Andy Burnham announces that sex offenders will be inelegible for early release. This is an obvious cheap shot announcement but there appears to be some story behind it. In the mayoral by-election Rupert Lowe’s Restore party clearly went all in on sex abuse gangs, with the candidate being the father of an abuse survivor. The Restore page of the election booklet was clearly careful not to mention the ethnic background of the perpetrators but the focus is clear.

Sexual abuse has a long and sorry history in the outer bounds of Greater Manchester, going back to Cyril Smith in his days before he became a prominent Liberal MP. The Labour party has a record of feigning cultural sensitivity and kicked off the obsession with DEI leading to the poor policing that repeatedly failed the common person. In such circumstances West is absolutely in his rights to campaign on these things.

Restore predictably tanked in the urban areas but Greater Manchester also includes far more council areas than Manchester City itself and in half of them Restore outperformed the Greens. In Oldham and Rochdale they reached the mid-teens which coincidentally are the areas where these gangs are still a raw issue. This is Andy Burnham’s back yard and he has made a shameless attempt to avoid a sore point within it.

The replacement of Kier Starmer as British prime minister with Andy Burnham is a non-event as the shackles of the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) will ensure the same inability to take any properly tough decisions. However with Burnham having done a runner from his position as Mayor of Manchester there is a by-election to fill the position, and this would have passed me by had it not been for a chance encounter with some literature. And both pieces are pretty dire.

If the best headline these two parties independently can come up with is Stop Reform it is fingernails scratching the bottom of the barrel. Of all the possible headlines it is the one that increases the chances of Reform winning. Labour are in free-fall and in such situations painting the opponent as someone who “must be stopped” has a poor track record of succeeding. Just look at how effective that was against Donald Trump.

In Gorton and Denton Reform lost because they fielded an in-your-face candidate in the form of a conservative christian whose day job was a GB News presenter and who was listed as living in Hitchen. They could not have fielded a candidate who grated so many local nerves. It is a mistake they were wise not to repeat in Makerfield although that one was lost because of Burnham’s personal vote and Restore acting as a spoiler candidate.

If the election was just the City of Manchester the chances are that the Greens would win it hands-down but the Mayor also covers a large area surrounding the city, and it is due to these areas Reform could win via the same donut strategy that allowed the Conservatives to win the Mayor of London. These are the stereotypical “left behind” areas.

There is an assumption that elections are Reform versus everyone else, but there is also a significant cohort that would rather like to wipe the smile off Labour’s face. Odds are not in its favour but it is not impossible.