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Residents are heading to the polls in the Greater Manchester constituency of Makerfield in the UK today in a key by-election to determine their next MP – and quite possibly Britain’s next prime minister.
Polls in Makerfield are open from 7 am to 10 pm on Thursday, with the count set to take place after voting closes.
The by-election was triggered after the former Makerfield MP Josh Simons stepped down to pave the way for Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, to be able to mount a challenge to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Simons made the decision following Labour’s disastrous local election results in May, which heaped pressure on Starmer and led to calls for him to stand down.
Speaking to the BBC at the time, Simons said it had been the “most difficult decision” of his life but “too big an opportunity to miss”.
“We were heading for a leadership election with the Labour Party split into different factions, and there was no hope, no energy that anything would change,” he said.
Burnham is regarded by many Labour MPs as the party’s best chance of recovery following the May local elections, but he will face stiff competition from the right in Thursday’s election.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain parties will be hoping their focus on tackling immigration will be enough to persuade locals for their votes.
Shortly after polls opened, Farage posted a video to social media in which he presented the election as a choice between Reform candidate Robert Kenyon or “open borders Andy Burnham”.
Burnham’s stance on the EU and Brexit has attracted particular attention in the runup to the Makerfield election.
Burnham had previously called for the UK to rejoin the bloc, an idea which has been fiercely debated again in recent months, but he has since distanced himself from those comments.
“My view is that Brexit has been damaging,” he said in May. “But I also believe the last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments”.