The Makerfield Test, marked by its voters and found wanting

IN JUNE, Andy Burnham stood in front of the cameras and promised a Makerfield Test. Nothing would be done to the country, he said, that the people of Makerfield would not stomach. The places Westminster had neglected would now get fairness. It was good copy. It was meant to be. A man who has spent his career being northern to people knew exactly how it would land, and land it did.

Five months on, Survation went back to Makerfield (in a poll covered by The Times and the Telegraph) and asked the question he never has. Not about Brexit. Not about Brussels. Labour Party historian, Dr Richard Johnson of Queen Mary University of London designed the poll so the EU was not mentioned once, precisely to pull people out of the trenches of 2016 and find out what they think about where power should lie. Who should decide VAT? Who should decide which criminals get through the door at Dover? Who should decide whether the NHS can approve a medicine, whether a council can buy British, whether a government can put money into a struggling town?

Who should decide whether the NHS can approve a medicine, whether a council can buy British, whether a government can put money into a struggling town?

Makerfield answered. On every one of ten policies, a clear majority, never lower than 67 per cent and rising to 80 per cent, said UK governments alone. Not in partnership. Not in alignment. Alone. State aid for regional development, the very thing Burnham claims he wants to provide for the North: 80 per cent. VAT: 78 per cent. Refusing criminals entry: 75 per cent. Food standards: 74 per cent. The share who thought Britain should be required to follow decisions made by international institutions ran from 12 per cent down to 2 per cent. You could fit the 2 per cent in a snug in Hindley and still have stools to spare.

The margin of error is 5.8 percentage points. It does not matter. Give the rejoiners every point of it twice over and the result still reads like a referendum nobody dared call.

make the status quo – independence – work for us is not on Burnham’s list

So here is the test, marked by the very examiners he appointed. And in twelve days the Prime Minister goes to his summit with the EU to lay out, as he puts it, the options for Britain’s long-term relationship. He has already told us there are three. A customs union. The single market. Full membership. Each of them hands some or all of those ten decisions to the institutions the voters of Makerfield were asked about and waved away by majorities of two-thirds to four-fifths. The fourth option, the one 500 of his own constituents just described to a stranger on the telephone, is not on his list. It is the obvious one, make the status quo – independence – work for us.

This is what should make Labour MPs feel sick rather than merely uneasy. Look at where these sovereignty majorities were strongest. Not on the culture-war ground the commentariat expects. On economic management. Industrial policy. Taxation. Public investment. The old Labour lifeblood. Railway nationalisation, a public energy company, Buy British procurement, regional state aid. These are Burnham’s own hymns, yet he proposes to let Brussels write the sheet music. You cannot build a new Jerusalem while asking the Commission whether your state aid for the foundations is compatible with its rules.

Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, has worked it out. Voters in Labour’s heartlands, he says, will not sign up to rules they have no say over, enforced by courts they do not control. One Labour MP. There will be more, once they read the data tables and then look at their own majorities. Meanwhile, Reform absolutely will be doing so, and letting those voters know exactly what Labour is up to.

EU judges with a hand in disputes. A trade policy with the brakes welded on. Rules we must follow and may not write.

What Burnham offers instead is the reset. Dynamic alignment through the sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement. EU judges with a hand in disputes. A trade policy with the brakes welded on. Rules we must follow and may not write. That is not a partnership, it is a tenancy, and the landlord sets the rent.

I spent a quarter of a century being told the public did not understand its own interests. Burnham has found a shorter route to the same arrogance. He invented a test, named it after the people who elected him, and then declined to sit it. Worse – he did sit it. He just hasn’t read the marks.

The Makerfield Test was his idea. Makerfield has handed back the paper. On ten questions out of ten, the Prime Minister’s own voters have failed his own policy. He has until 20 November to decide whether the test was ever anything more than a slogan with a postcode somewhere grim up North.

I think we know.

This article was first published 9 November 2026 on Gawain Towler’s substack Fainting with coils. 

Photo of Prime Minister Andy Burnham meeting Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre who said recently that the UK should avoid adopting EU laws like his country did  – By Number 10, OGL 3, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=200439856