Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party has suffered a significant setback following a disastrous defeat in Gorton and Denton, with blame for the outcome reportedly laid at the door of No 10.
The Green Party secured a stunning victory in a constituency where Labour had previously commanded more than 50 per cent of the vote in 2024, placing the Prime Minister under intense pressure to adopt more left-leaning policies.
The by-election result starkly revealed the electoral challenges facing Sir Keir, as both the Greens and Reform UK surpassed Labour's vote share.
This outcome underscores the dual threat to Labour, which is now losing support to parties on both the left and the right of the political spectrum.
Sir Keir has consistently identified Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as the most significant national threat to Labour, prompting the party to adopt a more stringent stance on issues such as immigration in an effort to neutralise this challenge.
During a visit to Gorton on Monday, which was initially perceived as a sign of Labour’s confidence, Sir Keir asserted that "only Labour can beat Reform".
However, recent electoral patterns contradict this claim. In both Thursday’s vote in Gorton and Denton, and the Welsh parliamentary by-election in Caerphilly last year, voters seeking an alternative to Reform opted for other parties – the Greens in the former, and Plaid Cymru in the latter.
The Labour hierarchy has pointed to the difficulties of governing parties winning by-elections, but the failure to come even close to victory in Gorton and Denton demonstrates the underlying problems facing Sir Keir.
Professor Robert Ford, an elections expert at the University of Manchester, said the result was a “nightmare scenario” for the Government.
“They have fallen into the electoral Valley of Death. Rejected in the centre. Rejected on the right. And now rejected on the left,” he said.
The constituency was almost tailor-made to expose Labour’s electoral weakness, with a mixture of wards with high student and Muslim populations – the kind of voters targeted by the Greens – and working class areas which Reform focused on.
Labour threw vast resources at the seat, with MPs and campaigners travelling to the constituency and the Prime Minister making a personal intervention.
But Labour’s share of the vote almost halved, falling from 50.7 per cent in 2024 to 25.4 per cent in the by-election, a drop of 25.3 percentage points.
The decision to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from contesting the seat may have been a key factor in the defeat, with Sir Keir now left open to the accusation he put blocking a potential leadership rival’s Westminster ambitions ahead of Labour’s best chance of winning the by-election.
Richard Burgon, secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs on the party’s left, said: “Blame for Labour’s defeat lies squarely with Keir Starmer and his clique.
“They put factional interests over having the candidate best placed to win, Andy Burnham.”
But even without Mr Burnham waiting in the wings in Westminster, the defeat will inevitably further weaken Sir Keir’s grip on power.
Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central, has warned Sir Keir he cannot “out-Reform Reform” and the by-election result will add weight to internal criticism of the leader’s strategy.
But a shift to the left could further distance Labour from the loose coalition of voters which delivered Sir Keir’s landslide in 2024.
May’s elections in Scotland, Wales and councils across England could now prove terminal for Sir Keir.
Professor Ford said they could prove “apocalyptic” if the Green surge is repeated in areas such as the London boroughs, Birmingham and other urban areas.
He warned Labour also risked being “wiped out” by Reform in areas of the so-called Red Wall in northern England.
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