\n<\/p>\n
When I ask him why he\u2019s voting Reform, Bromiley says: \u201cThis country is going to shit.\u201d 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. \u201cI’ll be honest with you, I’ve only been working for my company since March. Before that, I struggled to get a job,\u201d he says, \u201cAll 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.\u201d He continues, \u201cI don\u2019t like being racist, but,\u201d Bromiley trails off. \u201cGetting young people into work is a lot harder these days.\u201d<\/p>\n
From July to September 2024, 15.1 per cent of UK men<\/a> 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<\/a> 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<\/a> suggests that immigration may have more impact on lower paid workers with lower education than higher earners, that impact is minimal.<\/p>\n What has<\/em> 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 \u2013 or the newly born, even-further-right Restore Britain \u2013 brought up immigration (Restore Britain has seven per cent support in Makerfield, according to Survation\u2019s opinion polls<\/a>, fracturing Reform\u2019s voter base and inadvertently increasing Burnham\u2019s chances of winning).<\/p>\n 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. \u201cThe top thing on the leaflet they’re giving out is immigration,\u201d 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 \u201cfamily atmosphere\u201d on local estates. \u201cYou’re now seeing strange faces. No one knows who they are. No one really trusts them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is why we\u2019re all voting Restore,\u201d 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 \u201cget out the park\u201d after allegedly speaking to a young girl (who is not on camera). \u201cMost parks you go to these days, that’s what it’s like,\u201d he tells me, \u201cWomen can’t even walk at night, that’s how bad it’s got around here\u2026 they’re getting followed by these Asians.\u201d<\/p>\n In better news for Burnham, for some male voters, it\u2019s precisely Reform UK\u2019s stance on marginalised groups that has got them voting Labour. \u201cIt’s scary to see how many people are so taken in, especially by far right politics,\u201d says Sam Turner, a 25-year-old bar shift leader at a local Wetherspoons. \u201cThe far right is all about \u2018these people shouldn’t be here. These people are bad\u2019,\u201d he continues. \u201cPolitics shouldn’t be something that divides people along cultures.\u201d Turner will be voting for Burnham because he believes doing so could have a genuine impact on the community. \u201cEven 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,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n