After weeks of relentless campaigning on their doorsteps, the residents of Gorton and Denton have headed to the polls today to vote in what is a major test for Sir Keir Starmer and his beleaguered premiership.
Ministers and MPs from all parties have been trawling the area, filling letterboxes with campaign leaflets and trying to win over local residents with their policies and candidates.
Labour has thrown everything at Thursday’s vote, with more than 1,000 activists expected to travel to the constituency, which Sir Keir visited on Monday in a sign of apparent optimism about the result.
But behind the perfect photo-ops is an entire campaign team, hard at work to secure as much support as possible, hosts of The Independent’s In The Room podcast, Helen MacNamara and Cleo Watson, explain.
Watson, a former political adviser to Boris Johnson and Theresa May, said that ministers will likely find themselves on an “absolutely ridiculous” tour bus as others “run up and down the high street” searching for constituents keen to speak to them.
She said: “Not only are you in an actual former tour bus, but you turn up somewhere and then there’s just one guy in a car park with a placard.
“It’s not the buzzy thing you’d expect.”
She said team members generally spend their time “running up and down the high street” asking local businesses if they want a visit from a minister, only to be met with a “no” or “who?”
“There’s someone frantically running ahead texting the WhatsApp group, saying ‘be careful because there’s dog mess there’, or ‘could you stall there at that bakery because we can’t find anyone for a photo-op’.”
Depending on the minister on the campaign trail that day, however, the reception can be rather lacklustre.
“Sometimes you have an absolute drudge, no ones interested, it’s raining, no one is there to campaign with you,” says Watson. “It would be like thinking you’re going on an amazing world tour, but you’ve been mis-booked – no one knows who you are and no one knows you’re music.”
She added: “It’s like the worst album launch ever, and you’re there having to explain sometimes why no one turns up.”
Meanwhile, MacNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary, described how some ministers begrudge their duty of “having to go and do their bit”, while others “absolutely love it”.
She described instances in which some ministers resent being unable to use their ministerial cars, but said other MPs use it as an opportunity “to get some proper credit in the bank”.
She said: “People have such long memories when it comes to who is standing up when it’s something that is rubbish. If you are very ambitious and you’re low enough it can’t actually be you’re fault, you get proper credit in the bank.”
As the campaign comes to a close, campaigners will be heading on their “dawn raid” to get their voters out to polling stations “by hook or by crook”, before contacting party HQ so they can decide if the prime minister’s diary should be “cleared for a victory lap” or not.
Labour won Gorton and Denton in 2024 with more than half the vote, but polling suggests the party’s candidate faces a tight three-way contest with Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin and the Greens’ Hannah Spencer.
Hear more from Cleo and Helen on In The Room, The Independent's new politics podcast – taking you inside the world of power. New episodes come out every Friday, and you can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch on YouTube.
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