Labour lost the Gorton and Denton by-election this week because voters wanted to punish Keir Starmer for “broken Britain” and the Green Party was, tactically, the best option. That does not mean Labour is going to lose the next general election.
The big losers were the parties of the right, Conservatives and Reform, while the result was a blow for the Liberal Democrats, but not necessarily a serious one.
The Greens were the big winners on the night, increasing their vote share by 28% to 40.6% and overturning a Labour majority of more than 13,000 in a seat they had held for almost 100 years. Labour was pushed into third place with 25.4% behind Reform with 28.7%. The Conservatives trailed with 1.9% and the LibDems with 1.8%.
Disappointments
The result was an obvious disappointment for Labour, but not an unusual one for a governing party at this stage in a parliament. So much is a commonplace, but still true.
It was also a disappointment for the LibDems, who must now face the fact that they are no longer the sole beneficiaries of the protest vote. They, like Labour, face challengers to right and left. However, the north of England has not been a LibDem stronghold in living memory; losing in Greater Manchester does not necessarily mean losing in, say, the South West.
For the Conservatives, however, a vote share of 1.9% was a disaster, even in a seat where they came fifth with only 7.9% in 2024 and had no chance this time. It shows they have not been forgiven for the austerity of their 14 years in office from 2010-24 and face an uphill battle if they are ever to recover.
The Greens took the bulk of the protest vote in Gorton and Denton because the LibDems were always unelectable there, having come sixth with only 3.8% in 2024, and Reform turned out to be too much for a constituency with a 28% Moslem population to stomach. So there was nowhere else for protest voters to go.
That does not mean the Greens can win anywhere, as their new MP claimed, quite understandably in the euphoria of victory, or in any political circumstances.
The Gorton and Denton result is being seen by some as an unmitigated disappointment for Labour on the grounds that it now faces an insurgency from the left as well as the right. But there is another way of looking at the outcome. Labour now faces split oppositions to both right and left: the right is divided between the Tories and Reform and the left between LibDems and Greens.
If Labour can hold its nerve, hold together, hold the centre-left ground and achieve the economic growth for which we are all striving so hard, it has every chance of winning the next general election.
That means raising living standards, building homes, a green industrial strategy, investing in public services, stronger local government, improved relations with Europe, strengthening national defence with our allies, building social cohesion, confronting inequalities and discrimination, and enforcing ethics in public life.
