The Conservative Party should stand aside in Makerfield. Not because Reform UK is perfect. Not because Conservatism is dead. And certainly not because those of us who have spent years campaigning for the Tory cause suddenly wish to swap our blue rosettes for turquoise ones. No. The reason is far simpler, far colder, and far more urgent: mathematics.
Politics, ultimately, is arithmetic before it is philosophy.
Look at the actual 2024 result in Makerfield.
Labour won the seat with 18,815 votes. Reform UK came second with 13,416. The Conservatives were nowhere close, finishing third on just 4,379 votes, barely 11 per cent of the vote share.
In other words, Reform finished more than 9,000 votes ahead of the Conservatives. That matters.
This is not a marginal where the Tories are narrowly behind and simply need a better leaflet campaign or a shinier slogan. The electorate has already made a clear strategic choice about who the principal challenger to Labour is in Makerfield, and it is not the Conservative Party.
Now look at the direction of travel since then. Local election results across Wigan and Greater Manchester have shown the same thing repeatedly, the centre-right vote is migrating. Reform is consolidating. The old Tory coalition has fractured, and pretending otherwise is the political equivalent of insisting the Titanic merely had a ventilation issue.
The latest polling reportedly puts Reform on 46 per cent in Makerfield, ahead of Labour. That is not a protest vote anymore. That is a viable electoral machine.
And so the question becomes brutally simple, what matters more, preserving Conservative pride, or preventing more socialism.
Because if Conservatives and Reform continue fighting each other seat after seat, constituency after constituency, then the outcome is entirely predictable. Labour wins through the middle while the Right tears itself apart like rival Roman generals arguing over the ruins.
Sir Edward Leigh is correct. Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is correct. If there are “two Right-wing parties slugging it off in every single constituency”, then “as night follows day there will be a Left-wing government.” That is not ideology. It is electoral gravity.
And let us be honest about the stakes.
This is not merely a local by-election. It is potentially the launchpad for Andy Burnham’s return to Westminster and, eventually, the Labour leadership itself. Burnhamism is not Blairism with a northern accent. It is a far more interventionist, metropolitan socialism, sceptical of markets, relaxed about borrowing, and deeply convinced that the state can spend Britain back into prosperity.
At a time when markets are already jittery, borrowing costs elevated, and growth anaemic, Britain cannot afford another leap leftward wrapped in the language of “fairness”. The country needs enterprise, competitiveness, productivity, ambition. It needs wealth creation before wealth redistribution.
And yes, I say all this as a Conservative.
That is precisely why the Conservative Party must sometimes know when not to fight.
There are many constituencies where Reform should stand aside for the Tories. Southern marginals, rural shires, parts of the Midlands where only the Conservatives can realistically beat Labour or the Liberal Democrats. Any sensible future arrangement would work both ways.
But Makerfield is not one of those places.
Politics is not a debating society. It is a mechanism for power. If Reform is best placed to defeat Labour there, then Conservatives should recognise reality with maturity rather than denial.
Country before party.
In 2019, Nigel Farage stood down Brexit Party candidates in hundreds of seats to help Boris Johnson deliver Brexit. Many Conservatives quietly benefited from that decision while refusing ever to acknowledge the sacrifice. Perhaps this is the moment for some overdue reciprocity.
Because here is the uncomfortable truth the Westminster establishment still refuses to grasp, the British Right is already in coalition electorally. Its voters move fluidly between Conservative and Reform depending on leadership, credibility, and circumstance. The only people pretending otherwise are the professional political class.
By 2029, some form of electoral understanding across parts of the country will become almost unavoidable. The first-past-the-post system rewards unity and punishes fragmentation. Labour understands that instinctively. The Right continues behaving as though tribal loyalty alone can suspend electoral physics.
It cannot.
Makerfield is a test, not just of tactics, but of seriousness.
Do Conservatives wish merely to preserve the emotional comfort of fighting every seat? Or do they actually want to stop Britain drifting permanently toward a high-tax, low-growth managerial socialism?
If the answer is the latter, then the path is obvious.
Stand aside. Unite the Right where necessary. Fight where appropriate. Win where possible.
And above all else, remember that voters care far less about party machinery than politicians do. They care about outcomes. Borders. Energy bills. Growth. Crime. Opportunity. National confidence.
The public will forgive pragmatism.
They will not forgive another generation of failure caused by vanity.
Claire Bullivant
