‘Keir Starmer doesn’t do anything but U-turns’: the bleak mood in Makerfield
As he rose to his feet in the Commons in September 2024, the incoming Labour MP Josh Simons echoed Keir Starmer’s promise to deliver,“Unless working people like those I am so proud to represent feel change and unless we in this chamber demonstrate humility and honesty and act with integrity and with respect, they have no reason to believe in democracy,” he said,Seventeen months on, Starmer is engulfed in a scandal that threatens to undermine those principles and could yet prove terminal for his premiership, having prompted the resignation of two key No 10 figures,Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, is a staunch ally of the prime minister and his now-departed chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney,A former director of the pro-Starmer thinktank Labour Together, Simons won his seat in Makerfield, Greater Manchester, under the McSweeney-masterminded landslide in 2024.
But the mood among his constituents on Monday was bleak as the Mandelson fallout continued in Westminster.“We voted Labour and we shouldn’t have,” said Clare Winterburn, serving up lunchtime pasties in Galloways Bakers.“You see it all day on the news: Keir Starmer doesn’t do anything but U-turns and couldn’t make a decision if one slapped him in the face.”Winterburn, 42, said she felt McSweeney was a scapegoat and that the scandal was further evidence that “they don’t think the rules apply to them”.“It’s time for Reform,” she said.
“We’ve tried all the others and they’ve all been crap.”Simons, 32, himself is also now under scrutiny over reports that he commissioned an investigative report into journalists who were probing the funding of Labour Together.He said it was nonsense to claim he wanted to investigate journalists and he had asked a PR and lobbying firm to “look into a suspected illegal hack”.Makerfield is a semi-rural collection of small towns and villages sandwiched between Manchester and Liverpool and has been Labour for more than a century, when its coal mining helped fire the industrial revolution.As the “red wall” tumbled around it in 2019, Labour clung on in Makerfield and survived again in 2024, when Simons finished 5,399 votes ahead of Reform UK.
Yet Labour MPs worry this is exactly the seat – white working class, socially conservative – that will punish the government at the next election if delivery does not happen soon.In Ashton-in-Makerfield, the constituency’s biggest town, change is happening thanks to a £6.6m levelling up fund awarded by the Conservative government to revamp its high street.Surrounding villages will get a further £20m under Labour’s “pride in place” scheme over the next decade.Yet business owners said the disruption had hurt their takings and accused the Labour-led Wigan council of not listening to their concerns.
“You put things across to them and they look at you like you’ve walked into their living room on Christmas Day and pissed on their kid’s Xbox,” said one shopkeeper, who did not want to be named.At The Cupcakery, co-owner Fran said they lost at least £3,000 in revenue last summer when her shop was covered in scaffolding, meaning children had to walk in the road to get to them.Fran, 36, who did not want to give her last name, said she refused to vote at the last general election because “they’re all a joke – they’re all liars”.Her friends felt similar, she said: “There’s so many women I know that refuse to vote and it’s because of the lack of trust in the government.”Labour’s share of voters has dropped by 23 percentage points since 2001, while Conservative support rose markedly after Brexit – 65% of the constituency voted to leave the European Union.
The shift right took Reform UK to within 5,399 votes of Labour, in one of the 98 seats where it finished runner up to Starmer’s party,David Baxter, whose Wigan and Leigh community charity was namechecked in Simons’ maiden speech in the Commons, praised the MP for being “really connected” to the area but that he “may be in a minority across the country”,“I do feel people feel [that] politicians, across any party, are disconnected from their communities,” Baxter said,The prospect of a strong Reform UK vote in May’s local elections in Wigan, when a third of its seats are up for grabs, is a source of anxiety for other voluntary bodies,Getting his hair cut while wrapped in a red, white and blue barber cape, builder Carl Pilling, 56, said Starmer “needs to go”.
“Everything’s just a shambles – it’s ridiculous,” he said complaining about small boats, the NHS and the Mandelson saga.“They’re all just looking after one another.”Over a bacon and cheese toastie at The Cupcakery, Callum Freeman, 29, said he refused to vote for the first time in 2024 but worried now about the rise of Reform.“Last time I didn’t because it doesn’t seem to matter,” he said.“Why can’t it be about making the country better?”
A new town for the 21st century? Seven-village build to begin after 20-year journey
After two decades of legal wrangling and planning bottlenecks, the first bricks will finally be laid on a project being hailed by developers as the blueprint for the future of community building in Britain.Gilston in east Hertfordshire will be transformed into a network of seven interconnected villages, comprising 10,000 new homes nestled within a sprawling 660-hectare (1,630-acre) landscape of country parks and woodland.Greg Reed, the chief executive of Places for People (PfP), the social enterprise leading the development, said the timeline of the project served as a reminder of the sluggishness of the UK planning system.“PfP’s journey with Gilston started at the same time my 20-year-old son was born,” Reed says. “I was thinking about all the things that have happened in his life … and it’s a bit depressing
The troubling rise of longevity fixation syndrome: ‘I was crushed by the pressure I put on myself’
It was a pitta bread that finally broke Jason Wood. It arrived with hummus instead of the vegetable crudites he had preordered in a restaurant that he had painstakingly researched, as he always did, weeks before he and his husband visited. “In that moment, I just snapped,” he recalls. “I hit rock bottom, I got angry … I started crying, I started shaking. I just felt like I couldn’t do it any more, like I had been crushed by all this pressure I put on myself
The sneeze secret: how much should you worry about this explosive reflex?
It is one of the most powerful involuntary actions the human body can perform. But is a big sneeze a sign of illness, pollution or something else entirely?How worried should we be about a sneeze? It depends who you ask. In the Odyssey, Telemachus sneezes after Penelope’s prayer that her husband will soon be home to sort out her house-sitting suitors – which she sees as a good omen for team Odysseus, and very bad news for the suitors. In the Anabasis, Xenophon takes a sneeze from a soldier as godly confirmation that his army can fight their way back to their own territory – great news for them – while St Augustine notes, somewhat disapprovingly, that people of his era tend to go back to bed if they sneeze while putting on their slippers. But is a sneeze an omen of anything apart from pathogens, pollen or – possibly – air pollution?“It’s a physical response to get rid of something that’s irritating your body,” says Sheena Cruickshank, an immunologist and professor at the University of Manchester
People with dementia are still people, with joys and interests of their own | Letters
Well said, Jo Glanville (Reading was the key to breaking through the fog of my parents’ dementia, 1 February). Our mother lived with vascular dementia for many years, but she wasn’t “dead” or “as good as dead”. Far too many people believe this, even people whose loved ones have had dementia, and it’s a dangerous belief that undermines the rights of people who are already extremely vulnerable.Mum was alive and herself right to the end, even when she had become bedbound and crippled, even when somebody who could once have chatted for England barely spoke any more. But in those last few years, when she could no longer read for herself, Dad or I (or my brothers when they visited) read to her every day, and even when she didn’t say much, I could tell by the expression on her face whether she was enjoying it or not
NHS hiring bans in cancer units shortsighted and dangerous, doctors warn
Hospitals have banned units that diagnose and treat cancer from hiring doctors as part of an NHS cost-cutting drive, despite the growing demand for care.Exactly half of the UK’s 60 specialist cancer treatment centres had a freeze on recruiting clinical oncologists imposed on them during 2025, more than double the 13 (23%) seen the year before.Similarly, more than a third (36%) of the 160 radiology departments – which perform and analyse scans – were subjected to a ban last year on hiring clinical radiologists, up from 19% in 2024, according to information supplied by 138 of the UK’s 160 such units.The Royal College of Radiologists, which collected the figures, warned that the dramatic rise in staffing freezes could lead to “dangerous” delays in cancers being spotted and treated.Dr Stephen Harden, the RCR’s president, criticised the bans as “shortsighted”, bad for patients, damaging to NHS personnel’s morale and likely to cost more money in the long term
Menstrual blood test could offer alternative to cervical screening for cancer
A pioneering test of period blood for signs of cervical cancer could be a convenient, non-invasive and accurate way of screening for the disease, researchers have said.A regular sanitary pad topped with a blood sample strip can pick up human papillomavirus (HPV), which causes most cases of cervical cancer, and could be used by women at home, the results of a study indicate.Currently, most women undergo cervical screening under the care of a clinician, who collects a sample via a brush inserted into the vagina. But millions of women invited for screening do not attend.Researchers in China compared the diagnostic accuracy of menstrual blood with samples collected by a clinician for detecting cervical cell abnormalities (CIN2 and CIN3), which can require treatment
Perth festival 2026: Swan River bursts to life with a stunning trail of stories and light
Porky Pig and Daffy Duck: ‘Jacob Elordi! That hair! Those dreamboat eyes!’
The Guide #229: How an indie movie distributed by a lone gamer broke the US box office
My cultural awakening: Bach helped me survive sexual abuse as a child
From Lord of the Flies to Deftones: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Austin Butler to play Lance Armstrong in big-screen biopic