The good people of Makerfield have the potential to do the funniest thing. It is in their gift to unleash the most hilarious chaos. With one swipe of their pen they could wipe the smirk off the face of every centrist-dad podcaster and leave the smug scribes of the leftish media scratching their heads in mournful bewilderment. All they have to do is vote Reform in the upcoming by-election.

They’re not dumb. They know the home he’s really eyeing up is Downing Street

Just picture it. In swoops Andy Burnham, their supposed King of the North, hoping to be crowned King of Labour too, but then the citizens of Makerfield say: ‘Nah, you’re all right.’ They have the power to block a coronation, to send the anointed golden boy of the SW1 left packing. It would be glorious. It would be entirely in keeping with the great English tradition of the little people occasionally saying a hearty ‘Nope’ to the cynical machinations of the powerful.

It would be a richly deserved blow for the cult of Burnham. There is something so mercenary in the gifting of Makerfield to Burnham, as if it were just another rung on his slippery ladder to power rather than a real place with real people and real issues. The incumbent MP, Josh Simons, says he’s standing down to make way for Andy and his much gabbed-about challenge to Sir Keir. And just like that, Makerfield is reduced to a glorified backroom in which clever men with rolled-up sleeves might plot their seizure of the throne.

If I lived in Makerfield, my every fibre would bristle at this use and abuse of my home as a site of Labour intrigue. Constituencies are not prizes to be handed out among friends. True, Burnham is not a stranger to this bit of England – his roots are in the North West. And yet the people of Makerfield are well within their rights to cock an eyebrow at all the talk of ‘Andy coming home’. They’re not dumb. They know the home he’s really eyeing up is Downing Street, and that he hopes their town will be the key to that door.

Yet the Makerfield swap has done something else too: it has bestowed extraordinary power on the people who live there. They now hold in their hands not only the fate of Mr Manchester but the political destiny of the nation itself. They can, if they wish, deprive Labour of the man it believes will cure their ills, leaving the party to sink ever-deeper into the stew of malaise. With their little pencils on election day they won’t only pick a new MP: they might also sign the death warrant of the duopoly.

It is a genuinely thrilling prospect. A largely left-behind people, in a constituency most influencers hadn’t heard of until this week, bringing down a hammer on the hopes and dreams of Labour stiffs and spin-doctors. We won’t serve as a stage army for the renewal of a party that has betrayed us time and again, they would essentially be crying.

They have the power to condemn Labour to a slow death at the hands of Starmer’s exhausted leadership or, even funnier, a Streeting-led makeover. It could be the final revenge of the working classes against the party that was founded to represent them but which now looks down on them as ‘gammon’ who delivered us into Hell with their dumb votes for Brexit. People of Makerfield, the history books await you.

It’s a real possibility. Yes, Burnham is popular in the North West, having served almost a decade as Mayor of Greater Manchester. And yes, many in Makerfield, like everywhere else, may feel tempted by Project Kick Out Kier, which is the ticket Burnham will be running on. Yet Labour’s majority in Makerfield is fairly small, and Reform cleaned up there in the local elections last week. Admit it – a people’s revolt against Burnhamism, with Reform as their cudgel, would be great fun.

It’s high time we threw cold water on the Burnham fandom. The way activists and luvvies in London talk, you could be forgiven for thinking he really is King of the North, and that any querying of his record is tantamount to treason. Yet from his dithering on the rape-gang scandal to his U-turning on his spectacularly unpopular ‘clean air’ tax on Manc motorists, Burnham has made many mis-steps. His swooning fanboys in the bourgeois press down south might not be able to see them through their Andy-tinted goggles — but King Andy’s subjects up north certainly can.

Everyone is saying Makerfield is a huge test for Burnham and Labour. But it’s an even larger test for Reform. They have a golden opportunity to prove they really are the populist disrupters of our old, knackered politics. They need to throw everything at the Makerfield clash and tear that crown from Burnham’s head.