Nigel Farage made his first appearance on the Makerfield campaign trail yesterday, saying the race will be the most significant by-election of his lifetime.

The Reform UK leader was taken on a constituency tour sitting in the front seat of a white van owned by his candidate, plumber Robert Kenyon, who plans to thwart Andy Burnham's bid to return to Westminster and scupper his hopes of becoming Labour leader once and for all.

Joining Mr Farage and his entourage, the Daily Mail followed Mr Kenyon's van in our own car for the tour – only to have an extraordinary encounter when, by chance, we bumped into Andy Burnham himself.

And it is fair to say he was not pleased in the least to see us.

Mr Farage had been talking about just how important a by-election in Makerfield was – turning to his fresh young candidate and joking: 'No pressure!'

'If Burnham wins, he will become the next Prime Minister,' Farage had been saying. 'If we win, we'll be odds-on to win the next general election. That's how massive it is – it's massive!'

Then, suddenly, we came across the self-styled King Of The North.

The encounter took place after Mr Farage was driven to a lake to see where Mr Kenyon enjoyed fishing – a hobby he has in common with his party leader. 

But moving on from the tranquil woodland and lakeside scene, Mr Farage made the spontaneous decision to pop into a local cafe for refreshment.

Shortly after taking his seat, it emerged that Mr Burnham was also in the cafe, just metres away in a separate gazebo next to the front door.

Mr Burnham, it transpired, was enjoying cakes and hot drinks while talking to young adults with special needs.

I was the only journalist there and became aware of his presence when I was told by Reform staff that he was in the building. So when he got up to leave, I decided to have a chat with him.

He did not seem to want to engage. In fact he appeared furious and fumed: 'You don't go into a place like that unannounced! You're out of order there!'

When I protested that I was merely on Nigel Farage's campaign trail and that the encounter had not been planned, Mr Burnham raged: 'I know who you are but you should not do that. You should have boundaries.

'I'm not going to do a 'friendly, matey, this that or the other'. You need to be told.'

I could not understand why he was so angry and asked if he was taking lessons from Donald Trump by launching personal attacks on journalists for doing their jobs.

'The Press does not walk in like that,' he responded. 'If you're going in with the media and a political party, you do not waltz into a place like that.'

And when I asked about the disclosure on the Daily Mail's front page yesterday – that Mr Burnham once said trans men who identify as women should be able to use female toilets – and whether he still believed this, he replied again: 'You're out of order.'

A member of Mr Burnham's entourage, meanwhile, attempted to prevent a Daily Mail photographer from taking pictures of the bad-tempered showdown.

I learnt soon afterwards that the cafe provided support for young adults aged 19-25, and offered training to help them participate in real life.

I can understand this could make our presence on the campaign trail appear insensitive.

Reform staff, however, insisted that a cafe in the constituency was a perfectly suitable venue for a campaign pitstop and I could not see what I had done wrong. I found Mr Burnham's intemperate response to my presence unusual to say the least.

Whatever the cause of his discomfiture, I felt it was a telling insight into the tensions in a by-election campaign which Mr Farage believes to be the most consequential in modern political history.

This is something Mr Kenyon – who can trace his family back in the constituency for 200 years and who stood on a Reform ticket in the 2024 election – still appears to be processing.

Only yesterday morning he had been out on plumbing duties, fitting two radiators before getting the call from his party demanding he drop everything and brace himself for a gruelling five-week campaign against Labour's most popular politician.

Asked how he felt to be thrust into such a glaring political limelight, he joked: 'That's what I've been thinking about the last few days. Can I come back to you? You know how they say there are people who seek greatness, and people who have it thrust upon them. I'm very much thrust upon.'

According to the latest polls, the race is starting on an absolute knife-edge. Makerfield, unlike the recent Gorton and Denton by-election, is heartland Reform territory.

Driving behind Mr Kenyon's van through his hometown, it was difficult to spot a single street without at least one Union Flag or St George's Cross flying among the lampposts and posted on the windows of terraced houses.

Had Labour opted to field an unknown candidate, Mr Farage could have been supremely confident of cruising to victory.

But Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham threatens to put up a fight about which Reform cannot be complacent.

And Mr Farage warned that if Andy Burnham wins the race, 'he will take Labour even more down a spendthrift route that the markets will hate'. 

'Burnham is saying 'vote for me to change the Labour Party'; Rob is saying 'vote for me to change the country'.'

He accused Mr Burnham of posing a 'threat' to Britain's economy, to Britain's borders and to women's rights, following the revelations in the Daily Mail yesterday about the mayor's views on single-sex toilets and spaces.

The Reform chief blasted: 'He's far worse than Starmer on policy. The truth is he's a more Left-wing version of Starmer, but he's not dissimilar – look at how he's U-turning on everything. 

Even in the last week, he's chopping and changing what he thinks. They're not dissimilar people.'

Reform is framing the race as 'David versus Goliath', accusing Mr Burnham of being the 'ultimate, consummate career politician' in contrast to Mr Kenyon's blue-collar careers in the trades, army and as a technician for the NHS.

Posing next to his man outside Reform's local headquarters, Mr Farage – who stands over a foot shorter than his unassuming candidate – looked up and quipped: 'The problem is, we're saying this is David versus Goliath – and he is a Goliath!'

The pair's first stop was a visit to the site of Mr Kenyon's first job – gruelling plumbing work in a freezing cold factory at night, which happened to be directly next to the site of his 'first love', the Wigan Warriors' rugby league stadium.

The candidate has now had to warn his friends that he may no longer be able to join them at Wembley for this year's final in ten days.

After that came my encounter with Mr Burnham in the cafe, about which Nigel Farage had his own views: 'Andy Burnham's had it all his own way for far too long… his biggest weakness is being seen as having a sense of entitlement. And that's how he treated you.'

While Reform is optimistic about its chances, the campaign has already been clouded by allegations against its candidate's social media usage.

Mr Kenyon has been condemned by Labour after it was revealed he was friends with a far-Right leader on Facebook. 

And the Tories have raised questions about his tweets, as his account was discovered to have been suspended by X. 

But Mr Farage issued a full-throated defence of his candidate. And Mr Kenyon insisted he had no idea who the far-Right leader was when adding him as a friend, arguing that during the election he had accepted hundreds of friend requests a day in order to help spread Reform's message.

On his first tour of the seat, Mr Farage had little time to interact with voters but a number who spoke to the Daily Mail suggested that even Mr Burnham may fail to win them around.

Malcolm, 69, highlighted the local clean air zone Mr Burnham had attempted to introduce in Manchester at a bill of £100 million, which he claimed would have cost him £60 a journey just to drive his motorhome up the street.

Paul, 55, said that his entire family would be backing Mr Kenyon but that Burnham is a 'good second place' option.

And though the Daily Mail found one Labour supporter who insisted not every local is a Reform UK backer, she admitted that her own party's first two years in power will prove an enormous hurdle for even Mr Burnham to overcome.

Whether Mr Kenyon can go from draining radiators to draining the Westminster swamp – voters in Makerfield will have just five weeks to decide.