Farage blames Makerfield defeat on anti-Starmer votes

Nigel Farage says he is disappointed with Reform UK's performance in the Makerfield by-election, as he blamed his party's defeat on a desire among voters to eject Sir Keir Starmer from Downing Street.

The Reform leader claimed frustration with the embattled prime minister had driven Andy Burnham's "emphatic" Labour victory over his party's candidate, Rob Kenyon, who finished more than 9,000 votes behind.

He also conceded his party had also lost votes to rightwing rival Restore Britain, founded by ex-Reform MP Rupert Lowe, which finished third in a breakthrough night for the fledgling party.

He issued a plea for Restore voters to back Reform instead, as the main "challenger party to the left".

Reform had sought to defeat Burnham in the Makerfield seat, giving it a high-profile scalp to boost its credentials as the likely main opposition party to Labour at the next general election.

But Burnham increased Labour's majority over Reform in the constituency in a rare feat for a candidate from the governing party.

The outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester is now expected to challenge Sir Keir for the Labour leadership and keys to No 10.

He would otherwise be barred from doing so without a seat in Parliament, making the Labour leadership a key issue in the contest in Makerfield, just south of Wigan.

In a video clip posted online, Farage said his party's second-place finish was a "disappointing" result, adding Burnham had won the contest with a "vote share that nobody could quite see coming".

"In many ways, he's a popular local mayor, just as Boris Johnson was a popular mayor in London just a few years ago," he said. "But what really happened here is it was 'vote Burnham, get Starmer out'."

He added that Reform had been "slightly hoist with our own petard", having previously framed a series of local and national elections in May as a chance for voters to put an end to Starmer's faltering premiership.

He also expressed frustration with Restore, which sought to outflank Reform on the right with bold promises including "the most ambitious programme of mass deportations ever seen in Britain".

"I thought we'd get 18,000 votes, we got just shy of 16 [thousand]. So I'm disappointed by that, no question about it," Farage added.

"There's a couple of thousand voters there who would normally have gone out and voted Reform, that voted Restore. And I would say directly to them, what do you want?

"We are the challenger party to the left in this country. And I would urge you to think again, I really, really would."

The by-election marks the first time that Restore Britain, which was registered as a political party in March, has contested a Westminster seat, marking its emergence on the national political stage.

It had been polling at around 3% nationwide but its performance in the high-profile Makerfield contest, where it captured around 7% of the vote, presents a strategic dilemma for Farage ahead of the next general election.