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Sir Keir Starmer has urged his MPs and activists to flood the streets of south-east Manchester on Thursday, as he seeks to persuade jaded Labour supporters to stick with the party and avert a disastrous loss in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
The bitter three-way contest is freighted with political risk for Starmer and could go down to the wire. This week an Opinium poll put Labour and Greens tied on 28 points, with Reform UK just behind on 27.
Starmer issued an eve-of-poll rallying call, insisting that only his party can stop Nigel Farage’s Reform from importing the politics of “anger and division” into a city which has for nearly a century been a Labour stronghold.
While a Reform victory would be a big blow to Starmer, it is the prospect of a Green victory that causes the greatest fear in the prime minister’s circles: an ominous sign that the left vote is fracturing, leaving scores of Labour seats at risk at the next election.
Starmer’s pitch in Gorton and Denton is that a vote for the Green Party is wasted and will let in Reform. But the Greens claim that they — not Labour — are best placed to tap into urban angst and are the most potent vehicle for beating Farage.
At the last general election the Greens won 6.7 per cent of the national vote and four seats at Westminster but the party came second in 40 constituencies, 18 of which were in London. In all but one of those seats, the party was second to Labour.
In the short term, a Labour defeat in Gorton and Denton in the early hours of Friday is unlikely to lead to another bout of leadership speculation. Starmer survived what looked like a putative coup earlier this month and most Labour MPs seem exhausted by the experience.
“The kindling is wet,” said one minister, arguing that Labour MPs had realised that the country, let alone the business community and the City, was in no mood for a protracted leadership contest.
One Starmer ally said: “Things were settled a couple of weeks ago. People showed they didn’t want to be like the Tories, constantly changing leader.” Anas Sarwar, Scottish Labour leader, found himself isolated after he called for the prime minister to quit.
However a Labour defeat in the Greater Manchester seat — which it won with a majority of over 13,000 in 2024 — would still weaken the prime minister and fuel mutinous feelings in the party ahead of a much bigger round of “midterm” elections across the UK on May 7.
Labour are particularly concerned about the implications any Green win could have for the May elections. One Labour Greater Manchester councillor said that activists were genuinely “frightened” that the Green candidate Hannah Spencer, a plumber, could win.
The Greens expect to put 2,000 campaign workers on the ground on Thursday to try to bring out the party’s vote.
“Everybody I know is hoping Reform win and we come second,” said the councillor. A second Greater Manchester councillor said a Spencer win could lead to a “Green wave of council seats” in May, notably in parts of the country where the party currently has little representation.
Luke Tryl, of think-tank More in Common, said: “The worst outcome for Labour is either a Green win or a Reform win with the Greens in second.”
Tryl said it would not only reinforce the trend towards a split in the left vote — a mirror of the Conservatives’ loss of support on the right to Reform — but it would undermine Starmer’s main electoral message.
“It makes it much harder for Labour to run a ‘Macron strategy’, that is ‘however much progressives might be frustrated with us, it is us or Reform and so you have to hold your nose and back us’.”
A Labour loss would also reignite debate about the wisdom of Starmer’s allies in blocking popular Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing as the party’s candidate in the by-election.
Starmer held “peace talks” with Burnham this week, although that is unlikely to insulate the prime minister from criticism. Even Labour’s opponents in Gorton and Denton concede the mayor would probably have won the seat.
Professor Rob Ford from Manchester University said a Burnham candidacy would have “instantly” solved the “divided left” problem because he would have been seen as the obvious anti-Reform choice.
Labour’s candidate Angeliki Stogia can still win, according to party activists, and Starmer’s campaign team is numerous and equipped with detailed electoral data. Teams on the ground insist that wavering voters are coming around to Labour.
But if the left vote does split down the middle, then Reform’s candidate Matt Goodwin, a controversial anti-immigration polemicist, could emerge triumphant.
A result in Gorton and Denton is expected at about 4am on Friday morning but if the result is tight, as the polls suggest, there could be recounts and a delayed declaration.
Starmer, Farage and the Green leader Zack Polanski will all be consulting the Friday train timetables to Manchester for the obligatory victory tour, but it is anyone’s guess which one will be turning up.