Manchester: A Meaningless Victory

Politics: a meaningless victory

RICHARD NORTH

A pretty disgusting (if that’s the right word) headline from the Guardian sums up the unreal world of the Manchester mayoral by-election just past.

As expected, Bev Craig, city council leader, won the contest and therefore will succeed Crash and Burn’em as mayor. But, to describe this as a “decisive victory” is to turn logic on its head. The turnout only just broke the 25 percent level, finishing at 25.14 percent – the lowest ever recorded since Burn’em was first elected in 2017 on a turnout of 28.93 percent.

With our “Bev” winning the contest on 47.1 percent of the vote (first preference votes), that means that only 11.8 percent of the registered electorate – around one in eight – could be bothered to vote for her. She takes her post on a wave of indifference with absolutely no democratic mandate whatsoever (not that Burn’em ever had one).

And, for once, the turnout is actually news, at least as far as the Telegraph is concerned. It is running the headline: “Labour wins Manchester mayoral by-election as voter turnout slumps”, with the sub-head telling us: “Boost for Burnham as his party’s candidate Bev Craig beats Reform’s Sian Astley – although fewest votes cast since 2017”.

Incidentally, in this contest, is the first time a new system of voting has taken place in Manchester – the supplemental voting system where, if no party gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, a second count is held, bringing in second preference votes.

Introduced in a rush in what were regarded as suspicious circumstances – aimed at neutralising the Reform vote, it actually made no difference. In the first round, Craig’s 47.1 percent of the vote would have won the day against Reform’s Sian Astley, who took 21 percent of the vote.

If Labour had not dabbled in a rule change and left the first-past-the-post system in place, the outcome would have been the same. As it is, the second round extended the count to a wearying 25 hours, delivering Craig a final vote share of 66.3 percent as opposed to Reform’s 33.7 percent.

Nevertheless, the first-round result reflects longstanding indifference of the British to the idea of elected mayors, going back to the Blair regime and John Prescott’s abortive regionalisation programme, after North-east voters rejected the idea of a regional assembly in a referendum in November 2004.

As a result, two other planned referendums, in North West England and in Yorkshire and Humber, were cancelled, most certainly because Prescott felt that the government wouldn’t win them.

That the idea was so roundly rejected by the one popular vote where it was held and never tested elsewhere should have been the end of the matter. But that assumes we live in a democracy.

Ignoring popular indifference, successive governments have continued to pursue the idea of devolution and elected mayors. Progressively, we have seen the imposition of a series of combined authorities, each with an elected mayor planted at the apex, in a grotesque parody of democracy, sold to a largely indifferent electorate under the pretence of devolution.

This current travesty is only the latest in a long line of executive arrogance, culminating in Manchester getting a mayor with the votes of one-eighth of the electorate.

Ignoring this background, the Guardian burbles about the “scale of the victory” constituting “a significant boost for the new prime minister”. It suggests, says the paper, that Labour can win back both left and right-leaning voters who deserted the party under Keir Starmer.

Actually, on that low turnout in a region that is solidly Labour, there was never going to be a different outcome and, with Labour currently at the crest of an electoral wave (according to the opinion polls) – the so-called “Burnham bounce”, the result was a foregone conclusion.

Nevertheless, the Guardian delights in telling us that the result poses troubling questions for Nigel Farage, “whose party has surrendered its year-long lead in the national polls and is in a deepening crisis over questions about its funding”.

The paper calls in aid a poll last month which had Labour and Reform UK virtually neck and neck in the battle for the mayoralty – a poll which pre-dated the Burnham bounce.

It then cites the May elections, where Farage’s party won more than 100 seats across Greater Manchester, including all but one of the 25 up for grabs in Wigan – the council of Burnham’s new constituency – and 18 out of 19 in Tameside, both once solidly Labour areas.

Before the result was officially declared, we are told that Labour sources were crowing that the party had won in every ward in the boroughs including Bury, Tameside and all but one in Trafford, where both Reform UK and the Greens made inroads in May.

In Oldham, where Reform UK gained 13 councillors and ended Labour’s 15-year grip in power two months ago, Labour won 17 of the 20 wards in the mayoral contest, the paper understands. Labour sources say they had won every ward in Gorton and Denton, the constituency won by the Green party’s Hannah Spencer in February.

It is reasonable to say, though, that the May elections were untypical, and were more a measure of the electorate’s loathing for Starmer than a true test of the popularity of the different parties.

But another comparison gives a different picture of Reform’s performance. In the 2024 UK general election, the vote-share across all 27 Greater Manchester constituencies which voted this week for a mayor stood at 42.5 percent for the Labour Party.

For sure, this time round, Labour increased its share of the vote to 47.1 percent, but Reform also increased its vote share. In the 2024 election, Reform UK polled 17.2 percent of the vote in the 27 constituencies which form the catchment for the mayoral election. But, this time round, Reform upped its share to 21 percent.

If there is a serious loser for which this result “poses troubling questions”, it is the Tories. From 15.7 percent of the vote in 2024, the party’s vote has plummeted to 7.7 percent just now, representing a halving of its popular vote. Badenough simply isn’t making an impact.

The Greens will also be disappointed with their performances, having not made it into the run off. The party won in Gorton and Denton in February and it had convinced itself that the contests was going to be a two-horse race between themselves and Reform, having made significant gains in Manchester in May’s local elections, but they did not make it into the second round.

One person who will be happy with the result, though, (apart from Labour) is Rupert Lowe. His Restore Britain polled overall 8.7 percent, putting it ahead of the Conservatives who, not so long ago were the strong second in the region.

What will particularly please Lowe is that his party has performed much better than recent opinion poll scores would indicate, which have been recording 1-2 percent. And, in the Oldham district, the party did even better, taking 12 percent of the vote. In Tameside, it took nearly 14 percent.

Yet, for all the hoopla – such that it has been – the figures make no difference. Addressing the count centre after being declared the new Mayor of Greater Manchester, Craig burbled: “I am honoured, I am humbled, and I stand ready to serve the three million people that live across this fantastic city region”. She adds: “I never believed as a girl growing up on a council estate that one day I would have a chance to stand for the place that I love”.

She may love the city, although it clearly doesn’t love her. But she now has a nice cushty job and doesn’t need the electorate any more. She can ignore the voters until the next election.

But the charade that this election has been makes hers a meaningless victory. But these days, politicians don’t care. A victory is a victory and money in the bank. And that’s all that matters.

With no mandate at all, Craig will be revelling in her new-found powers, just as Burn’em is announcing that English mayors will be allowed to keep a share of the taxes collected in their area, as part of his pledge to “take power out of Westminster and carry it into every postcode in the country”.

Meanwhile, Burn’em is making a tik-tok video, misnaming teacakes in order to announce the “biggest transfer of power, funding and responsibility from Westminster in a generation – also without a mandate.

With a million views recorded, that is the shape of British politics. We are doomed.

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