Afternoon summary
Keir Starmer has taken a major step towards rapprochement with China, opening the door to a UK visit from Xi Jinping in a move that drew immediate anger from British critics of Beijing. As Pippa Crerar and Rowena Mason report, during the first visit by a British prime minister to China in eight years – a period which Starmer described as an “ice age” – he said talks with the Chinese president had left the bilateral relationship in a stronger place. However, while Starmer and his team were flaunting the results of the visit – including a visa waiver, a cut in whisky tariffs and economic cooperation agreements – there was growing concern in the UK over the prospect of a return trip.
Police-recorded homicides in England and Wales have fallen to their lowest level in more than 40 years – driven by a drop in knife crime, PA Media reports. PA says 499 homicides were recorded in the year to September 2025, down 7% from 539 in the previous 12 months, according to ONS figures.
Updated
Yesterday political journalists got an email from Robert Ford saying Reform UK and the Green party were “neck and neck to win the Gorton and Denton byelection”. Politicos know that Robert Ford is a great elections expert, and it was surprising that he was quite so negative about Labour’s chances in the seat, all factors considered.
But this was Betfred’s Robert Ford – who may be a great expert on betting odds, but isn’t a politics professor.
Thankfully, his namesake (or Rob Ford, as he prefers) has pronounced on the byelection too. He has written a very detailed post about the byelection on his Substack blog, which is probably the definitive psephological guide to the contest.
It includes this chart about the demographics of the seat, which is a mix of Denton (largely white) and Gorton (less than 50% white, 40% Muslim, 42% graduate or student).
As Ford explains, there’s a catch. There are twice as many voters in the constituency from the Gorton end (the green bars) as from the Denton end (the blue bars).
Ford does not predict the result, and his article is worth reading in full, but he says Reform UK may struggle to win.
Though Reform have gained a lot of ground in the national polls, they may find Gorton and Denton, where they start 36 points behind Labour, a tough nut to crack. Reform poll poorly among young voters, university graduates, and ethnic minorities – all groups found in large numbers in this seat’s Manchester wards. The three Denton wards have a more Reform-friendly profile but Denton makes up just a third of the seat’s total electorate. There is no history of radical right success in any of these wards, and Reform likely begin with next to no organisational presence in the seat, having stood no candidates here in 2024.
Ford says, on paper, Labour should have the best chance. But he goes on:
Things are not so simple for a governing party polling below 20%, led by the most unpopular prime minister in polling history, a prime minister who has particularly struggled with young progressives and Muslim voters. Labour’s vote already fell sharply here in both the 2024 general election and the 2024 locals, as both Muslim voters and younger graduates in the Manchester wards registered their discontent with a party seemingly more interested in listening to Reform voters than listening to them.
And, as for the Green party, Ford says they will “hope that a radical left message on domestic and foreign policy will make them the obvious vehicle for discontent among young progressives and Muslims”. But they face competition from the Workers Party of Britain, who could “easily play spoiler, taking a large enough slice off the Muslim electorate to make a Green or Labour win harder, and a Reform win easier”, Ford says.
