The Conservatives came fourth in Makerfield. They secured 997 votes. They lost their £500 deposit. In a seat where they won 34% of the vote in 2019, they managed 2.2% last Thursday.
On Sunday morning, shadow chancellor Mel Stride sat down with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One to explain what had happened. It did not go especially well.
The deflection that didn’t land
Stride’s preferred subject was Aberdeen South, where the Tories won a seat from the SNP on the same night – their first by-election win in Scotland since 1967. “It shows what good, clear, policy offering can deliver,” he said. He then attempted to frame the Makerfield story as being primarily about Reform’s underperformance rather than the Conservatives’ own collapse.
Kuenssberg was not especially interested in that framing. “In 2019, you got 34% of the vote in Makerfield,” she said. “This time you got 2%. In those kinds of parts of the country, that suggests you’ve gone way back.”
She pressed further. “A leader like Boris Johnson had a hope in those kinds of constituencies. Under Kemi Badenoch, it doesn’t seem like you do.”
Stride’s response was to note that Makerfield had been a Labour stronghold for around 120 years and was “not one of” the red wall seats the Tories swept in 2019. Kuenssberg’s reply was immediate: “So it’s OK that you got 997 voters, then?”
The Reform distraction
Stride returned to Reform UK, arguing that the party was not surging the way it had been the previous year. Kuenssberg accepted the point but added: “They’re not surging the way they were last year, but you don’t look competitive yet.”
It was a fair summary of where the Conservatives find themselves. Reform did have their worst byelection night since the general election in Makerfield, with Luke Tryl of More in Common describing the result as damaging for Farage’s path to government. But that is a different thing from the Conservatives looking like a credible alternative opposition. Finishing behind Restore Britain – a party that did not exist a year ago – while losing your deposit is difficult to spin as progress.
What the numbers actually show
Andy Burnham won Makerfield with 54.8% of the vote, beating Reform’s Robert Kenyon by more than 9,000 votes. Restore Britain took 6.8% – 3,111 votes. The Conservatives’ Michael Winstanley finished fourth with 997 votes and 2.2% of the share. The Tories, Lib Dems and Greens combined won just 3% of the vote between them, compared with 22% in the same seat in 2024.
The scale of that collapse points to a broader pattern. Winstanley struggled throughout the campaign to make any impression in a contest dominated by Burnham and Kenyon. Voters in Makerfield appear to have concluded that the Conservatives were not a meaningful option and parked their votes accordingly – some with Labour, some with Reform, a handful with Restore Britain.
The Badenoch question
Kuenssberg’s observation about Badenoch was pointed: that Boris Johnson, whatever his other qualities, had a connection with red wall and northern working-class voters that Badenoch has so far failed to replicate. The Conservatives’ 2019 success was built substantially on winning exactly the kinds of seats – left-behind northern towns, post-industrial communities – where they are now finishing fourth.
Badenoch has been clear she intends to rebuild the Tories from the right rather than the centre, rejecting calls to shift her positioning. The Aberdeen result gives her something to point at. Makerfield suggests that strategy has not yet produced a route back into the parts of England that Johnson won and Badenoch needs.
Stride’s response to all of this was, ultimately, to keep pointing at Reform. It is not an unreasonable political strategy – if Reform continues to struggle in by-elections and Restore Britain peels off its hardest voters, there may eventually be space for the Conservatives to recover. But “eventually” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and 997 votes in a seat you won a third of just six years ago is not a foundation to build on.
Kuenssberg did not say any of that. She did not need to. She just kept asking about the 997 votes.
You can watch the interview below:
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