Five key takeaways from the Gorton and Denton byelection
The night saw a big win for the Greens, disappointment for Reform and landmark losses for Labour and the Tories
The Green party has pulled off a landmark victory in the Gorton and Denton byelection, marking a significant blow to Labour and the leadership of Keir Starmer.
Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority, while Reform UK finished second and Labour came third in the tightly contested race.
What are the key takeaways as the dust settles on the streets of Greater Manchester?
The Green surge continues
The Green party didn’t just sneak a win in Gorton and Denton, it won convincingly, taking almost 41% of the vote and securing a comfortable 4,400 majority. The party’s first victory in a Westminster byelection saw it increase its vote share by 27.5%, which is five times larger than the party has achieved in any byelection since 2010.
Reform was a fairly distant second place, picking up 10,578 votes, while Labour was left languishing in third, with 9,364 votes.
The result comes against a backdrop of growing support for the Greens, which have had a surge in membership since Zack Polanski took over as the party’s leader in September last year, rising from about 70,000 to more than 180,000. Sources in the party said they expected that to hit 200,000 soon.
According to Politico’s poll of polls, the Greens are polling at 16% nationally, two points behind the Conservatives and Labour, who are both on 18%, and a full 10 points behind Reform, who are on 26%. But given that in September the Greens were on 10%, 21 percentage points behind Reform, supporters will point to significant progress having been made.
The Greens’ choice of candidate was also key – and illuminating. Hannah Spencer, a plumber who has lived in Greater Manchester all her life, was a disarming force. She demonstrated an ability to connect with ordinary voters.
Her victory speech focused on wealth distribution, giving working-class people a voice. “Life has changed,” she said. “Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry.”
But there was scant focus on traditional “green” policies, such as tackling the climate emergency. That Spencer’s only mention of traditionally green issues was a desire for “clean air” – alongside good schools and a thriving high street – was an indicator of the Greens repositioning themselves as a general leftwing populist party, according to some political commentators.
Has Reform’s momentum stalled?
Reform has contested four byelections this parliament – two to Westminster, one to the Senedd and one to Holyrood. Nigel Farage’s party has only won one of them, a narrow victory in Runcorn, secured after its former Labour MP was convicted for assaulting one of his own constituents.
Matt Goodwin was not seen as a good choice of candidate for Gorton and Denton, not least because of his extreme views. Despite making a lot of Manchester being the “city that made him”, his style and narrative contrasted sharply with Spencer’s.
But coming second in Gorton and Denton was, by some commentators’ estimation, a good result for Reform UK. The swing it experienced in Gorton and Denton approximately reflects the swing it is experiencing everywhere else in the UK, whereas the Greens significantly outperformed their national polling.
Reform led the field in the predominantly white, working-class Denton half of the constituency, but its virulent anti-immigration message supressed support among the 44% of voters in the Gorton and Denton population who identify as coming from a minority ethnic background.
Goodwin said he thought he had “embarrassed Labour” in one of its strongest seats. “I think if we can do this here, we can do this pretty much anywhere,” he said. According to pollsters More in Common, “if Reform made this progress uniformly across the country in a general election, and all else remained equal, they would end up with 229 seats”.
Labour is in trouble
Labour won Gorton and Denton with more than 50% of the vote in the 2024 general election. Its distant third place in this vote will reignite questions about Keir Starmer’s leadership and renew the criticism from those on the left of the party that he has not done enough to impress its progressive base – particularly coming on the back of a similar result last year in the Senedd seat of Caerphilly.
“It’s a very disappointing result,” said Starmer. “Incumbent governments quite often get results like that midterm. But I do understand that voters are frustrated.”
The prime minister’s decision to block Andy Burnham from running for the seat will also be brought back into focus. Campaigners on the ground repeatedly said that had the mayor for Greater Manchester run, the seat could have been won.
Luke Tryl, from More In Common, said the loss was consequential for Labour because it sent a message to voters about future contests. The party had hoped that the threat of Reform would be enough to unite the progressive vote behind it. “But that argument risks collapsing after last night’s result,” Tryl said.
The result also points to Labour’s wider challenges in areas with high proportions of graduates, students and Muslims, said More In Common. John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University, stressed that the result showed a collapse in support among two pillars of Labour’s traditional support: white, working-class voters and minority ethnic people. “The Green party’s historic success in the Gorton and Denton byelection means the future of British politics is now even more uncertain than it was already,” he wrote in a piece for the BBC.
The Tories’ electoral nadir deepens
The Conservatives did so badly in the election that they lost their £500 deposit. In a statement issued after the party won just 706 votes, the party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said there was “only one sensible candidate standing in Gorton and Denton, their candidate, Charlotte Cadden”. She got 1.9% of the votes cast, down 6% on the general election, marking only the second time the Conservatives have lost their deposit in a vote, by polling under 5%, since 1962.
The next lowest-polling candidate after the Conservatives was the Liberal Democrat, Jackie Pearcey, who got 653 vote and also lost her deposit. She was followed by The Official Monster Raving Looney Party candidate, Sir Oink-a-lot, who polled 159, beating Advance UK’s Nick Buckley by four votes.
The collapse of two-party politics
For the Conservative party, it was the worst byelection result in its history. For Labour, it was a third placing in its 50th safest seat, one it has held for nearly 100 years. And it was the sixth largest Labour majority to be overturned at a byelection since the second world war.
Activists for both for the Greens and Labour noted a shift among Muslim voters, with many mentioning Starmer’s position on Gaza as a key reason for moving away from the party.
With the Greens and Reform taking a combined 68% of the vote, and Labour and the Tories taking 27%, the “duopoly that has long dominated postwar British politics has never looked weaker”, according to Curtice.