While Sir Keir Starmer was fighting for his political life in Westminster this week, on the terraced streets of south-east Manchester a new threat to the UK prime minister was unfolding in the form of a by-election that could reshape British politics.
Gorton and Denton is rock-solid Labour territory — or at least it was. But Starmer’s stumbling leadership, sluggish economic growth and a series of scandals have put the seat in peril.
After a week that shook his premiership, Starmer is facing another potential humiliation in a bitter contest on February 26, in which the Greens and Reform UK are hacking away at the crumbling Labour vote.
“It’s seismic for British politics,” said Steve Jackson, a Green canvasser, as he headed out into the early morning Gorton drizzle in search of votes. “If we win here, it will shatter the myth that the Greens can’t win.”
In the turquoise corner is Matt Goodwin, an academic turned activist with a strong line in anti-immigration rhetoric, hoping Reform UK can win a seat where 44 per cent of the population identifies as coming from an ethnic minority background.
And sitting in the Cha Cha Chai café in the suburb of Longsight is Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, insisting that her party can still win here on a slogan of “unity not division”. Starmer has not been seen yet in Gorton and Denton and no visit is scheduled.
A loss would be ominous for Starmer and his party. Labour used to walk home in urban seats like this, combining the ethnically diverse Gorton with the more traditionally white working-class Denton, on the other side of the M60 orbital motorway.
Jackson admitted it would be “a very different election” for the Greens if the popular Manchester mayor Andy Burnham was standing as Labour’s candidate. But Starmer and his allies blocked him, fearing his return to Westminster would herald a leadership challenge.
Greens and Reforms are flooding the seat with activists, hoping to overturn Labour’s 13,413 majority secured at the 2024 election by former MP Andrew Gwynne, who has retired on health grounds.
Starmer’s nemesis in Gorton and Denton, at least according to the bookmakers, could be a plumber called Hannah Spencer. While Starmer was trying to secure his position in Number 10 this week, the 34-year-old Green candidate was in Stoke finishing a plastering course.
Jackson admitted this is “terrible timing”, but in her temporary absence he claims about 600 Green activists have been knocking on doors and getting a positive response.
William Hill, the bookmaker, makes the Greens odds-on 4/6 to win the seat, with Reform on 6/4 and Labour a relative outsider at 11/2.
In the Green headquarters in Gorton, a former estate agent’s office, new recruits are instructed: “Every door we knock on could be the difference between winning and losing.”
One 17-year-old student, who declined to give her name, has travelled from Stoke to canvass voters for the first time, spurred by a desire to keep out Reform. “I don’t want racist parties in power,” she said, as she headed out on to the Gorton streets, where new developments are going up to house Manchester’s booming population.
Many voters here are tired. Manchester may be the poster child of regional development, but in the south-eastern suburbs daily life can be a grind and the promise of “change” from successive governments has not translated into a noticeable rise in living standards.
Ali Mukhtar, on a shopping trip in Longsight, said he felt neglected by “all the parties” and that immigrants had been stigmatised. He said he works “24/7” in a factory and as an Uber driver: “I pay my taxes.” He is weighing up how to vote.
Graham Barker, a retired electrician, summed up the frustration among traditional Labour voters. “Normally it would be Labour,” he said outside the local Morrisons, but added: “If anything it might be the Green Party. I may give them a go. I never liked Starmer anyway.”
Down the road in Denton, Reform UK’s campaign operates from a new unit on a tumbledown industrial estate, with a security guard on the door. Huge pictures of Goodwin and party leader Nigel Farage dominate. The party also claims to have had about 600 activists on the ground last weekend.
If the Greens want to use the by-election as a springboard to dislodge Labour MPs in urban seats at the next election, Farage sees this as an opportunity to show that his party can defeat Labour in its old white working-class heartlands.
The geography may not stack up in this seat. While Goodwin insists Reform is making headway in more diverse areas like Longsight and Burnage, the party’s principal effort is in Denton, where the Manchester suburbs slope up towards the moors.
Goodwin is a divisive figure with a nativist agenda or — as Green leader Zack Polanski prefers to put it — a “track record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.
On his Substack in 2024 Goodwin spoke about how “millions of British Muslims — millions of our fellow citizens — hold views that are fundamentally opposed to British values and ways of life” and that Britain “will experience the largest increase in the number of Muslims in Europe in the next 20 years”.
Goodwin tells the FT that while the Greens are talking about issues such as Gaza and Labour obsesses about “saving Starmer”, Reform is “the only party talking about local issues” such as antisocial behaviour.
He denies that Reform’s message is not resonating in more diverse areas of the seat. “There are lots of Muslim business owners who can’t afford their energy bills or their taxes,” he said.
“Labour think they have a God-given right to represent Manchester,” he said. “They haven’t. People here have been shafted by Labour. We are in with a very good chance of winning here.”
High-profile figures including chancellor Rachel Reeves and Burnham have been to the constituency to campaign in a contest seen as pivotal by the party leadership. If Reform or the Greens triumph, nerves among Labour MPs will become even more strained and Starmer’s premiership will come under further pressure.
“We’ve got a strong story here,” Powell said. “Reform coming into town has been very galvanising for our voters.” Labour has an established ground operation and voter data that the Greens and Reform do not possess: the deputy leader insists Labour can win.
She acknowledged that the stakes are high. “What happens here is very important for the local context but also what it says nationally.”
Powell insisted that Labour grandee Lord Peter Mandelson and his links to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are barely mentioned on the doorstep, but she admitted the scandal will harden the views of people who were “frustrated with us anyway”.
Surveying the café as a diverse range of customers tuck into samosa chaat and gulab jamun, she added: “This by-election is about a lot more than who is up or down. This is properly serious.”