We have torn the roof off British politics”, Green Party leader Zack Polanski declared after Hannah Spencer claimed a historic by-election win in Gorton and Denton that has sent shockwaves through the Labour Party.
“Labour’s electoral stranglehold is over,” Mr Polanski said, describing Ms Spencer’s victory as sparking an “existential crisis” for a party which he claims has long taken for granted the support of areas such as this.
It is a result that will have seismic ramifications for British politics – it leaves prime minister Sir Keir Starmer fighting for his political life – but it also brings with it a sense that the age of the Labour heartland in the North West of England is over.
This constituency is only two years old but the area and the seat’s previous iterations have always been loyal to the Labour Party; Manchester Gorton had been red since 1935, Denton and Reddish was Labour from its 1983 creation.
The party that people in this area have long thought represented them slumped to third in this by-election, behind the victorious Greens and Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin, having won the seat with a 13,000 majority at the 2024 general election.
Voters in Gorton and Denton who woke up with a new MP suggested they had run out of patience waiting for Labour, which they helped return to power 19 months ago, to improve their lives.
Just yards from a Reform UK sign fixed in his neighbour’s garden, Joseph McNamara had a flyer supporting Ms Spencer in his front window.
He’d never voted for the Greens before but felt now was the right time.
“I did vote years ago for Labour, but not anymore”, the 77-year-old, who moved from Ireland to Manchester in 1966, told The Independent.
“Starmer is for the higher-ups rather than the lower-downs. He promises things and says ‘oh yes I’ll do this, do that’. At the end of the day nothing happens.”
Ms Spencer told The Independent during the campaign that a vote for her was a vote for hope. That chimed with Joseph.
His choice was very simple, he explained. “They can do more than Labour has done and help the people.”
Asked if he believes they will look after working-class voters in a way he does not believe Labour has done, he added: “Well, I hope so. That’s the main reason. That’s what everyone wants to be done.”
University worker John Tiplady, from Gorton, has always voted Labour. He didn’t do so this time, however, feeling Sir Keir’s party no longer stands up for people like him.
“Never again [would he vote for Labour], not with how it’s going now,” the 65-year-old told The Independent on Mount Road in Gorton on Friday morning.
“I think they’ve lost the plot of what they should be standing for,” he said, saying the party is now focused on the “Westminster establishment” rather than communities like this.
John would never vote for Reform and was not won over by the triumphant Greens either. Feeling completely without options, he chose to vote for the Monster Raving Looney Party as a protest.
Labour could have won John’s vote back in different circumstances, however.
“I would have 100 per cent voted for Andy Burnham and think he’d have walked it,” he explained.
Mr Burnham, the popular Merseyside-born Mayor of Greater Manchester, was blocked from standing as Labour’s by-election candidate by the party’s National Executive Committee amid fears he would use his position as an MP to challenge Sir Keir for leadership.
Though Mr Polanski and Ms Spencer think they would have beaten Mr Burnham, his absence undoubtedly damaged the party’s chances of retaining the seat.
“He would have given us a strong northern voice”, John said. “He’s trying to fight, he’s a figurehead.”
A combination of Angela Rayner, MP for the nearby Ashton, and Mr Burnham at the Labour helm would be the way to come back from this disaster, John believes.
Ms Rayner led the calls for introspection in the Labour Party after the result. “This result must be a wake up call,” she wrote on X.
“It’s time to really listen – and to reflect. Voters want the change that we promised – and they voted for.
“If we want to unrig the system, if we want to make the change we were sent into Government to make, we have to be braver.”
John doesn’t think the “Westminster establishment” would allow such a change within the party, however.
Far from enamoured with the result was market trader Geoff Drake, 71, from Denton. He voted for Reform, saying he was concerned about immigration and had no time for either the Green Party or Labour.
He hasn’t voted for the latter for 40 years and believes it must change. He is far from convinced it will learn the right lessons from this defeat, however.
“The shift [in votes] from Labour must show them something that they’re going wrong. They must learn something from that. But can they rectify it?”
Mr Polanski believes that his Green Party has made ground where Labour refuses to change.
Asked by The Independent whether this by-election result cements the Green Party and Reform UK as the new left and right wings of British politics – and how his party would differ from Labour in the way it counters the rise of Nigel Farage – he said: “I think it’s about having some actual principles and a coherent narrative about what you do.
“Because right now Nigel Farage says jump and Keir Starmer says how high?
“There’s so many issues where we’ve seen Keir Starmer not actually present an alternative to Nigel Farage.
“He’s just presented Diet Coke light, and you know if people wanted the full-fat version, then they would vote for Nigel Farage and for Reform.”
The Green Party leader suggested the prime minister’s premiership may not survive this by-election result. He said that his party succeeded where Labour could not because it has not looked to “feed” parties on the right in chasing votes.
He said: “Now it’s not for me to give Keir Starmer tips, and I think even if I gave him tips, he probably wouldn’t be around long enough to implement them anyway at this point.
“But in terms of the Green Party, I think it’s about not giving an inch to the right, because we see the more that you give and the more that you feed it, the worse that they get and the further and more extreme it gets.”
Ms Spencer was equally bullish at the press conference.
She said: “This is only the beginning. This was 127 of the Green Party’s target seats. There are at least 126 that we can win with a smaller swing than we saw here. But actually we can win anywhere.”
“Something absolutely massive is happening right now”, the incoming MP added.
Labour cannot afford to ignore it.
