The best start to a Friday…#GreenParty ‘s Hannah Spencer wins #GortonAndDenton byelection…and pushes #Labour who had had a comfortable majority there into third place.
“Rather than winning narrowly, the [Green party] won 40.7%, enough to put them as much as 12 points ahead of second placed #Reform. It represented as much as a 27.5 point increase on the party’s share in 2024.
Labour, who had not hitherto lost an election in the area since 1931, fell into third place.”
Professor Sir John Curtice
But the bad news from Professor Sir Curtice continued on the stale dead old parties:
“The [#Labour] party’s 25.4% of the vote represented a near halving of their 50.8% of the vote in 2024 and the 13th biggest ever fall in the party’s support in a byelection.
Meanwhile, the #Conservatives lost their deposit with just 1.9% of the vote, their worst ever byelection result.”
This is bad news for both #Starmer and #Badenoch. There is a seismic shift away from both their parties.
Former YouGov president,Peter Kellner:
“This time, turnout was almost the same as in 2024. To be sure, some former #Labour voters will have stayed at home, while #Reform and the #Greens picked up some new voters. But the lion’s share of Labour’s 9,000 lost votes did not stay away: they switched to other parties.”
There is no love for #Starmer here and he was punished for not letting Andy Burnham stand…but this is not a one off result, as Kellner goes on to say…
“There is quite separate evidence of the depth of the hole in which #Labour now finds itself. Week after week by-elections are held for local councils.
More than 200 have been held since last May. Greg Cook, Labour’s former head of political strategy, and Mark Pack, a Lib Dem peer and meticulous number cruncher, tell the same story. Labour has failed to gain a single seat, and lost three-quarters of the seats it was defending.”
Peter Kellner
Professor of politics, Rob Ford:
“As I noted in my Swingometer profile of the seat this result - #Green win over #Reform with #Labour 3rd - is the nightmare scenario for the incumbent govt.
They have fallen into the electoral Valley of Death. Rejected in the centre. Rejected on the right. And now rejected on the left”
And yet #Labour have trotted out Heidi Alexander on the media rounds to say the stale old thing that big parties always say about by elections that don’t go in their favour - this result should not be ‘over interpreted’…which means they will ignore it and sadly not learn from it.
#Starmer has pissed away Labour’s 2024 victory.
Nothing to show for it and haemorrhaging votes in areas that have been solid Labour for almost 100 years.
Nobody wants #Labour to be #Tory or #Reform Lite.
The Labour Party that supported working people, women, disabled and ethnic minorities has been lost to the cynically named centre right cult of #LabourTogether…and don’t think just because Morgan McSweeney has gone its been swept away.
It lives on in key Cabinet figures such as Steve Reed, Shabana Mahmood, Lisa Nandy and Wes Streeting…and even in Starmer himself, in as much as much as he aligns with any ideology.
It’s a gift to #Greens.
As new #Green MP #HannahSpencer has just stated #gortonanddenton was 127th on the Greens list of target seats.
That means there are 126 seats where the Greens could win on a smaller swing.
But we won’t have to wait until the next byelection to see the newly invigorated Green Party roar…local elections are now back on in just a few short weeks time.
Just watch this Green momentum build.
Juggling With Eggs
Kim