The day before the voters of Makerfield chose their new MP, I stood with my camera-wielding colleague John Domokos on the main road through the post-industrial town of Hindley. Every two or three minutes, a van or small truck drew level with us, and there it was again: a honked horn, and a full-throated shout of “Reform!”

But on our side of the street was an augury of the news to come: the house of a man called Les, who had views most Guardian readers would find deeply problematic, and no less than seven placards adorned with the logo of Rupert Lowe MP’s new mega-right outfit, Restore Britain. “Farage has lost it,” Les told us. In at least one sense, the result – Labour’s Andy Burnham triumphing with 55% of the vote, Reform on 35%, and Restore managing 7% – proved he was spot on.

So have we passed “peak Farage”, yet again? The first mention of the term may well have come back in 2014, when the UK Independence party won the most votes at that year’s elections to the European parliament – remember those? – and some deluded members of the political establishment wondered if it was all downhill from there. More recently, Reform UK’s average poll rating has fallen by around five percentage points from its late-2025 high and prompted the return of the same wishful phrase, amid suggestions that, this time, something is definitely up. Take your pick: the decisive arrival of Lowe’s proudly obnoxious party, more violence on the UK’s streets, or simple Farage fatigue: as a matter of political gravity, you cannot style yourself as the insurgent outsider for ever.

And now there is Burnham’s big win, and a vote tally that put him 6,100 votes ahead of Reform and Restore combined. On the face of it, Farage’s party was in with what its deputy leader this week called a “cracking chance”: Makerfield is reckoned to be 97% white British and replete with the kind of grievances that Reform........

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