For a moment, I could be listening to a young Margaret Thatcher – with a Mancunian lilt.
‘I work hard. That is what we do,’ says the earnest, poised blonde figure at the lectern.
‘Because working hard used to get you something. It got you a house, a nice life, holidays. It got you somewhere. But now, working hard, what does that get you?’
It sounds straight out of the traditional aspirational Tory playbook. Indeed, within five seconds of starting this speech, she has managed to remind us that she is a plumber – a self-employed one to boot – and has even just qualified as a plasterer.
Hannah Spencer, the new Green MP for Gorton and Denton, will certainly be something of a curio down at Westminster next week – an MP in possession of a pair of overalls, a set of tools and a genuine trade.
It’s 4.30am and she has just walked into the Manchester Convention Centre with her party leader, Zack Polanski, to hear herself returned as the first by-election victor in her party’s history.
The atmosphere is oddly sterile for a properly momentous result – Labour thumped into third place in what was hitherto one of its ten safest seats and the Tories, minus their deposit, also enduring their worst by-election result in memory.
The candidates have each been given a ticket ration of just half a dozen. The only ones making any noise are the posse with Loony candidate, Shaun ‘Sir Oink-a-Lot’ Jones.
Shake on it: Hannah Spencer and Labour’s Angeliki Stogia during the Gorton and Denton by-election count
Hannah Spencer (left) with Green party Leader Zack Polanski (right) in Gorton, Greater Manchester
The returning officer has banned booze from the count but one of the Loony gang has managed to smuggle some in beneath his huge stovepipe top hat and they are in celebratory mood.
Their by-election aim had been ‘to beat the communists’ which they have done by a margin of six to one.
The victorious Ms Spencer is heard in respectful silence as she switches from plucky plumber to pained victim. Whereupon the Mrs Thatcher tribute act morphs into a beardless Jeremy Corbyn.
The public, she warns, are being ‘bled dry’ by ‘billionaires’ and are ‘sick of being let down and looked down on’.
And, on she goes: ‘We are sick of our hard work making other people rich. I saw how much harder life is when the things around you are broken – the litter, the fly-tipping, the dirty air.’
This last point is a momentary reminder that Ms Spencer is actually from a party whose raison d’etre is to fight for a cleaner planet. That, though, was pretty much all we heard of the fluffy eco stuff.
The Greens have steered well clear of greenery during this by-election. It’s hard to preach about tree-hugging when you have pulped more trees to produce more leaflets than any other party.
Besides, there are no votes in being anti-fossil fuel in a constituency so full of cars that every street has vehicles spilling on to the pavement.
What has proved to be much more effective round here is the pursuit of the Muslim block vote. ‘Assalamu alaikum,’ begins one of Ms Spencer’s final leaflets which then continues: ‘Keir Starmer failed on Gaza…’
I can, at least, read this one since it is in English. Other campaign literature and broadcasts have been in Urdu and Bangla, accompanied by images of Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy meeting the prime ministers of India and Israel.
So what is the underlying message there? Coming off the stage, she is asked that question by a television interviewer and pulls a baffled look.
‘I don’t know, I’ve been out on the streets every day,’ she deflects.
Across the room, the runner-up (and earlier favourite), Reform candidate, Matt Goodwin, is simmering and does not mince his words.
He accuses the Greens and their leader – whom he repeatedly calls ‘Mad Zack’ – of ‘sectarianism’ and playing the Islamic card in a constituency where 30 per cent of the electorate defines as Muslim.
Reform UK’s by-election candidate Matthew Goodwin is pictured arriving at the result declaration
He latches on to earlier warnings from an election monitoring watchdog which has spotted a marked upswing here in ‘family voting’ – ie men escorting women into the polling booth.
‘The reason the Greens have won here, let’s be honest, is exactly what that report was warning about: family voting,’ says Mr Goodwin.
‘Now we can have a conversation about sectarianism and what it’s doing to our democracy, or we can pretend it’s not happening. It’s clearly happening.’
Just five hours later and the Greens have reconvened in a glittering Asian wedding hall in Gorton to introduce their new MP to the media.
This time, they have some supporters to generate applause and Ms Spencer walks up the aisle alongside Mr Polanski, like a pair of bashful newly-weds.
No tongues are wagging. Mr Polanski is gay and Ms Spencer is said to be happily single with four greyhounds.
‘I’m probably going to get a bit teary and I am actually not going to apologise for that,’ she begins, before ladling out the pieties.
‘I’m so proud that we fought a really positive campaign against the Reform Party that dances to the tune of their billionaire donors and against the Labour Party who stooped so incredibly low,’ she tells us.
‘I have been surprised by some of the divisive, dog-whistling campaigning from other parties.’
If bombarding Pakistani communities with leaflets showing a Labour Prime Minister hobnobbing with the PM of arch-enemy India is not dog-whistling, I wonder what is. Ms Spencer starts channelling her inner Mandela.
‘Today, the people here in this constituency have sent a very clear message. We’ve rejected hate and embraced the politics of hope – hope that is rooted in an ambitious plan to transform our country for the better.’
And not just our one, either. ‘Many voters I’ve worked with are deeply troubled by this Labour government’s complicity in genocide.
And I am so proud that the Green Party stands firmly against genocide and war crimes and defends human rights in Gaza and across the world.’
Questions were permitted from broadcasters and hand-picked outlets like the New Statesman but there was no opportunity for pesky hacks like me to ask a question.
For example, how would her colleagues in the building trade cope with the sort open-borders policy advocated by the Greens?
However, there was a lot about caring. ‘We have very high levels of empathy here and I think that really shows how much we care about each other.’
After little more than half an hour of a one-hour press conference, the spin doctors ushered her out into the ‘Bridal Room’ and to a rather un-Green Audi A5 and away for a spot of kip.
But then, I think we now have to acknowledge that all that net zero/polar bear business really is a second order issue for the party now.
There is a revealing moment when Mr Polanski, unprompted, lists the three key goals of his party: ‘To lower people’s bills, to protect the National Health Service and to rebuild our public services.’
Across the constituency, the sense of polarisation which has permeated this by-election has not subsided.
Over in Levenshulme, a relatively mixed area, I find elation and surprise among Green supporters. ‘We are all very happy,’ says Takeer, manager of the Jabeenz bridalwear shop.
Labour loyalists, such as 34-year-old Alan, a software engineer, voice continued frustration that Manchester Mayor and ‘King of the North’ Andy Burnham had been barred from standing by his own party.
Among Reform supporters, there is a shrug and a sense that the momentum still rests with Nigel Farage.
‘The whole country is utterly f***** and no one else is going to solve it,’ says a lunchtime drinker at the Union pub who calls himself ‘the man with no name’.
Landlady Kath Hennigan says she is a lifelong Lib Dem who was ‘very disappointed’ by the Green campaign and tried Reform as a result.
I receive a fairly objective analysis from John Commons, a former Lib Dem city councillor for more than a quarter of a century who stayed loyal to his party on Thursday night (they lost their deposit).
‘I take some pleasure from the fact that Reform failed but they will do well in the local elections,’ he reflects.
He deplores the cynical way in which the Greens have ridden the twin horses of progressive student activism and religious politics but thinks it may work again next time in this seat.
And his overall conclusion? ‘Starmer is completely finished.’ At teatime, Hannah Spencer resurfaces for a ‘walkabout’ on the Stockport Road. Very regal. I have read in the local paper that she got her plumbing business off the ground thanks to help from the Prince’s Trust.
Might she actually be that rare breed, a Green royalist in what is now a republican party? ‘I don’t think so,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t really believe in that sort of thing.’ A referendum on the monarchy? ‘Why not?’ she says, before a minder intervenes.
Here in Gorton and Denton, there is a real sense that the old certainties are starting to crack. The full battiness of the Greens’ views on defence, open borders, drugs and the like are unlikely to survive first contact with a general electorate, as Jeremy Corbyn discovered in 2019.
But, at the same time, it does feel as if a tectonic plate has shifted. May is round the corner. Local elections have never looked more portentous.
