Makerfield Debate Exposes Systemic Failures, Not Solutions
The BBC's by-election debate in Makerfield was never going to deliver justice. It was, as liberal democratic candidate Jake Austin aptly noted, a backdoor mechanism for electing a prime minister. Yet beneath the theatrical posturing of Andy Burnham and Robert Kenyon lies a more disturbing truth: both candidates failed to address the structural violence that continues to devastate marginalised communities across Britain.
The Myth of the Political Outsider
Kenyon, the Reform UK candidate, leaned heavily into the trope of the 'normal person' going 'down to London' to fight for fairness. This rhetoric of the ordinary citizen against the establishment is a familiar playbook for the far-right, one that obscures how candidates like Kenyon actively uphold the very systems of oppression they claim to challenge. When an audience member confronted Kenyon, declaring they would 'rather have a career politician than a plumber who is a sexist', the moment laid bare the contradictions of a campaign built on anti-elitism while perpetuating patriarchal harm.
Burnham, meanwhile, performed the role of the relatable northerner with practiced ease. His admission of ambition was framed as honesty, yet his career trajectory reveals a politician who left Westminster in 2017 not out of solidarity with the working class, but because he saw no viable path to power under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. As Sean O'Grady observed, Burnham 'was, is, and always will be a careerist'. The myth of the outsider serves both men, but it serves no one enduring systemic marginalisation.
Two-Tier Policing and the Weaponisation of Grievance
The debate's most contentious moment centred on allegations of two-tier policing. Kenyon echoed public sentiment claiming police bias favouring ethnic minorities, a narrative that fundamentally inverts the reality of state violence. It is not white communities who are over-policed, disproportionately detained, or subjected to stop-and-search powers that target BIPOC individuals. The two-tier policing discourse is a deliberate obfuscation, designed to delegitimise legitimate demands for racial justice and accountability.
Burnham's response was arguably more insidious. Rather than directly challenging the racist assumptions underpinning the two-tier narrative, he praised Conservative candidate Michael Winstanley and Kemi Badenoch for 'speaking really well' on the issue. This is the politics of the big tent at its most cynical: accommodating reactionary positions to capture votes, while those most harmed by policing practices are rendered invisible.
Henry Nowak and the Silence on State Violence
The death of 18-year-old Henry Nowak deserves far more scrutiny than this debate afforded. Nowak, a student who had been stabbed, was ignored by police when he sought help. He died while being arrested and handcuffed, after his killer, Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed to be the victim of a racist attack. This case encapsulates multiple systemic failures: the criminalisation of victims, the readiness of police to detain rather than protect, and the dangerous ease with which accusations of racism can be weaponised to justify state violence against marginalised individuals.
Burnham pointed to his relationship with the local police chief, claiming he backed efforts to ensure police were 'seen as neutral, serving all communities'. The emphasis on being 'seen' as neutral, rather than actively being accountable, speaks volumes. Neutrality is not justice when the system itself is structurally biased. As abolitionist scholars and activists have long argued, reforming institutions built on carceral logic is insufficient; they must be dismantled and reimagined.
Who Wins When the Margins Are Excluded?
The Liberal Democrat and Green candidates, Jake Austin and Sarah Wakefield, offered substantive challenges to the dominant narratives. Wakefield's confrontation of Kenyon over his refusal to apologise for violence in Southampton, invoking Carol Vorderman's scrutiny, was a rare moment of accountability in an otherwise evasive evening. Yet these candidates will lose their deposits, casualties of an electoral system designed to entrench two-party dominance and marginalise alternative voices.
The real losers, however, are those never invited to the debate stage. Migrants facing detention and deportation. Trans and non-binary youth targeted by a hostile media landscape. Disabled people abandoned by austerity. Neurodivergent individuals failed by systems not designed for them. The Makerfield debate was a spectacle of power competing with power, while the structures that produce harm remained entirely unchallenged.
Burnham won the night, if winning means performing competence without confronting complicity. But for those living at the intersections of state violence, poverty, and marginalisation, nothing debated on that stage offered liberation. The question is not who won the debate. The question is who will dismantle the systems that make such debates necessary.