Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could win the Gorton and Denton by-election as neither Labour nor the Greens has emerged as a “front-runner” for the Left-leaning vote, according to a leading political expert.
Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science at Manchester University, predicted that all three parties could still clinch the seat.
Reform could “come through the middle” if the Left vote in the constituency splits evenly, he believes.
If this happened it would be a major blow to Sir Keir Starmer, especially given that Labour chiefs blocked Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham from being the party’s by-election candidate.
If he had been chosen, Mr Burnham would have been expected to have won the seat but having returned to Parliament he could then have challenged Sir Keir for the Labour leadership and to be Prime Minister.
With less than a fortnight to go until the by-election polling day on February 26, Prof Ford explained: “Both Labour leaning and Green leaning voters strongly prefer either party to Reform, and would very likely coalesce behind a Left bloc front-runner, if they knew for sure who that was.
“But they can’t, because there isn’t one.
“Both parties are therefore furiously posting leaflets into this information vacuum, but by doing so they only thicken the electoral fog of war that impedes their progress.”
Labour claims that local electoral history, including the most recent local and general elections, make it obvious that it is the strongest anti-Reform candidate, he added.
But the Green Party, under leader Zack Polanski, argue that the Government slumping in the polls and Sir Keir’s “toxicity” among voters, combined with the “Green-friendly demographics” of the seat, with a large number of young people, leave it best positioned to defeat Reform, Prof Ford stressed.
“Both claims are plausible. They cannot both be true,” he added.
He also emphasised: “The risk for both parties, and the opportunity for the party they and their voters both oppose most, is that tactical co-ordination completely fails.
“Different voters believe each party, the larger Left vote splits evenly, and Reform come through the middle.
“This, too, is a plausible scenario.”
Prof Ford previously predicted that everything would have to go Reform’s way for it to win in the constituency, an area which has been a safe Labour seat for many years.
Labour won the Gorton and Denton seat at the 2024 general election with 50.8% of the vote, but this was down on an estimated 67.2% in 2019 after boundary changes are taken into account, as more young people and Muslim voters turn away from the party.
Labour MPs who have been campaigning in the constituency have been surprisingly upbeat about how they believe their vote is holding up.
But the Greens are also pouring resources into the seat hoping to pull off a shock victory.
The by-election was triggered after Andrew Gwynne, who was sacked as a minister and suspended from the Labour Party over offensive messages in a WhatsApp group, resigned as an MP.
