After Makerfield, the Answer Cannot be Managerial Politics with a Different Accent

Only structural change which seeks to transform a failing system can actually deliver a politics people will believe in, writes Labour MP Clive Lewis

At the last Constituency Labour Party meeting, I told members that the future of Labour hinged on Makerfield. Not just the party. The Government too.

If Reform UK won this heartland seat, a place Labour had already been told it had lost, its victory would not stop there. It would harden the story Reform wants the UK to believe: that the old Labour towns have gone; that the ‘Red Wall’ has collapsed; and Nigel Farage’s party is no longer a protest vehicle but the next force in British politics.

That is why the by-election mattered.