Greens storm key UK by-election — as Starmer’s Labour slumps to third

LONDON — The Green Party triumphed in the Gorton and Denton by-election Friday, snatching a once-safe Labour seat from Keir Starmer’s governing party and prompting fresh questions about his strategy for staying in power.

Hannah Spencer, a plumber and local councillor who pitched a populist cost-of-living message, will be the party’s newest member of parliament having seen off both Labour and Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK in the local race.

She bagged 14,980 votes (40.6 percent) — racking up a majority of 4,402 in one of Labour’s safest seats, and helping to push the governing party into third place less than two years after Keir Starmer’s party triumphed nationwide.

Matt Goodwin, an academic-turned-Substacker who ran for Reform UK, received 10,578 votes (28.7 percent), sharply improving Reform’s result on 2024 but not doing enough to take the insurgent Farage-led party over the line. Angeliki Stogia, standing for Labour, bagged just 9,364 votes (25.4 percent).

The result represents a serious blow from the left for Starmer, who is battling tumbling poll ratings and major concerns over his leadership from his own MPs. The Green vote climbed 27.4 percentage points on 2024’s result, while Reform UK’s climbed by 14.6 percentage points.

By contrast, Labour’s share of the vote tumbled 25.4 percentage points on 2024’s general election result.

The turnout was 47.62 percent, slightly down from 47.8 percent at the general election.

“Working hard used to get you something,” Spencer said in a victory speech that majored on cost-of-living concerns and attacks on billionaires. “It got you a house, a nice life, holidays, it got you somewhere. But now working hard, what does that get you?”

‘Deeply disappointing’

It marks the second by-election defeat for Labour since Starmer took office, and makes the prime minister’s position in his own party more vulnerable. Labour had held the seat with one exception since 1906.

The contest was called after former minister Andrew Gwynne resigned from parliament last month over ill health — and saw Labour high command move to block Andy Burnham, a potential Starmer rival from the party’s center-left, from running for the seat.

Labour Party Chair Anna Turley called the result “deeply disappointing,” but said “by-elections are normally difficult for the party of government, and this election was no different.”

“We know the majority of voters here did not want the poisonous politics of Nigel Farage and Reform,” Turley argued, as she attacked “the politics of anger and easy answers” of both the Greens and Reform.

Reform meanwhile zeroed in on the Greens’ repeated campaigning on the war in Gaza to accuse the party of stoking “sectarianism” in a seat with a diverse population. Speaking to the BBC after the count, Goodwin said he had been beaten by “a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives.”

Reform had, however, delivered a bloody nose to Labour in their “sixth safest seat,” Goodwin argued. “I think if we can do this here, we can do this pretty much anywhere.”

British political scientist John Curtice told the BBC that Labour were now “losing votes in both directions” and that the Gorton and Denton result gives “a very clear affirmation of the potential risk that the Greens can pose — particularly actually in Labour constituencies with two characteristics.”

“One, yes, plenty of Muslims, as in Gordon and Denton, but also, more generally, in constituencies with relatively large numbers of younger people,” he said.

Curtice added: “This is going to be up with those [past by-elections] in the history books and in our political memory — this is a seismic event.”

This developing story is being updated.