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Reform UK gloomy about prospects in Makerfield, as one party source says Labour ahead by 2,500 votes – UK politics live | Politics
Reform UK gloomy about prospects in Makerfield, as one party source says Labour ahead by 2,500 votes
Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor.
A Reform UK source just told me they currently expect to lose to Burnham by around 2,500 votes. An official spokesperson would not comment on numbers but said they believe it’s “fairly close” and that “no one’s running away with it.”
The spokesperson denied reports that Nigel Farage had left Makerfield, saying he had just been on the phone to him and he was still in the constituency.
Separately, a senior Labour source said it did not look like Restore Britain had been able to turnout its vote to the level that some had predicted.
They said Rupert Lowe’s hardline anti-immigration party could “possibly” achieve 7% of the vote but it was very unlikely to be higher than that.
Lowe, who is giving a series of media interviews, is believed to be claiming to have won 10% of the vote.
Key events
SNP concedes Aberdeen South with Scottish Conservatives set to win
The Scottish National party (SNP) has conceded defeat in the formerly safe seat of Aberdeen South in a shock loss to the Scottish Conservatives, Severin Carrell reports.
Reform UK ‘very happy’ to come a strong second in Makerfield, says Sarah Pochin
Sarah Pochin, the Reform UK MP, told GB News a bit earlier that her party would be “very happy” to come a strong second in Makerfield.
That is not technically a concession. But it is not what you say if you think you have a chance of winning.
Reform UK gloomy about prospects in Makerfield, as one party source says Labour ahead by 2,500 votes
Josh Halliday is the Guardian’s North of England editor.
A Reform UK source just told me they currently expect to lose to Burnham by around 2,500 votes. An official spokesperson would not comment on numbers but said they believe it’s “fairly close” and that “no one’s running away with it.”
The spokesperson denied reports that Nigel Farage had left Makerfield, saying he had just been on the phone to him and he was still in the constituency.
Separately, a senior Labour source said it did not look like Restore Britain had been able to turnout its vote to the level that some had predicted.
They said Rupert Lowe’s hardline anti-immigration party could “possibly” achieve 7% of the vote but it was very unlikely to be higher than that.
Lowe, who is giving a series of media interviews, is believed to be claiming to have won 10% of the vote.
The SNP have conceded defeat in Aberdeen South with a senior source saying it is the “Tories’ night”, but pledging to “win it back in 2029”, the Press Association reports.
Turnout in Aberdeen South 31.4% – down almost 30 points from general election
And here is the turnout from the Aberdeen South byelection. It was was 31.36% – down from 57.9% at the 2024 general election.
According to the BBC’s James Cook, in Aberdeen South “both sides seem pretty certain that the Tories have won this seat.”
Cook says:
There are lots of glum Scottish National Party faces at the Aberdeen South count and plenty of Conservative smiles.
The SNP candidate, Richard Thomson, looks particularly disconsolate.
If victory for the Conservative candidate, Douglas Lumsden, is confirmed, it will be a boost for the party’s UK leader, Kemi Badenoch who visited Aberdeen South three times, campaigning hard on a promise to support the flagging oil and gas industry, which is based here.
Turnout in Makerfield 58.75% – six points up on general election
We have the turnout figure for Makerfield now. It was turnout is 58.75% – up from 52.5% at the general election.
There were 45,510 votes cast.
Nandy says Labour ‘cautiously optimistic’ about Makerfield, and Burnham beat expectations pulling back Reform voters
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary and MP for Wigan, the constituency next door to Makerfield, has told Sky News that Labour is “cautiously optimistic” about winning the byelection.
She said:
We’re cautiously optimistic. We always knew this would be a hard fight, but we are definitely seeing that Andy Burnham is able to pull some of our voters back from Reform in a way that just seven weeks ago at the local elections we would not thought was possible. We lost every ward in Makerfield to Reform at the local elections just seven short weeks ago and not be a small amount – by thousands of votes …
Whatever the result here tonight, the lesson is that we can actually change people’s minds, we can bring people back to us, we can defeat some of the division and anger that has been on display in this constituency in recent weeks.
Sometimes you can read too much into pictures, but the smile on Nandy’s face suggests “cautiously optimistic” might be a bit of an understatement.
Neither Labour or Reform camps were giving much away as counting got underway at the Edge convention centre in Wigan. A Reform spokesperson said it’s close while a senior Burnham aide said it was too early to tell, Josh Halliday and Hannah Al-Othman report.
Away from the official lines, Burnham supporters had been increasingly confident of victory and one of his team has just told reporters they were “really really pleased” with the campaign.
The Burnham aide said his team had knocked every single door in constituency in a week and a half and gone to every one seven times across the five week contest.
He said Burnham appeared to have a “significant lead” among women, in part no doubt due to the offensive remarks about women posted by Reform UK candidate Rob Kenyon in recent years.
And he said it was not clear yet how well Restore Britain would fare. Polls predicted the hardline rightwing party would win about 7% of the vote, which could be enough to split the rightwing vote in favour of Burnham.
The Makerfield turnout is reportedly very high. Sky News has said it could be 60%, and the BBC has said it could be between 60% and 65%. At the general election it was just 52.5%.
Prof Sir John Curtice, the BBC’s lead elections expert, said that the last time byelection turnout was higher than at the proceeding general election was at the Glasgow Hillhead byelection in 1982. But he also said that if the turnout ended up 11 percentage points higher than at the general election, this would be the first time that had happened since the Torrington byelection in 1958. That was a win for the Liberal candidate, Mark Bonham Carter, in a seat that had previously been held by a National Liberal/Conservative.
SNP reportedly worried they could lose Aberdeen South to Tories
The Scottish Conservatives are optimistic about their chances of winning Aberdeen South, the BBC is reporting. Tom Gordon from the Scottish Daily Mail is hearing the same thing. Paul Hutcheon from the Daily Record says the SNP, who are defending the seat, are “anxious”.
Severin Carrell described the contest in Aberdeen South in this article earlier this week.
Kemi Badenoch has said, if her party wins this byelection, it will be a vote for more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
On the BBC’s election programme, Jess Phillips, the former safeguarding minister, said her ideal outcome from Makerfield would be for Andy Burnham to win and for Keir Starmer to be given the chance to make a “dignified” exit. She said she did not want to see “chaos”, with lots of ministers resigning.
Phillips resigned as a minister last month saying she wanted Starmer to quit.
Reform UK’s Sarah Pochin defends video urging England team to ‘keep winning’ to stop domestic violence escalating
Sarah Pochin, the Reform UK MP, is at the Makerfield count on behalf of her party tonight and she has had to take questions about this video she posted on social media earlier.
In it she says:
England won the football last night.
And thank god they did because, on the occasions that England lose their football matches, the incidents of domestic violence go through the roof.
So, boys. Keep winning.
Asked about this on Sky News, Pochin stressed her record as a magistrate dealing with domestic violence and defended the point she was making – that this is a link between teams losing, and increased incidents of domestic violence.
But she did not seem to grasp that people are criticising her for not explicitly condemning the abusers, and instead suggesting it was somehow the England football team’s responsibility to prevent women being attacked.
Thangam Debbonaire, the Labour peer, was being interviewed at the same time and she told Pochin that in her remarks she “did not put responsibility on the men who do it”.
Council officials in Makerfield say they expect the result around 3am, my colleague Josh Halliday, who’s at the count, tells me.
Here are some more pictures from the count venue.
The family of Shaun Burton, say they are “devastated” by the loss.
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Key events
In the opening half an hour against Cape Verde, Mikel Oyarzabal, the centre-forward, did not get a single touch.
Kyle Green gets in touch: “Your highlighting of Lalas and his absurdity is something that has prevented me from wanting to watch the coverage on Fox. While every channel has its pros and cons I just can’t.
“I’m 45 and probably the youngest of anyone who remembers him as a player instead of an opinionated insert insult here. As for the match this could be more competitive than it looks on paper Spain need a win the pressure is on them. Saudi Arabia could hold out for a draw and see what happens in their last match. “
News from the England camp, and it seems to be good news on Declan Rice.
“I’m ready and fit, raring to go. I was feeling a little bit of neural pain in my hamstring, which I was managing from after Christmas with Arsenal for a very long time. Obviously, not a lot of people would have known that. It was all behind-the-scenes stuff but it was a smart decision.
“In the end, that last 20 minutes is probably where you pick up the most, and it’s where you play a 70-minute match. But that last 20 is where you really feel your body going for it. And I think it was a smart decision because the last few days I felt really, really good.”
Alex Reid has penned today’s weekend special Football Daily.
Portugal v Uzbekistan on Tuesday enticingly pits the incredibly nice, incredibly 41-year-old-superstar-tolerant Roberto Martínez against Fabio Cannavaro, who’s won a Ballon d’Or as a player and the Chinese Super League as a coach. While the fixture following that game really does see the dream of Thomas Tuchel – in his first international job with England – taking on Queiroz, who is in charge of his ninth national side with Ghana.
The expected formations are 4-2-3-1 for Spain, and 5-3-2 for the Saudi Arabians.
The Saudi team features two Donis changes: Ali Lajami, a defender, and Nasser Al Dawsari, a midfielder, are preferred to Mohammed Abu Al Shamat and Mohamed Kanno. You may recall Salem Al Dawsari, the Saudi captain, as the man who scored the winner against Argentina.
An entertaining read, even for those of us who have just seen the clips.
In a conversation where his co-panelist is casually reminiscing about his days playing alongside Messi or exchanging shirts with Ronaldo Nazário at the World Cup, what exactly is Lalas going to talk about – coming on as a second-half substitute for Earnie Stewart in a friendly against Scotland in 1998? Helping the Kansas City Wizards finish last in the 1999 MLS Western Conference? Did Lalas enjoy an elite playing career? No. But does he do the background reading that could compensate for his relative lack of standing in a conversation with titans like Henry and Zlatan? Also no. But is he charming or funny or charismatic or otherwise magnetic on screen? Eh, no.
For the record, I once interviewed Alexi Lalas on the challenge of playing against Romario in the 1994 World Cup. He had this to say:
“He could kill you in so many different ways. If you remember from that World Cup, he scored so many types of goals. That ranged from solo adventures to an outside-of-the-right-foot half-volley off a corner kick. Romario was both the most difficult to play against and the best that I have faced.
“Roberto Baggio was doing his thing, but in terms of consistency and living up to the hype, he [Romario] was the best. As with all stars, there was a moment when the fans sit up in their seats, and that was a feeling I got with Romario. When it got close to him and the potential for his involvement in a play was there, everybody sat up in their seat. They knew that something spectacular would be happening.”
Saturday’s match reports here.
The Saudi Arabia coach, and Blackburn legend, Georgios Donis, spoke about the challenges facing his team: “Spain is not the same team when Yamal or Williams are on the bench.
“While they still have plenty of possession, they lack the individual one-on-one penetration when these two are missing. I’m not saying it’s a problem for Spain, but when those players are missing, they play in a different way. We saw this very clearly against Cape Verde.
“We are playing against one of the best teams in the world, and it’s very important that when you play against these kinds of teams, you should enjoy the experience and respect the opponent, but not too much.
“It is very hard for any team playing against Spain to have any time in possession. So what we must do is to be more in control of our movement and compact, and when the ball goes through the lines, be able to defend dynamically.
“It’s nice to see miracles in football, and we’ve seen favourites losing against underdogs. Of course, it’s great for Saudi football to have a great memory of the result against Argentina, but we aren’t drawing anything from that.
“I think we’ll feel more pressure in that [Cape Verde] game than we will against Spain.”
The Spain coach, Luis De La Fuente had this to say in his Saturday press conference: “This generation of footballers is highly competitive and really fired up… It’s going to be a completely different story,” he said at his pre-match press conference on Saturday. There is no drama or crisis. The bottom line is simply that we need to win tomorrow.”
Four changes for Spain: Lamine Yamal, Pedro Porro, Dani Olmo and Alex Baena also come into the side with Marcos Llorente, Fabian Ruiz, Ferran Torres and Gavi dropping out.
The teams – Lamine Yamal starts
Spain: Simon, Porro, Cubarsi, Laporte, Cucurella, Gonzalez, Rodri, Yamal, Olmo, Baena, Oyarzabal. Subs: Raya, Joan Garcia, Pubill, Grimaldo, Eric Garcia, Llorente, Merino, Torres, Fabian, Gavi, Pino, Williams, Zubimendi, Munoz, Iglesias.
Saudi Arabia: Al Owais, Abdulhamid, Tambakti, Lajami, Al Amri, Al Harbi, Nasser Al Dawsari, Al Khaibari, Al Juwayr, Al Buraikan, Salem Al Dawsari. Subs: Al Aqidi, Al Kassar, Majrashi, Yahya, Al Shehri, Al Boushal, Kadesh, Al Johani, Al Ghannam, Al Hajji, Al Hamdan, Mandash, Kanno, Thakri, Abu Al Shamat.
Referee: Raphael Claus (Brazil)
Perhaps one of the Saudi -players can write themselves into this high-grade selection?
Perhaps it can be their goalkeeper.
Madrid screening of Spain v Saudi Arabia cancelled due to heat
The public screening of Spain’s World Cup match against Saudi Arabia in Madrid on Sunday has been cancelled because of extreme heat forecast for the Spanish capital, officials said.
The match, due to kick off at 6pm local time on Sunday, had been scheduled to be shown on a giant screen installed by the Spanish football federation (RFEF) at a fan zone in Plaza de Colón in central Madrid.
Madrid city council and the federation decided to cancel the screening after national weather agency AEMET issued an orange heat warning – the second-highest level – for the Madrid region, with temperatures forecast to reach 40C.
“The decision has been taken with the aim of protecting the health of attendees, event staff and support services involved in the event,” Madrid city hall said in a statement, apologising for any inconvenience.
Officials urged supporters to watch the match indoors in air-conditioned spaces and avoid prolonged exposure to the heat.
Large parts of Spain are experiencing unusually high temperatures for June as a mass of hot air from North Africa moves across the Iberian Peninsula.
A total of 13 of Spain’s 17 regions are on orange alert for heat on Sunday, while the northern Basque Country bordering France is on red alert, the highest level.
Authorities advised residents and visitors to take precautions during the heatwave, including drinking water regularly, staying in cool environments, limiting outdoor physical activity during the hottest hours of the day and taking extra care of vulnerable people. AFP
Can Saudi Arabia repeat the magic of 2022?
Argentina arrived in Qatar on a 36-game unbeaten run. When Lionel Messi opened the scoring from the penalty spot after 10 minutes, a comfortable afternoon seemed in the offing. Saleh al-Shehri and Salem al-Dawsari had other ideas, Argentina had three goals disallowed for offside in the space of 13 minutes and the greatest comeback in Saudi Arabia football history was made. Argentina went on to lift the trophy, while defeats to Poland and Mexico meant the Saudis did not reach the knock-out stage.
Unai Simon over David Raya is a controversial choice for De la Fuentes. The Arsenal keeper could lay claim to being Europe’s best this season.
“Those at the Champions League final had a few more days, so I got there on the Wednesday night,” Raya says. “I arrived a bit before Fabián [Ruiz]. I was saying hello to some of the others in reception when he arrived. I went to say congratulations; that was almost the first thing I did. I couldn’t really talk [to him] after the final; I just didn’t have it in me. The next day we talked about the game properly. Just two mates chatting … I was happy for him that he could lift the trophy for a second time.”
A high pressure game for the European champions, as Sid Lowe reports.
“If we had scored one, the game would have changed,” Martín Zubimendi said. Immediately after the game, De la Fuente had offered a simple analysis: when the ball doesn’t want to go in it doesn’t want to go in, he insisted. Spain had racked up 27 shots, after all. Ferran Torres had hit the bar and seen another clear opportunity saved. Vozinha, the 40-year-old goalkeeper who stopped that, saved six more and was named the man of the match. “There’s nothing to reproach the team for,” Rodri said. “We generated chances but couldn’t put it away; the good thing is they created almost nothing.”
We wait to see what role Lamine Yamal will play today. His coach would surely like to be able to use him.
The worst mistake we could make would be to compare him to anyone. He is the midst of a process. He has exceptional footballing maturity and lives it all with total naturalness. He has great serenity and strength. We have to let him follow his path but those players who have something different are ready for that. They’re geniuses, like Dalí [who] can paint a picture, or Michelangelo. They’re different. What is exceptional to us, isn’t to them. In those extremes, they feel comfortable. Why? Because they are different. What we think is exceptional, they consider normal.
Preamble
Spain’s campaign did not get off to a flying start, and Luis de la Fuentes may wake up in the night to visions of Cape Verde’s Vozinha. He will have Georgia on his mind ever since Monday. Saudi Arabia are no pushovers and gave Uruguay a scare in their opening match. Memories of downing Argentina four years ago still abound, and so Spain might beware. They can ill afford to go into the final game with Uruguay at a disadvantage. All eyes on Lamine Yamal, whose fitness situation remains opaque, though Spain need their other forwards to come to the party.
Kick-off 5pm UK, 1pm ET, 2am AEST. Join me.
A topless man can be seen driving erratically in Edinburgh before abandoning his car and attacking a black man and a delivery rider.
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