The Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton by-election, dealing Keir Starmer’s Labour Party a devastating blow, as it falls to third in one of its “safe” seats.
Hannah Spencer won the Greater Manchester seat with 14,980 votes (41 per cent of the vote share). Reform’s Matt Goodwin came in second place with 10,578 votes (29 per cent), with Labour’s Angeliki Stogia in third with 9,364 votes (25 per cent). The turnout was 47.6 per cent.
Speaking following the announcement, Spencer said: “We ran a hopeful campaign… we have shown that we don’t have to accept being turned against each other.” It is her party’s first ever by-election victory and will be seen a personal win for leader Zack Polanski.
Labour said the result was “clearly disappointing”. “By-elections are normally difficult for the party of government,” Anna Turley, the chair of the Labour Party said: “This election was no different. The politics of anger and easy answers offered by the Greens and Reform won’t deliver this. We will move forwards with a relentless focus on delivering the renewal communities across Britain want to see.”
The by-election was called on 22 January after Andrew Gwynne, a former Labour health minister, resigned from the Commons on health grounds. Gwynne was dismissed from the government and suspended from the Labour Party on 8 February 2025 after it was revealed that he had sent disparaging messages about constituents to a group chat (“Trigger me timbers”), which included other Labour figures.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, applied to run as the Labour Party’s candidate in the seat. He was blocked by the officers’ group on Labour’s National Executive Committee on 25 January by eight votes to one. Keir Starmer was one of the eight who voted to block Burnham, while Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, voted to allow him to run. The reason given for the decision was that Burnham would have been forced to resign as mayor should he have been selected as the Gorton and Denton candidate, and party could not afford to fight two by-elections and risk losing the Greater Manchester stronghold to Reform.
[Further reading: The Tories will fight Reform to the death]
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