Good morning. Hannah Spencer is the new MP for Gorton and Denton after the Green party’s first ever parliamentary byelection victory. In a bitter blow to Keir Starmer, Labour were pushed into third place in a constituency the party has represented for nearly a century. Reform’s Matt Goodwin came second, as Nigel Farage claimed the result was “a victory for sectarian voting and cheating”.
This contest had been billed as a three-way fight and for much of the campaign, it felt like a pollster’s nightmare. One side of the seat looked ripe for Reform’s message of grievance and cultural threat; the other was saturated with Green posters and the sense that Labour’s coalition was splintering. Add the row over Andy Burnham being blocked from standing, accusations of dirty tricks and disinformation, and you had a byelection that felt like a microcosm of 2026 British politics.
