Last Wednesday I went up to Makerfield to do a bit of on-the-ground research into what voters there really make of Burnham, Kenyon, and whoever it is that’s standing for Rupert Lowe. To do so, I went from pub to pub in search of unguarded moments and in vino veritas. I have family just outside Warrington, ten miles up the road from Makerfield, and have lost more money than I care to count at Haydock Park Racecourse, on the border of the neighbouring seat of St Helen’s North, so I did not arrive entirely unfamiliar with the local area.

I pulled into Wigan North Western just before ten in the morning, early enough to make it before the pubs opened. From the station, I took a taxi to Ashton, the largest settlement in the seat. My driver was a lovely man called Ian, who lived in the constituency on a road that served as the border between Wigan, Greater Manchester, and Lancashire.

I chatted to a few other 10.30 punters, who spoke about ‘our Andy’ with genuine warmth. All of them said they had voted Reform in the local elections, but were going to vote for Burnham on Thursday.

We were making the usual cab small talk when Ian suddenly burst out with: ‘and another thing. We need to stop these people coming across our borders.’ Ah, I thought, leaning forward a little. Fantastic. I had not even reached the pub and already copy-worthy conversation had found me. ‘Which people do you mean?’ I asked. ‘These cabs coming over from Wolverhampton into Wigan,’ he said. ‘They’re illegally operating.’

Ian then explained that taxicabs licensed in Wolverhampton face far lower administrative and financial requirements than those licensed in Wigan. Andy Burnham, he said, had been very good on this, and because of that he was considering voting for him. He added that there was a time when he would never have considered voting for Reform or Farage, but now he wondered whether we did, after all, need someone new running the government.

I jumped out of the cab and headed to my first pub, a Wetherspoons called The Sir Thomas Gerard where I ordered a pint of Doom Bar. ‘Andy, is it?’ I heard someone say to my left. I looked over and saw a bald man sitting on a stool, reading the Daily Mail. I went over and confirmed my identity, and he admitted he had seen me on GB News before. Flattering. He then admitted he often found himself shouting at the television when I was on. Not so flattering, but at least he watched.

I asked him how he had found the by-election so far, and whether he was voting. He said he was obviously voting for Reform, and really didn’t like Andy Burnham at all. I asked if he had liked the outgoing Labour MP, Josh Simons, to which he spat back that he hadn’t, because Simons wasn’t from the area and because of his role in Labour Together.

I put it to him that, as a GB News viewer and Reform UK supporter, he might have been tempted by Restore Britain. He said he was ‘pissed off’ with Rupert Lowe, and that Lowe and Farage needed to get back together, since their policies weren’t that different in the first place. He then left, telling me to behave, and I chatted to a few other 10.30 punters, who spoke about ‘our Andy’ with genuine warmth. All of them said they had voted Reform in the local elections, but were going to vote for Burnham on Thursday.

I stopped after two pints, grabbed a bacon sandwich from the Cwtch Cafe across the road, and made my way up to the Robin Hood pub. I was making small talk with a regular when I heard the barmaid complaining about journalists in the pub from all over the world, every single day, trying to shove cameras and microphones in people’s faces. I can’t print what she said she would do to the next journalist she found in the pub, but it was enough to make me down my pint and head West through the constituency to a lovely local in Winstanley.

I bought my pint and fell into conversation with a punter called Stephen, who was on his second pint of Guinness. He told me he was ‘actually very right wing’, but would be voting for Burnham for two reasons. The first was that ‘we’ll be stuck with Starmer’ if Andy loses, or else we’d end up with ‘that Wes guy’, which, in Stephen’s view, was just as bad. The second was that his grandkids had gone to the same school as Andy’s children, so he felt some kind of collegiate loyalty to the man.

I shot back down to Ashton and visited a pair of pubs opposite one another: The Hingemakers Arms and the Commercial Inn, having a pint in each. The punters I spoke to echoed what everyone else had been telling me: if it were anyone but Andy, it would instantly be Reform.

Makerfield may not quite exist as a coherent political unit, like many constituencies it is an indiscriminate name given to a town, a scattering of villages and the bits in between to make up a fairly spread population density. But its pubs do exist, and in them the shape of the by-election could form. The voters I met were not, in any neat sense, Labour voters – maybe they would have been 30 years ago. Many of them had already wandered off to Reform and seemed perfectly happy to do so again if it was anyone but Andy.

Burnham is local enough, familiar enough, and, crucially, Andy enough. If you find yourself in the constituency, I am told Andy Burnham’s favourite pub is The Holts Arms in Orrell. Mine, for what it is worth, would be The Hingemakers Arms in Ashton. Whether that says more about him, about me, about Labour, or about the strange civic power of day drinking in a constituency that doesn’t really exist, I will leave to wiser minds.