Labour have handed the Greens a victory that now threatens to unpick Keir Starmer’s leadership.
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment Labour lost the Gorton and Denton by-election.
It could have been the headlines surrounding Keir Starmer’s appointment of Peter Mandelson, in spite of his friendship with a convicted paedophile. Perhaps it might have been revelations that long-time Starmer aide Lord Matthew Doyle was friends with a paedophile. Maybe it was MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy, making headlines for her links with a convicted paedophile.
Or of course, it could have been their failure to appoint Andy Burnham.
Until the early hours of Friday morning, it was totally inconceivable to Labour strategists that they could lose the seat. Still believing the country operates on a duopoly, the party made a play for politics of old and argued the contest was a two–horse race with Reform – and lost.
They’d identified that Reform’s Matthew Goodwin was a “posh boy academic who could never win in Manchester”, but having fought hard internally against aspirational policies like a wealth tax, they hadn’t baked in a challenge from the left.
The only thing horse-like about this contest was Labour’s blinkers. The streets of Levulshume were plastered with Green paraphernalia and canvassing indicated a close contest with Zack Polanski, yet even former pollster-turned-Labour-MP Chris Curtis still saw “a straight fight between us and Reform” as late as Wednesday evening.
Even on the night of the election, I gently suggested to one Labour advisor that – based on their own data – they should be expecting around 27% of the vote. They were furious and dumbfounded by this projection. It turned out they achieved two percentage points fewer, arguably indicative of their hubris.
Starmer fought tooth and nail to keep Burnham off the ballot, bending the limits of his National Executive Committee to keep the process just within the limits of new rules he himself brought forward a couple of years ago. There is a reason local constituency parties are tasked with choosing their candidate: contrary to current Labour consensus, campaigners living in the area tend to know who will win.
The result has been public condemnation from his own MPs, with blame for Thursday’s defeat lying at the Prime Minister’s feet. Backbenchers have taken to social media to describe Burnham’s snub as a colossal error and have reignited fears over his position as leader.
There’s a lot to be said about the Green’s winner Hannah Spencer
There’s a lot to be said about the Green’s winner Hannah Spencer. She is arguably the perfect Labour candidate: a plumber driven into politics by the growing gap between the super-rich and “working people”.
Spencer has the charm of Burnham and the grounding of Angela Rayner, having left school at 16 to take up a trade. She is everything that Labour, the party of working people, strives to be. But a stubbornness at the top of the party prevents candidates like Spencer from breaking through.
Instead Labour find themselves stuck between a rock and the Reform Party: in a bid to appease Nigel Farage’s rising star, Starmer has introduced policies that do not align with the people who typically vote for them.
People voted for a wealth tax, Rachel Reeves gave them an incremental rise in capital gains contributions. People want nationalisation of water, Labour continue to underwrite a looming private company bailout. People want public ownership of the railway, Heidi Alexander has delivered a halfway house that relies on foreign investment.
Straddling the politics of the left and right has ultimately resulted in stagnation. Neither faction is happy, and it’s clearly cost Labour at the polls.
On Friday morning, Starmer said he would not quit in the wake of his catastrophic result. He said while it was disappointing he will “keep on fighting” for those who want change “for as long as I’ve got breath in my body”.
In a matter of weeks, voters in Wales will elect a new devolved government. If polls are to be believed, there is the prospect of a groundbreaking result: Labour are ousted from their heartlands.
The question now is whether Labour will change tact and prevent a larger more cataclysmic loss at the upcoming local elections, or will they bed in under Starmer’s stubbornness.
