting there feels just isn't really possible.
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Adam
And Luke, tell us about some of the recent political trends in Makerfield and kind of the area around Makerfield.
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Luke Trill
So if you look at Makerfield it has long been traditional Labour territory. It's one of those mining constituencies. There are times when Labour has been getting more than seven in ten of the votes in the seats that has gone down a little bit recently. So both 2019 and 2024 we saw labour getting in the 40s there but still, you know, a reasonable lead. It's not one of the parts of the so called Red wall that fell, you know, during Boris Johnson's Time. But you know, the Conservatives did do a bit better and at the last general election it was one of Reform's better performances. It was actually, and bear with me when I say this, it was their 13th best second place in the country. And what that means is it is right up there on Reform's target list. What they're going to be trying to do and what they would have been certainly aiming to at the next general election is do what Boris Johnson couldn't do when he took large parts of the so called Red Wall and win that seat. But what's, I mean, what's interesting about it as you just heard, is that, you know, I think there's a risk of mischaracterizing it as, you know, we sort of think of like Red Wall areas as kind of very down on their look, classic left behind kind of left behind. And actually, you know, as you just heard, what's really interesting about the seats, even within the seat there are pockets of affluence, there are some very deprived areas and actually some of those deprived areas have a history of voting, not electing, but significantly high numbers voting for ukip, for the BMP as well. So, you know, the sort of radical or far right has done well in parts of the constituency before, other bits where independents have actually done quite well throughout the period. So the idea of it as a Labour monolith can be overstated, but certainly, you know, parliamentary level, they've held that seat since its creation.
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Adam
And look, you were talking about the, the so called Red wall and the 2019 election and Boris Johnson capitalizing on Leave votes around the country, but, but not here. What's a way of thinking about kind of the Brexit legacy in Makerfield?
- [09:03]
Luke Trill
Well, it's interesting, I mean, if you look at the local elections, there was a really clear correlation still between the Reform vote and the Leave vote in the referendum. And that bodes very well for reform in this by election because Makerfield is a constituency where two thirds voted to leave. Now that's not to say that Brexit is particularly salient at the moment. You know, it doesn't come up in focus groups way down.
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Adam
Well, it comes up in our politics a lot more than it used to.
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Luke Trill
But it's way, you know, it's way down this. But it's a more about, I think, what Brexit stood for beyond the eu. That sense of, you know, places like, you know, the Makerfield seat, place like Ashton Makefield in the constituency feeling overlooked. Right. And I think the danger of reopening the Brexit debate is less about Europe in of itself and more people start to go, oh, did they not learn their lesson from that at all? Are we going back to a time when places like Makerfield or Wigan Council get overlooked?
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Adam
And Kevin, just going back to the geography. Makerfield or parts of Makerfield are considered to be parts of Greater Manchester when it comes to, I don't know, voting for a Greater Manchester mayor, for example. But this isn't really part of Manchester, is it?
- [10:15]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
No, it's really out on the edge and Wigan is really proud of the fact that that's where we're from. And in some parts, in terms of Greater Manchester's whole conurbation, the combined authority which runs it, they actually opt out of some bits in things like rubbish collection and all the recycling. So they are just on the edge. There's a huge stretch of land, really, between the big conurbation of Greater Manchester from the outskirts of Salford into Bolton and it comes down into Wigan there. And parts of it are quite rural in this constituency, so there you have a real sense of their identity over there. But Andy Burnham, you know, the Labour candidate, does have links there. He lives in the constituency, he has done for a long time, and even though he is the mayor of Greater Manchester, and that's what he's seen as now, he was for 16 years the MP for Leigh, and since the reorganisation recently, some of his old constituency have come into it. So while you have got a conversation about, you know, the mayor of Greater Manchester dropping into a place on the outskirts, potentially it is where he's from. And I guess people there would be identify him as that. But clearly, straight away, two of the main candidates are the front runners, Andy Burnham and the Reform candidate, Robert Kenyon. They put out promotional campaign videos and the real theme is, I'm from here, this is my area, I know the people, I know the issues, so there's a clear identity. And all the candidates, I'm sure, are going to be trying to say, listen, I get this place, I understand what you feel and what you need.
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Adam
Well, let's talk about the candidates then, in a bit more detail. Let's give ourselves a sort of, like, trading card episode. Andy Barnum. Now, my sort of confusion as a journalist when I'm thinking about this by election, is he's got sort of three hats on, hasn't he? So there's his current job, which is mayor of Greater Manchester. There's the thing he's doing now, which is campaigning to be elected in this Westminster constituency. And then the thing that we all know he wants to do afterwards, if he wins, which is to be Labour leader. And I feel for sort of democratic purposes we should only be looking at the middle one, which is his performance on the campaign trail. But Luke, you can see why Andy Burnham makes a lot of the of hat number one, which is his very successful mayoralty.
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Luke Trill
Yeah. And look, whenever we have run focus groups in Greater Manchester, whether it is in places like Leigh, which you just heard about, or in, you know, more leafy altering them, or indeed in Gorton and Denton, it is rare not to have people in the focus group who don't have some praise for what he's done as mayor, transport in particular, and expect to hear I think a lot more about the B network over the coming weeks and what he's done, which
- [12:58]
Adam
is the integrated transport network in Manchester,
- [13:01]
Luke Trill
very yellow, very yellow there. So you've got that, that sense he's actually delivered something. People also talk about development improvements in Manchester City center itself there. But also there's this wider sense that as mayor he's almost become a sort of champion, not just of Greater Manchester, but of the north as a whole. And one of the things which often comes up in focus groups is that moment when during the pandemic, Greater Manchester was put into a new tier. He looked like he was finding out live on TV on his phone. You know, I was furious about it. And it's kind of created this, you know, sort of almost mythology around him as the champion of the North. What was interesting was, you know, just before the election we were in West Yorkshire and people there were saying we wish we had Nandy Burnham here in. You know, of course they do actually.
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Adam
Yeah, they do, yeah.
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Luke Trill
You know, but you know, there was. There's just this sense that he's got a bit of kind of like oomph about him. And I think that if he is successful in the Baltic, it will be that that carries him over. The sense that this is someone who is genuinely going to stand up for, you know, Greater Manchester, Makerfield, but the north of England as a whole.
- [14:14]
Adam
And also, Kevin, it's interesting because, I mean some of the first things Andy Burnham said in this campaign weren't really about Manchester or the B network or whatever. He was sort of doing a kind of political history lesson and talking about the direction of the country for the last 40 years.
- [14:28]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah. And Andy Burnham's story essentially is that he went to parliament, had 16 years there. He was cabinet minister's under Gordon Brown and then Labour were out of power. And he tried to be leader a couple of times and he left Westminster, he said, frustrated that it just didn't seem to be working for the rest of the country in a way that he thought it should. And then he came to be mayor and his job there was to battle the Westminster system, to try and get the things in Greater Manchester and the north of England that sometimes people in London take for granted, like a fully funded integrated transport system. And he's been at the forefront of the whole devolution conversation. Greater Manchester's often got things first and Greater Manchester has often shown that there are benefits to having devolution and they've done really well. But now he's suddenly come to the point and he's clearly been getting there for some time, where he thinks he needs to go back to Westminster and he's saying, well, I'm going back with the lessons I've learned. But we've had him on BBC Radio Manchester this morning, a half hour, grilling his first interview since he was confirmed as the Labour candidate earlier in this week. And, yeah, he was having to walk that line between saying, I'm really focused on Makerfield, I'd be a great mp. I'm fully across all the local issues, but also referring to the things he thinks he's done as mayor that have benefited places in Makerfield and how if he got the chance to go back to Parliament, you know, if he becomes Prime Minister or not, he could try to get Westminster then to start to listen a bit more.
- [16:01]
Adam
And Kevin, how is he handling those claims that he's just using Makerfield as a stepping stone to get to Downing street eventually, which is one permutation that may emerge from this.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
Well, he's very dismissive of them, as you can imagine. He's saying he would be fully committed at 2 Makerfield. And to be fair to him, he does know the patch. It's not like he's been dropped in and he's trying to catch up and work out what the local issues are. And I mentioned antisocial behavior. Clearly, as police and Crime Commissioner, he's got an understanding of what's been done to try and address that with the flooding issues, as Mary's been involved in the campaign to try and get more investment for flood defences. So he does know the patch, but he can't deny that clearly. The elephant in the room is that everybody knows he would love to be Prime Minister. And he said again this morning, I can't deny, you know, I've always intended to hopefully return to Westminster one day. He's not been as clear as he's making out now. I don't think over the years. I think the first couple of terms as mayor, he was adamant that this was where he wanted to be and you'd really have to persuade him hard to get him back to Westminster. But now he's convinced that the country isn't working. Labour in government isn't working, in his view, and he clearly thinks he's got some part to play. Could he get back to Parliament?
- [17:15]
Adam
And if he wins, he'll have to resign as Mayor of Greater Manchester. So, Kevin, no rest for you if that's what happens?
- [17:21]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
No, and that would be really interesting. He doesn't have to resign until he wins. If he wins. But then there would be a huge by election here, it has to be said, because the winds of political change have swept in the two years since he won his third mayoral term. In that. In that election, he won in every single council seat apart from one where Labour hadn't stood a candidate. But at the local elections two weeks ago, well, Reform UK swept to victory in places like Thameside in Salford, in Wigan, where the Makerfield constituency is, in places where Labour have dominated for decades. And if that was repeated come a mayoral election, it would be very interesting to see whether Labour could hang on. And one final thought on Andy Burnham. He has become this huge figure really, in Labour circles. You'd really have to wonder who on earth Labour could find that would be able to step into the shoes of that seat had he vacated it without the public thinking. Right, well, this is a bit of a lower key version.
- [18:24]
Adam
Right, Kevin, introduce US to reform UK's candidate, Robert Kenyon.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah, so this is Robert, he's a local plumber. And it was a bit amusing to me when Reform announced that he was a plumber and made a big thing of it. As you'll remember, the Gorton and Denton by election, Hannah Spencer, the Green candidate who eventually became the mp, she made a big thing about her being a plumber and the opposition parties were pooh, poohing that, really, and trying to have a bit of fun with it. She was also doing a plastering course as well. But front and centre is the fact that he's a plumber, a local business person. He was elected as a councillor at the local elections recently. He also stood as Reform UK's candidate at the general election in 2024. He's a former army reservist as well, but it hasn't been smooth running so far. He was Only announced on Wednesday. I think he hasn't done any interviews yet. We're told that will be next week potentially. But Nigel Farage was up the first leader of any political party to come and visit the constituency and he was already facing questions about why Robert Kenyon had recently just deleted his Facebook account. The allegations not denied by Reform ukr that he'd ended up being friends on there with a fascist campaigner. Previously he'd also had his X account sanctioned and deleted. But Nigel Farage yesterday was saying essentially, this is nothing to worry about. We've done all our checks, absolutely 100% happy with him. And that what happened was at the last election when he stood, he just accepted friend requests from everybody and there's nothing untoward in it.
- [20:04]
Adam
And Luke, I mean, Robert Kenyon is kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? That isn't really reductive or cliched, but he's a sort of like poster boy for like what, what reform is now as a party compared to what maybe UKIP or the Brexit party.
- [20:20]
Luke Trill
Was exactly that. And in many ways, you know, he kind of, again, not being reductive, embodies the seat as well. In lots of ways, you know, the reformers become the party of that squeezed middle of tradespeople, you know, the self employed. You know, a lot of reform support comes from non graduates people, you know, pursued more vocational roots. And you know, I think there is a lot of appeal of that type of person for lots of people. And actually, you know, to go back to Hannah Spencer, the fact she was a plumber, came up in focus groups in Gorton and then some people like, this is a normal person there. But. And similarly for him, I think it will stand him in good. He's just doing air quotes, just normal, normal person air quotes. Whereas, yeah, you know, Andy Burnham has his record of mayor to run on, but he also has been involved in politics for a long time. It is difficult for him to say that he is an outsider, even though he has been outside Westminster, he's been mayor, you know, he was a cabinet minister. Right. And you've got this big contrast and it's no surprise to me that already Reform and Robert Kenyon are framing it almost as a sort of David and Goliath type battle. You know, actually we know that Brits in general, when it comes to things, quite like the plucky underdog there. So he's making for. It's just another layer of a really interesting contest. I think it is so interesting as well, that Reform seemed to have learned their lesson from Gorton and Denton, where they selected a much more high profile candidate in. Matt Goodwin, who didn't live in the area at the time, had quite a long track record of some quite inflammatory, some people would say, statements, and that juiced up turnout against him. You know, this time Reform have gone almost for, you know, the polar opposite of that in their candidate.
- [22:10]
Adam
And Kevin, how does the Reform campaign feel on the ground? Because Reform like to present themselves as a bit of a sort of like a ragtag insurgent army. But I also wonder if they're actually a lot more sophisticated than that really now, because they've certainly got more money, more staff, more experience. It's all becoming much more kind of professional than the Farage. Oh, I've done it on the back of a fag packet kind of version.
- [22:34]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
It is, yeah. And I think they've learned a lot of lessons from the Galton and Denton by election more generally. And there really. This is back in mid January, wasn't it? That was a standing start for the party. They just had one councillor in the Thames side area, none in Manchester. Those two boroughs kind of make up the constituency and they didn't really have a team to get off the back of. Whereas here in Wigan, They've just had 24 councillors elected after having none before the local elections. So that's a huge team. At the first weekend, this weekend, just gone, they were able to have a whole load of activists out and about. Two buses came down and they've got a load of press officers as well, which hasn't always been the situation. So suddenly it does seem that they are a much more slicker operation and they will be throwing absolutely everything at this by election campaign.
- [23:25]
Adam
Have we checked the review websites to see if he's a good plumber? Does he get. I wouldn't name any of them because that would be. There are many tradespeople review websites.
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
We haven't. No. But you'd hope if he does have jobs booked in, which you'd think a decent plumber would, then he does win, people will be disappointed. And that was the first thing Hannah Spencer announced, wasn't it, when she won, that she was going to have to let a lot of customers down.
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Adam
Right, let's talk about the Conservative candidate. He's Michael Winstanley, former mayor of Wigan. And so, Kevin, what's his backstory?
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Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah, he's been a councillor in Wigan for many, many years. This has been one of those boroughs where it's been an absolute Labour Stronghold. But there's always been some true blue, real traditional Conservative voices and he's been one of them in Wigan for many decades. You mentioned the Brexit election, when the Conservatives swept to victory across the north of England and they ended up getting all these MPs suddenly eight MPs in Greater Manchester, when they'd only ever really had them in the leafy areas of Cheshire and. And the more wealthy Altrigham, we ended up with one in Leigh, just up the road from this constituency. But even then, the councillors, they didn't really have much impact on the council, the conservators. But Michael Winstanley, he's been there, so he'll know this constituency inside out. He's not a fan of Andy Burnham, I can tell you that. He's been critical publicly of him quite a lot over the years and I'm sure he'll be relishing this opportunity to take him and to take reform on.
- [24:54]
Adam
And also he proudly says that Margaret Thatcher was one of his political heroes, which you would think in a former mining era area is not a hugely popular thing to say.
- [25:04]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah, and that's what I say. He's a true blue Conservative. He's one of those who probably in his own community, over the years he's had to argue his case because there would have been so much resentment perhaps over the years to that particular Thatcherite view. But yeah, he stuck to his guns and he's here, part of this huge by election.
- [25:23]
Adam
And Luke, back to your big kind of thesis that we started this episode with. That's a very pretentious word, you'd never use that. But about how this is such a sort of petri dish for the politics of the country at large. Reform have been taking votes from the Tories in places like this as well, not. Not just from Labour.
- [25:41]
Luke Trill
Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the local elections, which were now, they feel like a decade ago, but you know, they were only a fortnight ago, you know, there was switching between blocks, that is people, you know, who voted for left wing parties voting for rights, so Labour to reform switches. But there was also a lot of what we call in block switching, and that is former Conservative voters going to reform UK in particular, you know, this was almost most pronounced in places like Makerfield, Wigan Council, other councils across the north of England where the Conservatives might not have won, or in some cases they did. Almost off the pitch entirely, you know, almost squeezed into irrelevance, which is why I don't think it was ever going to happen. But, you know, when Josh Simons announced he was standing down, you know, there was pressure on the Conservatives not to put up a candidate because people were saying you were going to split the right vote there. Now, look, you know, for a national party, I don't think they were ever going to feel the candidate. I also feel, you know, if they weren't going to feel the candidate, there would have had to be some kind of quid pro quo in one of the other by elections, which I'm sure you're going to go on to talk about in future episodes in Aberdeen south, where they're clearly the challenger to the snp. But Reform announced a candidate very quickly, so I don't think that was ever likely. But it shows you again how far the Conservatives fortunes have fallen, that people are basically saying, look, why are you even running?
- [27:09]
Adam
And that conversation about not splitting the vote within the blocks happened on the left as well, or the progressive side, or whatever label you want to use, because the Greens were discussing whether to stand back to give Labour a better chance, but they decided to field a candidate. He's Chris Kennedy, registered nurse and children's safeguarding specialist. Kevin, have we seen much of Chris Kennedy yet?
- [27:31]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
No, I think you've just used up all the information I have about him, basically. But we're told by the party that he's a committed local campaigner and it's a place where the Greens haven't really had much of a presence over the years, despite the momentum that we would hope to have in the north of England following that by election victory in Gautam and Denton, they came fifth at the last general election, so behind the Liberal Democrats and quite a way behind the Conservatives, Reform and obviously Labour, who were thousands ahead of them. But there would be a conversation, wouldn't there, locally, about whether the Greens are going to take some votes from Andy Burnham, potentially costing him the by election. But we've also got a candidate from Restore Britain and I think there's quite a bit of frustration with Within Reform that they have come up and got involved here. So this is Rupert Law's party, of course. Their candidate is a local businesswoman, Rebecca shepherd, so she's in the mix already. We've not heard from her yet beyond the announcement, but certainly I think it'll be interesting to see how these extra parties do take votes off what we consider to be the two favourites in this Labour and Reform uk.
- [28:41]
Adam
And look, Restore Britain is interesting because they pop up on my social media feed a lot, so they're obviously doing things that Tickle a bit of an algorithm somewhere. But actually they are appearing in the national opinion polls now. Low single figures, but not zero.
- [28:58]
Luke Trill
Absolutely. So, you know, I think one of the big questions about RESTORE has been precisely that. Are they just an online phenomenon? People are very engaged and want to go further. The Nigel Farage and Reform are prepared to go. Obviously RESTORE UK sister party, Great Yarmouth first, which only ran candidates in Great Yarmouth, actually swept the board there. That's Rupert Lowe, their leader's parliamentary seats. They clearly can win elections. And you're right, you know, if you look across the pollsters that prompt for them or include them, they're somewhere around, you know, kind of 3, 4% at the moment. But in an era of fragmented politics, 3 to 4% makes all the difference. And I just think the. I can describe it as what I think will be a meltdown if Andy Burnham comes out on top. And the difference between labor and Reform is that RESTORE vote, because it's going to trigger lots of soul searching. Reform will then start to think, do we have to go further to the right in order to get back that RESTORE vote? But then they risk losing this big bulk of moderate voters or more moderate voters who have powered their rise in the polls. And this is another, you know, it's another reason why I think this by election is so important, because it's going to teach us, you know, about the squeezability, to use the technical term, on the right, but also, as you were just saying, on the left, because again, imagine if Andy Burnham just fall short and the Green margin is high, that's going to trigger so much soul searching there about how can you reunite progressives. So we're going to learn so much, not just about that headline race, but about the underlying dynamics in politics.
- [30:31]
Adam
And I'm glad you said that word squeezability, because it was quite a long way into my political journalism career where I actually understood what that was. And that's that thing you get usually at the end of an election campaign where party A says, don't vote for party B because it will let in party C who you dislike more than me. So vote for me. That's basically the squeeze message, isn't it? And then, Kevin, there's one candidate declared that we haven't mentioned yet. That's Howlin Lord Hope from the official monster raving loony party, who I have seen at many, many, many by elections over the years.
- [31:01]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
Yeah, and I remember the Gartner and Denton count and those lads. It was mostly lads, all lads, in fact. From the Monster Raven Loony party. They had an absolute scream all night. They had a great time and I'm sure, you know, whatever policies they're putting forward there will be a nice little play on words and they will enjoy themselves getting out and about and meeting people.
- [31:19]
Adam
Yeah, Howlin Lord Hope he likes to wear a white suit with a wide brimmed hat and in my mind he's got a big medallion. But maybe I've just added that in my imagination.
- [31:29]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
I think you're blending them all together.
- [31:33]
Adam
That would be a classic monster reaving piece. Party Luke. Right, I think we've done a very good trot around the Makerfield constituency and how it interacts with national politics. Thank you very much, Kevin, for fitting us into an incredibly busy reporting schedule for you for the next few weeks.
- [31:46]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
My pleasure.
- [31:47]
Adam
And Luke, thanks for coming back to the newscast studio.
- [31:49]
Luke Trill
Thanks for having me.
- [31:50]
Adam
I feel we should maybe get you your own newscast mug, but no one else has that, even me, so that would be quite exceptional. Just a reminder that since we recorded that episode of By Election Cast on Thursday afternoon, the Green Party has said that its former candidate in the Makerfield By Election has apologized for sharing social media posts which described an attack on Jewish run ambulances in North London as a false flag. Chris Kennedy had been announced as the party's candidate on Thursday morning just before we started recording. And then after we'd recorded he withdrew for personal reasons. And then that news about his social media usage emerged afterwards. So the fullest of candidates as we now record this extra unexpected bit of By Election cast on Friday morning for the Makerfield By Election are in alphabetical order. Andy Burnham for the Labour Party, Alan Howlin, Lord Hope for the official Munster Raving Loony Party, Robert Kenyon for Reform uk, Rebecca shepherd for Restore Britain, and Michael Winstanley for the Conservative Party. We will be adding to that list as and when other parties announce their candidates after they've been selected. And we'll be back with another episode of By Election Cast in your podcast feeds next Friday morning. Before that though, I'm going to head to HEY on why for the world renowned literary festival there because we're going to be recording a few episodes of Newscast from there and we'll be joined by people who are at HEY because they're talking about their big ideas. We'll have some members of the Newscast family and hopefully some newscasters will be coming to see us in probably a very, very hot tent in a field. And of course we will be sharing those episodes with you so that you can be part of the newscast at hey Experience over the next few days. Bye bye Newscast. Newscast from the BBC well, thank you
- [33:39]
Luke Trill
for making it to the end of another newscast.
- [33:41]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
You clearly ooze stamina.
- [33:43]
Luke Trill
Can I gently encourage you to subscribe
- [33:45]
Adam
to us on BBC Sounds?
- [33:47]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
And then, without having to do anything
- [33:49]
Luke Trill
else, our meandering chats will miraculously make
- [33:53]
Kevin Fitzpatrick
its way to your phone.
- [34:07]
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- [34:30]
Adam
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