You don’t have to be in Gorton and Denton for long to know that next week’s byelection really matters. If Labour wins in what has been an over-50% solid red-voting area since the second world war, that will calm nerves on its febrile back (and front) benches. If Labour loses, heavy blame will fall on Keir Starmer for fixing the party’s ruling NEC to bar Andy Burnham’s selection, ensuring he couldn’t challenge for the leadership without a Westminster seat.
Few doubt the popular Greater Manchester mayor would have won next week in Gorton and Denton on his home patch. Blocking him is widely seen as grubby Westminster politicking that has weakened, not strengthened, Starmer’s grip on the leadership. For many erstwhile supporters that jiggery-pokery was a turning point, as Starmer seemed willing to risk Reform UK scoring another win in order to stop Burnham, though “stop Farage” has to be Labour’s overwhelming priority.
The field is a three-way split between Labour, Reform and the Greens, and each can make a good case as to why they will win. There is plainly a strong anti-Reform majority in an area that has been Labour for more than 80 years, but how is anyone to know which is the best anti-Reform vote to cast?
Greens and Labour fight it out fiercely here, each accusing the other of dirty tactics, of uprooting each other’s posters from front gardens and worse. A mass of canvassers has descended. A journalist arriving, as did I, can, as ever, take their pick of doorstep vox pops and shape a conclusion to suit any proposition. The truth is that I am none the wiser about the result after spending time here; my crystal ball is murky. Professional pollsters say the same thing: Patrick English of YouGov says it all depends on whether either Labour or the Greens can unite the “beat Reform” vote. The venerable pollster Peter Kellner says: “If Reform get 40% they will be hard to defeat, but if they get 30-35% they can be beaten if voters have a clear signal as to who is best placed to overtake them.” Good polling could be vital, he says. But there is none in sight. Without it, if anti-Reform votes split, then he says “first past the post will deliver a Reform victory”.
Minds may be concentrated sharply this weekend when the white supremacists of Britain First hold what threatens to be a large “march for remigration” in the centre of Manchester, challenged by Stand up to Racism and others. Resisting the far right, kin to Nigel Farage’s crew, must surely be the prime focus for all on the left, setting aside their smaller differences. Reform’s candidate, the GB News presenter Matt Goodwin, has claimed UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British. He has also said: “We need to dramatically lower, if not stop, migration into the UK from predominantly Islamic nations.” More than 40% of voters here are from an ethnic minority.
From my vox pops, I can quote a former Labour voter on the doorstep who says: “Everything has to change from top to bottom.” He doesn’t quite say it, but “change” is now the Farage trope. Or there’s a woman dithering, after longtime voting Labour. “Nothing’s going well, is it?” she says. Then she nods to the sound of Labour achievements – breakfast clubs, local bus fares capped at £2, NHS waiting times falling, the move to curtail zero-hours jobs, living wage rising and more. Then she looks at a leaflet of Farage, declaring: “Not that smile; he has to be stopped!” She likes Burnham. She will probably back Labour.
Burnham is everywhere most days: at events, door-knocking, recording TikToks, “the most loyal of foot-soldiers”, his team says. You look at him for the eye-roll: he would be less than human if deep within there wasn’t a schadenfreude wish for a loss here to serve Starmer right. But he’s ultra-visible in backing Angeliki Stogia, the good local candidate, whom he knows well as a local councillor. Sometimes people tell him they won’t vote Labour because he was blocked from running. “Please, please don’t do that!” he begs them, raising the threat of Farage, reminding them that nearby Runcorn was lost to Reform at the recent byelection by just six votes. “Keeping Farage out means voting Labour,” he says. He talks of national policies, what Labour got wrong on disability benefits and winter fuel allowance, of the need for electoral reform, Lords reform, and a new economic direction. He talks, they listen.
Can he tilt for the leadership one day? Can he win it? My crystal ball is murky as ever. But primed to go, you see him standing “in the slips, straining upon the start”, as Shakespeare might have it, ready with plans to govern, and like so many others, deeply frustrated by the missteps that have cast Labour so low in so short a time.
Next Thursday, Gorton and Denton won’t just yield a result – it will also reveal the shape of the battle to come.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
