This is The Guardian.

The senses, it feels quite positive for Andy Burnham.

This is his home turf.

And they've said, you know, he's a local lad.

He's one of us.

He understands what

it's like. The Labour Party MP Josh Simons is standing down as the MP in Makerfield, in the

north-west and the Wigan area to make way for Andy Burnham. It's been harder to find support

for reform than I thought. And I don't think that it's because the support for Labor,

but it's because the support for Andy Burnham. It's not unanimous by any means. So that may change

when reforms start turning up, throwing everything at it, as I'm sure they will.

The Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has found a route back to Parliament, but he needs to win a critical

by-election burst that reform are set to throw the kitchen sink at. From the Guardians today

in Focus, this is the latest with me, Lucy Hoff. Well, I'm joined by Hannah Al-Othman, literally

on the road in Makerfield, where this very critical by-election is soon to take place,

where Josh Simons, the Labour MP, has agreed to stand down to pave the way for the Mayor of Greater Manchester

to stand for a seat in Parliament.

First of all, Hannah, just tell me a bit about Makerfield what it's like as a constituency.

So, Makerfield sort of on the outskirts of Greater Manchester is in the borough of Wigan.

It's a whole different sort of political landscape to where we had that very recent

by-election, which was also in Manchester, in Gorton and Denton.

But this is very different. The Greens are not really in contention here.

...