When I ask him why he’s voting Reform, Bromiley says: “This country is going to shit.” He brings up Henry Nowak, the 18-year-old university student who was fatally stabbed by Vickrum Digwa using a blade he said he carried as part of his Sikh faith (Digwa falsely claimed that Nowak racially abused him). I ask Bromiley what he hoped politics could change. “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve only been working for my company since March. Before that, I struggled to get a job,” he says, “All the places I’ve tried to apply, I got turned down. And let’s be real, the foreigners managed to get [those positions]. It’s not racism or anything like that.” He continues, “I don’t like being racist, but,” Bromiley trails off. “Getting young people into work is a lot harder these days.”
From July to September 2024, 15.1 per cent of UK men aged 16-24 were NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), compared to 11.2 per cent of women. Young men are also falling behind women in terms of income; the gender pay gap is now reversed for full time workers aged 16 to 24, with the most pronounced divide in the northern regions. But the way in which immigration actually impacts employment or income is complicated, because it also expands worker demand and creates new jobs. While research suggests that immigration may have more impact on lower paid workers with lower education than higher earners, that impact is minimal.
.png?trim=34,0,86,0&auto=webp&quality=75&width=1200 "My London: Trinny Woodall shares her secrets with cabbies, shops at Liberty and stays at Claridge’s")
What has contributed to surging male unemployment is the decline in male-dominated industries over several decades, such as manufacturing, agriculture and construction. And yet nearly every man I spoke to who was voting Reform – or the newly born, even-further-right Restore Britain – brought up immigration (Restore Britain has seven per cent support in Makerfield, according to Survation’s opinion polls, fracturing Reform’s voter base and inadvertently increasing Burnham’s chances of winning).
One was a 27-year-old dry liner, who was sitting in Bryn Community Club with a Peroni, surrounded by other men drinking beer and playing pool. “The top thing on the leaflet they’re giving out is immigration,” he told me. When I asked him what issues were impacting his life that he hoped the by-election results could change, he described the disintegration of the “family atmosphere” on local estates. “You’re now seeing strange faces. No one knows who they are. No one really trusts them.”
“This is why we’re all voting Restore,” says a man sitting on a table behind us, who had previously declined to be interviewed. He holds up his phone to show me a video: a man is told to “get out the park” after allegedly speaking to a young girl (who is not on camera). “Most parks you go to these days, that’s what it’s like,” he tells me, “Women can’t even walk at night, that’s how bad it’s got around here… they’re getting followed by these Asians.”
In better news for Burnham, for some male voters, it’s precisely Reform UK’s stance on marginalised groups that has got them voting Labour. “It’s scary to see how many people are so taken in, especially by far right politics,” says Sam Turner, a 25-year-old bar shift leader at a local Wetherspoons. “The far right is all about ‘these people shouldn’t be here. These people are bad’,” he continues. “Politics shouldn’t be something that divides people along cultures.” Turner will be voting for Burnham because he believes doing so could have a genuine impact on the community. “Even if he is just using it as a stepping stone for parliament, that’s not a bad thing, because that means we’ll have a northern prime minister, which would do us an absolute world of good,” he says.
