Starmer under pressure after Greens win Gorton and Denton by-election
Sir Keir Starmer vowed to fight the extremes of both the left and right but did not set out any plans to change his approach after Labour’s humbling in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
The UK prime minister made his comments after a stunning victory by the Green party in the Manchester seat, with Labour trailing in third place in the formerly safe constituency behind Reform UK in second.
Starmer accused Reform and the Greens of taking advantage of people’s “grievances” and wanting to “tear our country apart”.
He added: “I will not stop fighting the extremes of politics, the extreme on the right in Reform, the extreme of the left in the Green party.”
He declined to elaborate any plans to shift tack, despite calls from Angela Rayner, his former deputy and possible future challenger, for the government to be “braver” after the by-election’s “wake-up call”.
The leftwing Greens’ comfortable victory in Thursday’s contest has weakened the position of the already embattled prime minister.
In the party’s first ever by-election win, its candidate, Hannah Spencer, took the seat with 14,980 votes.
The triumph is a vindication of the strategy of Green leader Zack Polanski of targeting urban voters with both an anti-poverty message and strong criticism of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
“Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires,” Spencer said in her victory speech. “We are being bled dry.”
Reform secured 10,578 votes and Labour took 9,364, barely more than half its total at the 2024 general election, when it secured a 13,413 majority.
The result suggests that the Greens are able to outflank Starmer as the primary leftwing opposition to Reform in Labour heartlands.
Polanski said the result had the “potential to transform the face of British politics”.
Most Labour MPs do not believe Starmer will face a renewed leadership threat immediately, but a much bigger round of elections on May 7, to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and English local councils, now looks more perilous for the prime minister.
In a letter to MPs on Friday, Starmer admitted that Labour had to “learn lessons” but suggested that the Green victory was a flash in the pan that cannot be replicated nationally.
He had previously blocked Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, another potential Labour leadership rival, from standing in the by-election.
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservatives, who finished fourth in the by-election with only 706 votes, said Starmer’s premiership was now “finished”.
Comment: ‘Family voting’ allegations disguise failures of losing parties
It has been too easy for parties who lost out to the Greens in Gorton and Denton to pivot attention away from that historic result and on to the story about alleged voting irregularities.
There are reports from volunteer observers of “family voting”, which means coercion or lack of a free vote by family members. Extremely concerning, as they say.
But both Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch’s statement about “harvesting Muslim community bloc votes” and the many quotes from senior Reform politicians suggesting that coercion was happening at scale, smack of the same thing: they don’t want to talk about how far they fell short in this by-election.
There is no way that the healthy 4,000 vote majority for the Green candidate can be put down to this phenomenon. Nor can it be blamed for the Tories losing their deposit. But it is a useful way of getting off the topic of rejection by voters.
As Sunder Katwala of think-tank British Future, something of an expert on divisive political tactics, points out in a thread on social media today, Reform and predecessor parties Ukip and the Brexit party, have a record of crying foul when they lose a by-election and blaming ethnic minority voters.
He cites 2019 in Peterborough and 2024 in Rochdale and asks whether there was ever a formal complaint or anything came of these successive gripes.
In a febrile atmosphere, we all seem to struggle with the idea that two things can be true at the same time. So it may be that voting irregularities went on — and should be fully investigated. But also that this is a bit of a distraction and very convenient for the losers.
Scottish Labour leader says party can win in May
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar warned against reading too much into the Greens’ historic win in the Gorton and Denton by-election ahead of May’s Holyrood election.
“We have demonstrated that we can win against the odds in
Scotland and I honestly believe we can win in 10 weeks’ time,” he said at the Scottish Labour conference in Paisley on Friday.
The last Scottish Election Survey poll before May, published
on Friday, put the ruling Scottish National Party on 34 per cent with Labour slipping into third place at 14 per cent behind Reform UK at 18 per cent.