18/6/2026 by-elections - including Makerfield

[Gathursty]

I live in Makerfield and have canvassed for Labour here recently. I don't care about him being a dad, in the TA or even a plumber. In fact, I dislike him using that to claim he is 'normal'. His views are abhorrent.

His policies, if they are actually his and not his puppet master, are either Labour policy already or in the case of the overtime rebate, so minor in the grand scheme of things, they have little effect on people any way.

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

I fully get why some Labour voters have lapsed because they feel the pound in their pocket is stretched rather thin and as such, provisions from the government are slimmer but to then get taken in by 'the problem is those people over there' cuts any further sympathy I have with those voters.

Wigan is better than scapegoating foreigners however we seem to be having a renaissance of people feeling too confident in being xenophobic in my town.

 

[brad465]

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

I shouldn't think like this, but we really need to allow Darwinism to run its course with this sort of level of intellect around.

 

[nw1]

I think you meant that he's entirely unsuitable to be an MP.

I did, sorry. From his comments, the Reform candidate is absolutely unsuitable.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jun 2026 ==

I live in Makerfield and have canvassed for Labour here recently. I don't care about him being a dad, in the TA or even a plumber. In fact, I dislike him using that to claim he is 'normal'. His views are abhorrent.

His policies, if they are actually his and not his puppet master, are either Labour policy already or in the case of the overtime rebate, so minor in the grand scheme of things, they have little effect on people any way.

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

I fully get why some Labour voters have lapsed because they feel the pound in their pocket is stretched rather thin and as such, provisions from the government are slimmer but to then get taken in by 'the problem is those people over there' cuts any further sympathy I have with those voters.

Wigan is better than scapegoating foreigners however we seem to be having a renaissance of people feeling too confident in being xenophobic in my town.

Not liking Labour isn't really an excuse for voting Reform though. You have other parties: the Tories would presumably be a reasonable choice for those who lean a bit rightwards and are a bit anti-immigration.

 

[Tetchytyke]

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

But we mustn't call Reform voters thick.

 

[SuspectUsual]

There's a Makerfield special edition of Question Time tonight. I've largely given up on watching QT because its a pale imitation of the series debate programme it once was, but I may make an exception for tonight to watch the Reform candidate attempting to form coherent responses without his handlers next to him and without the questions being fed to him by a friendly interviewer

Meanwhile, Rupert Lowe was this morning "consulting his legal team" to see what can be done about Restore's exclusion * from the debate. Cry harder, racist grandad. Obviously, off the back of this he's reannounced that under a Restore government (hahaha) the BBC will be defunded "on day one". What is it about these people who love free speech so much, but see their arses when the free speech doesn't give them what they want?




* for "exclusion" read "not invited"

 

[Snow1964]

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

That says a lot about Reform pensioner voters :
didn't like U-turn to warm homes that added 2.7m homes to discount
WASPI who didn't bother to check since 1995 what their pension age was
Didn't notice Brits went abroad and bought diseases back

Sort of makes them sound stupid

 

[nw1]

That says a lot about Reform pensioner voters :
didn't like U-turn to warm homes that added 2.7m homes to discount
WASPI who didn't bother to check since 1995 what their pension age was
Didn't notice Brits went abroad and bought diseases back

Sort of makes them sound stupid

What I don't really understand is why the WASPIs think of themselves as more special than other generations.

For example, as a member of Gen X, my pension age has risen from 65 to 68. It's not great (though I personally don't mind as I don't really want to retire early) - yet for people of my generation the ethic seems to be "put up or shut up". Why is it OK for the WASPIs to complain and not OK for younger generations to complain? Why should taxpayers fund the WASPIs when we are not the recipient of such generous treatment ourselves?

 

[SuspectUsual]

What I don't really understand is why the WASPIs think of themselves as more special than other generations.

For example, as a member of Gen X, my pension age has risen from 65 to 68. It's not great (though I personally don't mind as I don't really want to retire early) - yet for people of my generation the ethic seems to be "put up or shut up". Why is it OK for the WASPIs to complain and not OK for younger generations to complain? Why should taxpayers fund the WASPIs when we are not the recipient of such generous treatment ourselves?

The massive difference is the age at which they were informed.

 

[nw1]

The massive difference is the age at which they were informed.

Mind you they were still quite young, relatively speaking, in 1995. They may not have been officially informed, but I don't think I was ever officially informed that my pension age would rise from 65 to 67 and then further to 68.

 

[SuspectUsual]

Mind you they were still quite young, relatively speaking, in 1995.

They generally were, but they weren’t informed individually for another 10-12 years so many were genuinely ignorant of the passing of the law and effectively had less than two years notice. Some claim never to have been informed and only to have found out at age 60.

I don’t understand why those potentially impacted weren’t told soon after the passing of the 1995 law

 

[nw1]

They generally were, but they weren’t informed individually for another 10-12 years so many were genuinely ignorant of the passing of the law and effectively had less than two years notice. Some claim never to have been informed and only to have found out at age 60.

I don’t understand why those potentially impacted weren’t told soon after the passing of the 1995 law

Then this was really the responsibility of the 1995 government. Why is it anything to do with Starmer? It wasn't even passed by Labour, let alone Starmer.

 

[edwin_m]

Not sure if there's any connection, but I got a letter recently informing me when I would qualify for State pension.

 

[nw1]

Not sure if there's any connection, but I got a letter recently informing me when I would qualify for State pension.

I've never had such a thing, even though it was 65 when I turned 18, became 67 for a while, and is now 68. It's just something I've picked up via the news.

 

[cb a1]

Then this was really the responsibility of the 1995 government. Why is it anything to do with Starmer? It wasn't even passed by Labour, let alone Starmer.

"It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always wins."
Until a revolution, philosophically we still have the same government today as we had in 1995, 1895, etc.

 

[WesternLancer]

Then this was really the responsibility of the 1995 government. Why is it anything to do with Starmer?

Ref WASPI.
Because Labour indicated/ intimated they would ‘put things right’ or some such when in opposition but then u turned on it in power.
And rather worse in my view decided not to implement the outcome of a parliamentary ombudsman investigation indicating some compensation was due. Which I suspect is unprecedented in respect of this ombudsman, whose decisions are respected by convention.

I think this is their reason.

I think there’s also the issue that such women will have spent most of their working life assuming they would get a state pension at x age, then with fairly short notice (in retirement and pension planning terms) that got changed - and for many quite significantly given for many decades it had been 60.
Whereas for eg me the change from 65 to 67 was more modest and was announced some roughly two decades before I would be that age and thus I’m better able to plan for that change in financial terms. At least in theory.

 

[Tetchytyke]

without his handlers next to him and without the questions being fed to him by a friendly interviewer

Fiona Bruce is always very gentle with the Faragist lot, she's almost as bad as Kuenssberg.

Whereas for eg me the change from 65 to 67 was more modest and was announced some roughly two decades before I would be that age

I don't think that really matters tbh.

I'm in my mid-40s and my pension age is now 68. This was only communicated a few years ago. I don't expect that it will stay at 68 either, even though life expectancy is actually decreasing. I think it'll be 70, so only the ten years later than the pension age the WASPI lot think should apply to them because they're special.

Those women really really annoy me. Their name is Women Against State Pension Inequality but they're not actually campaigning about inequality. They are actually campaigning in favour of more inequality, just as long as they're the ones who are on the positive side of it.

I've been diddled out of almost £30,000 of pension by David Cameron (spit) and the WASPIs are completely silent about that. Weird.

What I don't really understand is why the WASPIs think of themselves as more special than other generations.

The campaign group is named "Women Against State Pension Age Inequality" yet what they actually want is state pension inequality- and lots of it- just in their favour.

You'll never see a more entitled set of people in your life.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Jun 2026 ==

Meanwhile, Rupert Lowe was this morning "consulting his legal team" to see what can be done about Restore's exclusion * from the debate. Cry harder, racist grandad. Obviously, off the back of this he's reannounced that under a Restore government (hahaha) the BBC will be defunded "on day one". What is it about these people who love free speech so much, but see their arses when the free speech doesn't give them what they want?

He has a point, though. Question Time's panel is influential and either all candidates should be invited or none of them should be. I really don't like the way Question Time's producers get to be the arbiter of who is important enough a candidate and who should be ignored.

If the bum sniffer from Reform is there then Restore's candidate should be there. And Count Binface- who will make more sense than all of the fash combined- should be there too.

 

[WesternLancer]

m in my mid-40s and my pension age is now 68. This was only communicated a few years ago. I don't expect that it will stay at 68 either, even though life expectancy is actually decreasing. I think it'll be 70, so only the ten years later than the pension age the WASPI lot think should apply to them because they're special.

Those women really really annoy me. Their name is Women Against State Pension Inequality but they're not actually campaigning about inequality. They are actually campaigning in favour of more inequality, just as long as they're the ones who are on the positive side of it.

To be fair to them I suspect they would be happy to back a campaign to keep the pension age at 67 or 65 or even 60 for all - as I suspect many of them are signed up to parts of the magic money tree spending agenda

I've been diddled out of almost £30,000 of pension by David Cameron (spit) and the WASPIs are completely silent about that. Weird.

See my point above - but the thing is I think the raise to 68 was announced in 2017 (happy to stand corrected I just did a quick google search and found an old BBC news article), Theresa May was PM, and to be implemented in 2039 (but it may have been flagged even earlier by Cameron and Osborne - so if correct at least 22 years notice of that. If you are eg 45 years old now you would have been 36 then - so 30 years notice prior to your then expected state pension age. Given rule of thumb 'working period to earn a pension' was historically 40 years, that is 3/4 of your working life knowing this - and paying the relevant NI and tax from your employment on the basis that you knew that (OK I realise that the link between NI payments and actual pension paid and funding is lets say 'tenuous'*....)

AIUI that isn't the case for the WASPIs

Obv we are at risk of being off topic as I doubt this is what will be the biggest issue in Makerfield by election

* now I think about it therein lies much of the problem in that it's not an actuarily sound pension scheme paid for out of a pension 'fund' based on real money contributions paid by workers over time and saved up to pay out the pensions (as Beveridge advocated in his report) - it's a pension payment paid out of general government income paid now by non pensioners, and thus at the whim of whatever govt is in power, with a pretence that NI funds it - and paid in this way because the 1945 labour government decided not to implement Beveridge's recommendations because the lead time for pensioners to start benefiting from those recommendations was too long , and they wanted people of pension age in 1945 to start getting a better pension immediately, and felt it was affordable (even in an era of austerity the magic money tree was probably far less magic, and more full of money in 1945, given the UKs economic base then wasn't as reliant on nail bars, estate agency work and deliveroo as it is now ...

 

[Ted633]

Ref WASPI.
Because Labour indicated/ intimated they would ‘put things right’ or some such when in opposition but then u turned on it in power.

It was in their 2019 election manifesto which was overwhelmingly rejected. Yes, their were rumblings during those 5 years in opposition they would do something, but it wasn’t in their 2024 manifesto.

 

[SteveP29]

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

I wonder why this person was not asked to confirm where and how many cases of Ebola were in the UK?

 

[Merle Haggard]

/snip/

* now I think about it therein lies much of the problem in that it's not an actuarily sound pension scheme paid for out of a pension 'fund' based on real money contributions paid by workers over time and saved up to pay out the pensions (as Beveridge advocated in his report) - it's a pension payment paid out of general government income paid now by non pensioners, and thus at the whim of whatever govt is in power, with a pretence that NI funds it - and paid in this way because the 1945 labour government decided not to implement Beveridge's recommendations because the lead time for pensioners to start benefiting from those recommendations was too long , and they wanted people of pension age in 1945 to start getting a better pension immediately, and felt it was affordable (even in an era of austerity the magic money tree was probably far less magic, and more full of money in 1945, given the UKs economic base then wasn't as reliant on nail bars, estate agency work and deliveroo as it is now ...

I interpret that as meaning that people retiring from work 1945 and subsequently received a full pension, but only people first entering work after 1945 paid National Insurance for all their working lives before receiving the same pension. Is that the case?.

 

[WesternLancer]

It was in their 2019 election manifesto which was overwhelmingly rejected. Yes, their were rumblings during those 5 years in opposition they would do something, but it wasn’t in their 2024 manifesto.

thanks for this

 

[tutacre]

I would just point out gently, that there's a lot of views being shared on here which would seem to almost mock Reform supporters / more right leaning minded people, particularly older voters.

Now it is all well and good doing that - in a free society - but I think it causes people to somehow think Reform are a minority or harbour fringe views. The reality is, that they absolutely have a very realistic and fairly strong chance of winning the next election, whether it's in coalition with other very right parties or with a whopping majority. They have a huge role to play now in our society, as they are influential, precisely because of their popularity, resourcing and supporters.

The irony is that some of the attitude towards Reform on this forum is what helps them win even greater support - as it can come across as upsetting "lefties" (great for them) or being targets of a left wing agenda (invokes sympathy and encourages people to want to stand up against the left).

I wonder if it has occurred to some of you, that perhaps you are actually the minority these days?

 

[scarby]

The Reform voters I have spoken to were mainly pensioners who disliked the u-turn on warm homes discounts and the WASPI situation but one claimed 'foreigners came here on boats with Covid and now Ebola'.

I just find it baffling when people seem determined to believe things that are so blatantly not the case.

 

[Class73Electro]

I would just point out gently, that there's a lot of views being shared on here which would seem to almost mock Reform supporters / more right leaning minded people, particularly older voters.

Now it is all well and good doing that - in a free society - but I think it causes people to somehow think Reform are a minority or harbour fringe views. The reality is, that they absolutely have a very realistic and fairly strong chance of winning the next election, whether it's in coalition with other very right parties or with a whopping majority. They have a huge role to play now in our society, as they are influential, precisely because of their popularity, resourcing and supporters.

The irony is that some of the attitude towards Reform on this forum is what helps them win even greater support - as it can come across as upsetting "lefties" (great for them) or being targets of a left wing agenda (invokes sympathy and encourages people to want to stand up against the left).

I wonder if it has occurred to some of you, that perhaps you are actually the minority these days?

Well partly because other than "Stop the boats", they have not shown any... policies? Their leader hasn't been in Parliament for the last 70 odd votes...

 

[WesternLancer]

I interpret that as meaning that people retiring from work 1945 and subsequently received a full pension, but only people first entering work after 1945 paid National Insurance for all their working lives before receiving the same pension. Is that the case?.

Hmmm....I'd hesitate to confirm or rule that out given the complexity of pension policy over the long term

I think a key thing in general is that NI creates an entitlement to aspect of pension, but does not fund it in the way many people think it does (along with much confusion over thinking that it funds the NHS, unemployment benefit, work sickness benefits etc etc -I believe this confusion was because in 1948 people conflated schemes some people had paid into since Lloyd George's revolutionary 1908 budget for some sorts of health care and pensions with the post Beveridge proposals set out in 1942, and also because Beveridge was a strong advocate in his general approach ,and his 1942 report, that the system he was proposing - much of which has been abandoned by stealth over many decades now - would achieve more public support and 'legitimacy' if people felt that the welfare payments they received had been 'earned' via the payment of a contribution to something (called NI) that then created an 'entitlement' or 'right' to the benefits that would then be paid).

But this IFS report on history of the state pension looks informative - and I extract the bit I found early on it it which is what I had in mind policy wise when I posted (not that I had read this then)

https://ifs.org.uk/publications/history-state-pensions-uk-1948-2010

My italics in the extract for emphasis

The history of state pensions in the UK: 1948 to 2010​

• Antoine Bozio
• Rowena Crawford
• Gemma Tetlow

Published on 9 June 2010

The UK state pension system originally consisted only of means-tested non-contributory benefits that were introduced by the Old Age Pensions Act 1908 (Gilbert, 1966). The first contributory benefits scheme emerged in the Widows, Orphans and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act 1925. This scheme was not universal in coverage, however, and was only compulsory for manual and other low-wage workers. It was the 1942 Beveridge Report – Social Insurance and Allied Services – that marked a major break with the past because of the introduction of universal coverage based on a social insurance model.

From the outset, the objective was not to provide a high replacement income for most wage-earners but to provide a safety net against old-age deprivation. Beveridge’s proposal was that individuals would be provided with a flat-rate income in old age that would be just sufficient to lift them above an absolute measure of poverty. This income was to be funded through contributions paid during working life. These contributions were to be calculated on an actuarially fair basis. In other words, the weekly amount paid would be that which, over the course of a working life, would finance the proposed retirement pension (and also finance the average expected incidence of sickness and unemployment, which were also to be insured through Beveridge’s new system).

The National Insurance Act 1946 introduced the BSP, with effect from 1948, but right from the start it differed from the proposals of the Beveridge Report. Political considerations made it impossible to implement the fully funded scheme that Beveridge had envisaged because such a scheme made no provision for pensions for those already older individuals who had suffered through the Great Depression and contributed to the war effort. Faced with the significant immediate bill of paying pensions to individuals who had not made contributions, the government opted to introduce a ‘pay-as-you-go’ system rather than a funded one. Individuals paid contributions (known as National Insurance (NI) contributions), but instead of the level of these being related to an individual’s own future pension benefits (as Beveridge had envisaged), they were related to what was needed to fund the benefits of current pensioners. Over time, the link between a person’s contributions and the pension income that person receives has become even weaker, as NI rates are now set simply according to the overall budgetary needs and distributional objectives of the government and are not directly related to either future pension benefits or current pension funding needs.

The BSP is often called ‘contributory’ because entitlement to the pension requires individuals to satisfy some conditions on their NI contribution histories. However, since the pension benefit received increasingly depends very little on an individual’s years of contributions and not at all on the actual level of contributions made, the pension cannot really be considered to be contributory in the usual sense. As a result, the BSP is not, whatever its appearance, a social insurance scheme. Its design and implementation are described in detail in Section 3.

Subsequent sections of the report about how the pension evolved after 1948 also look very interesting, but I've only just skimmed them, and obviously all off topic for this thread really.

 

[AlterEgo]

I would just point out gently, that there's a lot of views being shared on here which would seem to almost mock Reform supporters / more right leaning minded people, particularly older voters.

Now it is all well and good doing that - in a free society - but I think it causes people to somehow think Reform are a minority or harbour fringe views. The reality is, that they absolutely have a very realistic and fairly strong chance of winning the next election, whether it's in coalition with other very right parties or with a whopping majority. They have a huge role to play now in our society, as they are influential, precisely because of their popularity, resourcing and supporters.

The irony is that some of the attitude towards Reform on this forum is what helps them win even greater support - as it can come across as upsetting "lefties" (great for them) or being targets of a left wing agenda (invokes sympathy and encourages people to want to stand up against the left).

I wonder if it has occurred to some of you, that perhaps you are actually the minority these days?

Well, quite - we had this with Brexit.

The problem is this sort of voter wants very blunt solutions to problems which can be complicated, and they are not politically engaged in a way much beyond "I would like things simply to be this way". Now that's fine - wouldn't life be better with less politics! - but this cohort of people are also not really interested in discussion, debate or consensus building.

Where we have bigger problems is when this voter and the traditional middle ground agree on something but there is an optics issue involved with the middle ground agreeing with the "Reform right". Reform are, in places, addressing real problems and courting voters who find those issues important, but they are also encouraging those people to see themselves as victims which is rarely helpful and never attractive.

 

[WesternLancer]

I would just point out gently, that there's a lot of views being shared on here which would seem to almost mock Reform supporters / more right leaning minded people, particularly older voters.

Now it is all well and good doing that - in a free society - but I think it causes people to somehow think Reform are a minority or harbour fringe views. The reality is, that they absolutely have a very realistic and fairly strong chance of winning the next election, whether it's in coalition with other very right parties or with a whopping majority. They have a huge role to play now in our society, as they are influential, precisely because of their popularity, resourcing and supporters.

The irony is that some of the attitude towards Reform on this forum is what helps them win even greater support - as it can come across as upsetting "lefties" (great for them) or being targets of a left wing agenda (invokes sympathy and encourages people to want to stand up against the left).

I wonder if it has occurred to some of you, that perhaps you are actually the minority these days?

This is an important point to make

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 Jun 2026 ==

Well, quite - we had this with Brexit.

The problem is this sort of voter wants very blunt solutions to problems which can be complicated, and they are not politically engaged in a way much beyond "I would like things simply to be this way". Now that's fine - wouldn't life be better with less politics! - but this cohort of people are also not really interested in discussion, debate or consensus building.

Where we have bigger problems is when this voter and the traditional middle ground agree on something but there is an optics issue involved with the middle ground agreeing with the "Reform right". Reform are, in places, addressing real problems and courting voters who find those issues important, but they are also encouraging those people to see themselves as victims which is rarely helpful and never attractive.

and so is this important too

 

[The exile]

My feeling is that there are too many who have gone from university to a job working as a research assistant for the party or a lobby group or an MP, but often not one dealing with constituents, possibly then to a made-up job in a friendly business which allows them lots of time to seek a seat. This applies to all the parties, although someone who worked for a trade union might have a tiny bit more knowledge of life. They then get selected for a seat and spend their time nursing it.

I may be wrong, but my feeling is that politicians are expecting and expected to hit the top much younger. Wilson at forty-eight, and Heath and Thatcher at fifty-three were the youngest PMs since Lloyd George and then only just in the last two cases. But since Thatcher five of the nine PMs have been younger. Starmer is an outlier, being older than anyone since Callaghan. ‘Done too much, much too young.’

Also, I think we and political parties Do ourselves a disservice by signing up to the notion that a leader whose party doesn’t win an election is “a loser” and must go - just at the point they’ve probably learned some vital lessons. Equally - trying to make the position of Prime Minister like that of the US President (!) is a mistake -?one can see why the media do it, but it’s a great mistake for politicians to go the same way.

 

[81A]

Edit-sorry, seems I took humour seriously…

 

[brad465]

In my opinion, this sort of sentiment regarding Restore/Reform voters is just as alarming as some of the comments made by certain people on the right regarding non-white people etc. After all, there are reasons some people don’t trust the “centrist” narrative of events. It is to some extent the centre’s fault that opinions like this proliferate, as their refusal to investigate certain true patterns (say, until recently at least, the ”unenlightened” attitudes towards women amongst people from certain religious groups/cultures) leads to increased cynicism and distrust (the “if they lie about/hide one thing than everything they say must be some sort of conspiracy/cover up“ type attitude-especially amongst people who are less able to fact check things themselves).

I didn't say that about every Reform/right wing voter, I said that in jest about one person saying something that was clearly very stupid and false.

Also, on the wider issue of insulting potential Reform voters; yes there is a line in the sand that shouldn't be crossed, but I'd also point out that there is an element of free speech hypocrisy at play here. A lot of the high profile ones in the media who can't take insults are the same ones who cry "but free speech" when they're the ones dishing out insults towards those they disagree with and then getting demands for cancelling. I'd have far more sympathy for those calling for free speech if they were not hypocrites about it, which is particularly true in America at the moment (see Jimmy Kimmel saga). Jonathan Pie is probably the most prolific free speech advocate who seems to go above and beyond to make sure he's not a hypocrite.