Makerfield

Can the ‘Politics of Place’ Offer an Antidote to the Poverty of Possibility?

Having been on Reform UK’s target list as a winnable seat, Andy Burnham’s new constituency is a microcosm of Brexit Britain and the failed legacies of Thatcher and Blair. Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu paid a visit ahead of its seminal by-election

Andy Burnham has made much of the “politics of place”.

By choosing Makerfield as the place of his return to Westminster, what does the constituency and its voters tell us about his likely politics?

Overwhelmingly white, mainly working-class, marginalised in the march to post-industrialisation, Makerfield appears to be the epitome of a ‘Red Wall’ constituency: part of a belt of ‘left behind’ towns and villages that commentators commend or criticise for rejecting the ‘metropolitan elites’ and the UK’s growing social and ethnic diversity.