In the end, it was not even close. Andy Burnham has won the Makerfield by-election by a landslide, putting him on course to be Britain’s next prime minister.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester managed to unite the left behind his ‘Stop Reform’ campaign, beating even the most optimistic polls with 24,937 votes (54.8 per cent). That put him more than 20 points ahead of Reform’s Robert Kenyon, who won 15,696 votes (34.5 per cent), and in a distant third came Restore Britain’s Rebecca Shepherd, who took 3,111 votes (6.8 per cent).

Now that Burnham has proved he is the man who can take the fight to Reform in a constituency full of ‘their kind of people’, what happens next?

Oscar Edmondson speaks to Tim Shipman.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

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