Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister, his rule and navigation of the Labour Party has been catastrophic in my view and, in a number of cases, morally reprehensible. From factionalism to corruption to deeply unpopular policies, many that the leader has u-turned on, it is no surprise that Labour fell to third place in Gorton and Denton, losing half of the votes they had in 2024.
Many Labour MPs and politicians across the country have been criticising the direction of the leadership and the campaign which Starmer seemed to wish to fight. Some have even called for his resignation. In a post on social media, left-wing Labour MP Nadia Whittome laid bare in a series of points why her party lost the by-election.
The Green Party’s candidate Hannah Spencer won the Gorton and Denton by-election from Labour with 40.7% of the vote (14,980 votes), securing a 12% majority and a 26.4% swing from Labour to the Greens. Reform UK came second with 28.7% of the vote (10,578 votes) and Labour came third with 25.4% of the vote (9,364 votes). The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats got just less than 2% of the vote and lost their deposits.
This marks the first time that the Green Party has won a parliamentary by-election and also the first time that they have won a seat in the North of England.
Aping Reform
The first point Nadia Whittome raised in her post about the by-election loss is that Labour must not “ape Reform.” She said that to keep Labour’s voting coalition together “we should be true to the progressive values that Labour is meant to stand for” and blamed the large amounts of Labour voters moving to the Greens on the party’s failure to do that.
This is very true as whereas Labour has achieved some good things since coming to office in the nationalising of the railways, the freezing of rail fares and the EU reset deal to name a few things, they have also made some catastrophic errors.
The removal of the Winter Fuel Allowance for all pensioners, the proposed welfare cuts – since u-turned on – and the delay in removing the two-child benefit cap all mirrored the policy direction of previous Conservative governments. With Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech and the policy to confiscate the possessions of asylum seekers, Starmer’s government seems to be trying to, as Whittome put it, “ape” Reform UK.
Even after these tactics cost them a safe Labour seat, the government shows no signs of learning lessons as Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has confirmed she will continue her rightwards trajectory and is urging Keir Starmer to “resist a leftward shift”. This comes as Angela Rayner, former Deputy Prime Minister and an MP seen as being on the left of the Labour Party, said the by-election defeat should be a “wake up call.”
Factionalism
“Don’t put factional interests ahead of everything.” This was Nadia’s second point and rings very true. In the case of the by-election, Keir Starmer and his allies blocked Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, from being allowed to put himself forward to stand as a candidate. While Starmer insisted it was to avoid losing the Greater Manchester Mayoralty, many have speculated that it was because of Andy Burnham’s desire to challenge Keir Starmer for the leadership, which he’d have to be an MP to do. Nadia said his blocking was for “nakedly factional reasons” and said that Burnham “may well have been able to win this seat.”
An opinion poll by Find Out Now in late January showed that 53% would have voted for Labour in Gorton and Denton had Burnham been the candidate, compared to 30% for Reform and only 8% for the Greens.
Labour factionalism has been a problem for years, however, and the factional war against the left of the party being led by Starmer and, until his departure, his advisor Morgan McSweeney has come back to bite them with not only the by-election loss, but also the appointment and subsequent sacking of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. Peter Mandelson, a key instrument in the right of the Labour Party, was revealed to have had a close relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffery Epstein and is being investigated for passing on sensitive information to him.
Dirty tricks
In her third point, the MP for Nottingham East said “don’t play dirty.” In the campaign for Gorton and Denton, Keir Starmer made claims of the Green Party wanting to legalise drugs. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, you can see that it is not a blanket legalisation that is being proposed. Claims were made about sex workers as well which Nadia Whittome said were “desperate, embarrassing and harmful.”
But it seems that Keir Starmer has not learned his lessons from this as, while saying the result was “deeply disappointing” and that voters were “impatient for change”, he also went on to say that the Greens were willing to embrace “sectarian, divisive politics” and also said that they are “not the harmless, environmentalists they pretend to be.” Some Labour MPs have criticised Starmer’s comments with one calling it “appalling” and one telling Politics Home “that letter is what the Greens will use to raise the money. Slow clap.”
Dirty tricks, factionalism and aping Reform UK. While Nadia Whittome also spoke about how Labour shouldn’t say that only they can beat Reform if it’s not true and how First Past the Post isn’t fit for purpose, the top three points of hers illustrate the problem with the Labour Party currently. If Labour is to win the next election, the factionalism, the dirty tricks and the copying of Reform’s policy ideas need to stop. More importantly, however, a McSweeney style purge needs to happen at the top and the party must return to true Labour values and govern the country by them. Failure to do so will see Labour haemorrhage support to the Green Party and Reform UK at the next election as it did in Gorton and Denton and Runcorn and Helsby last year respectively. But, most importantly, if Labour fails to return to its progressive values and stand by them, then it is the people of Britain who will pay the biggest price.
