Far from the gilded halls of Westminster, an unassuming community center – squat, utilitarian, and with a parking lot whose potholes overflow with water whenever it rains – has become the center of power in British politics.

Here, in rooms more accustomed to hosting bingo nights, dance classes, sports watch parties and weddings, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s campaign team is plotting his return to parliament. If he succeeds, it is likely he will challenge Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer for leadership of the center-left governing Labour Party, and so the premiership.

Burnham is widely perceived to be the country’s most popular politician, but he cannot challenge Starmer’s crumbling authority unless he is a sitting member of parliament (MP). And without Burnham’s presence, no Labour leadership race can really materialize despite seven ministers resigning from Starmer’s government since a drubbing for the party in May’s local elections, which do not affect the national government but provide an important indication of the public’s mood.

Burnham has circled a potential seat near Manchester for months. In February, the party’s governing body blocked Burnham from running in another by-election. But, as Starmer’s political capital has eroded ever further, he could do nothing when Burnham’s ally Josh Simons resigned his seat in the Makerfield constituency last month. Burnham was promptly selected as Labour’s candidate, making Thursday’s by-election perhaps the most consequential in British history.

An electorate of around 76,000 now holds the fate of Britain’s prime minister and the direction of the Labour Party in its hands, since many Labour faithful believe only a new leader can salvage the party’s flailing electoral prospects as its traditional voter base fractures – drawn towards the populist left-wing Green Party or the populist hard-right Reform UK, often in once solidly Labour constituencies like Makerfield.

Running under all this for Labour is an existential subtext: If Burnham, often dubbed “The King of the North,” cannot defeat Reform’s candidate Robert Kenyon in Makerfield, there is little hope for the party’s other candidates in similar constituencies.

Both Burnham and Kenyon declined to speak with CNN, saying they were focused on talking directly to constituents rather than the media.

Such high stakes have made this normally overlooked area the effective center of Britain’s political universe. Activists and MPs have arrived from all over the country to help canvass and senior government ministers have traveled “up north” from London to support the campaign, implicitly endorsing Burnham, who has all but pledged to dislodge Starmer, their current boss.

Suited journalists huddle in a local cafe, making calls to update their London offices on the latest gossip, trading snippets of information about how many MPs they think support Burnham’s leadership ambitions or his plans to officially unveil his leadership campaign should he, as is widely expected, win this election. Outside a row of shops in Ashton-in-Makerfield town center, anti-Reform and pro-Labour campaigners stop weary residents to talk politics.

Yet, outside Ashton, which has attracted national journalists for its rail links to London and high footfall, life in the other small towns which make up the constituency continues much the same. Only residents complaining about the volume of campaign leaflets posted through their doors and a few signs peeking out of hedgerows and living room windows (“Vote Andy,” “Makerfield needs Reform” or “Restore Britain,” they shout) denote the significance of the election happening here.

‘The King of the North’

By-elections are typically important for their ability to act as bellwethers, offering an imperfect snapshot of voters’ preferences between general elections. They are not normally the vehicle by which prime ministers are chosen. But these are extraordinary times in British politics.

Since he rode to power in a landslide victory for Labour almost two years ago, Starmer has become trapped in a descending spiral of unpopularity which now, finally, seems terminal. Despite governing with an enormous majority, he has failed to articulate the precise nature of the “change” he promised to deliver, u-turned on several key policies, and left himself with few levers for increasing government spending.

Labour’s popularity has fallen accordingly, in echoes of the fate suffered by the center-right Conservative Party. These two parties have dominated British politics for more than a century, and their waning grip could stress an electoral system more used to balancing two or three parties, rather than the five who now take significant shares of the vote. Nigel Farage’s Reform, which currently leads most national opinion polls, provides the main opposition for Burnham in Makerfield.

So far, Burnham’s current position outside Westminster has largely shielded him from any association with this government.

An affable, instinctive communicator, his popularity has persisted even as his party remains in turmoil, and he’s crafted a narrative it lacks even if the national policy positions he’s staked out during this campaign broadly align with the current government.

Burnham’s identity is wrapped up with his upbringing in the north-west of England – he fervently supports his boyhood soccer club Everton, based in Liverpool, and his music taste is distinctly Mancunian.

That has helped him to position himself as an outsider despite spending 16 years as an MP for the neighboring Leigh constituency, serving under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in Westminster. Under Brown, he eventually became health minister before twice running unsuccessfully for the Labour leadership, in 2010 and 2015.

In 2017, he left parliament to become the mayor of Manchester, where he effectively reinvented himself. “There’s a joke that goes around about Burnham that he can be a bit of a chameleon,” says Lotte Hargrave, a political science researcher at the University of Manchester.

His pitch in this election is that “Westminster doesn’t work” for many communities. Instead, he points to Manchester becoming the country’s fastest growing economy under his mayorship and proposes implementing “Manchesterism” country-wide.

This set of ideas involves “fixing the foundations of the economy, making sure essential services are affordable by getting them back into public control … pushing out power from Whitehall and Westminster to the towns and cities … and a pro-enterprise culture,” explains Mathew Lawrence, founder of the thinktank Common Wealth, who’s seen as one of the intellectual architects of Manchesterism.

‘A classic post-industrial constituency’

Makerfield, despite currently being the most important place in British politics, doesn’t really exist. It doesn’t appear on maps, aside from as a suffix for towns Ashton-in-Makerfield and Ince-in-Makerfield, and locals would never refer to the area as such. It’s simply the name of the constituency which encompasses several small towns, each with their own distinct character, just south of Wigan and about halfway between Manchester and Liverpool.

Despite officially residing within Greater Manchester, the area’s character is more Liverpool than Manchester, says Peter Grey, a retired union representative who volunteers at Bryn Community Shop. “Liverpool is a warm city,” he says. “If you sit on a park bench, someone will sit next to you.”

This area has voted Labour for more than a century. Under the old rules by which British politics played for much of the 20th and early 21st century, the workers, especially those belonging to unions, broadly voted Labour and the landowners broadly voted Conservative. These small towns formerly relied on coal mining, steelworks and manufacturing for work, local historian Peter Fleetwood tells CNN. One resident, 66-year-old Shirley Clarke, started her working life in textile factories “walking in and out of jobs,” she tells CNN.

But like most other northern towns, this area’s economy has been remade in the past 50 years; those major industries have gone, and jobs in construction, retail, education or healthcare are the most common now. Locals speak of few opportunities for young people.

“Demographically speaking, it’s a classic post-industrial constituency,” says Hargrave, the political science researcher. “It’s older than the average place in the UK. It’s overwhelmingly white and British-born, it’s relatively low in terms of graduates, it’s high in home ownership and, crucially for Reform, it supported Brexit.”

The area’s politics are changing too. In last month’s local elections, which proved disastrous for Labour across the country, Reform UK won 24 of the 25 seats contested in the Wigan area. That result was “seismic,” says Fleetwood. “It just came with a bang.”

There is a weariness here, a near-complete disillusionment with mainstream politics and a deep skepticism that any politicians in Westminster can deliver meaningful change. Some locals remain suspicious of Burnham’s ambitions, an easy attack line for Reform, who argue he will not prioritize the constituency.

One resident, 18-year-old home care assistant Alex Moyo, says he probably won’t vote since he doesn’t understand politics. “From what I’ve seen, I probably wouldn’t vote for Reform… they’re saying what people want to hear rather than what’s needed,” he tells CNN.

Another undecided voter, David Young, says “Labour are a joke” and have forgotten their roots as the party of working people, while “the spine of Reform are just the Conservatives, and they damaged Britain by taking us out the EU.”

Others are drawn to Reform’s simplistic narrative that reducing immigration is the antidote to Britain’s problems.

“We stopped the German army from crossing the Channel, and we can’t keep out a dinghy,” says 64-year-old Grant Fryer, who trains service dogs and works with people who have disabilities, referencing the small boat crossings some migrants are making from France.

In recent weeks, the far-right has been accused of co-opting two separate stabbings to advance its anti-migrant narrative. Such arguments are falling on fertile ground. In his campaign, Reform candidate Kenyon, a plumber and local councilor, has sought to mesh together anti-immigrant narratives and thinly veiled references to defending “our Christian heritage,” with a promise to fight for the tight-knit local community.

But questions over historic sexist and homophobic social media posts have dogged his campaign; Kenyon has said they were made before he entered politics. And the rise of Restore Britain, another hard-right party amplified by Elon Musk which advocates for the large-scale deportation of migrants, has siphoned off some support for Reform too.

“This is the first test for Reform in terms of a force coming up further to the right … if (Restore) do well in this seat, it would be something that people pay attention to,” says Hargrave.

Burnham, meanwhile, has shied away from explicitly stating his leadership ambitions and his campaign insists he is taking nothing for granted before Makerfield’s voters head to the polls.

But should he win, it seems to be a matter of when, rather than if, he will challenge Starmer. Whether he can deliver the change Starmer has not yet been able to is another matter. (CNN)

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