Starmer under pressure after Greens secure historic by-election victory

Edited by Maxine Kelly and Philip GeorgiadisGeorge Parker in LondonSir Keir Starmer is under renewed pressure after a stunning victory by the Green party in the Gorton and Denton by-election, with Labour trailing in third place behind Reform UK in second.The leftwing Greens comfortably won the key parliamentary by-election in south-east Manchester, in a previously safe Labour seat, with 41 per cent of the vote.Labour’s defeat will weaken the prime minister further, following a bruising start to the year and speculation over his leadership, with many of Starmer’s MPs now looking over their shoulders at a potential Green challenge.The Green candidate, Hannah Spencer, took the seat with 14,980 votes after a bitter three-way fight. It was the Greens’ first ever by-election win and a vindication of the strategy of Zack Polanski, the party’s leader since last September, of targeting urban voters with an anti-poverty message combined with strong criticism of Israel’s campaign in Gaza.Reform had 10,578 votes and Labour took 9,364. At the 2024 general election, Labour won the seat with a 13,413 majority.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.The result suggests that the Greens are able to outflank Starmer as the primary leftwing opposition to Reform in Labour heartlands.Polanski said the result had the “potential to transform the face of British politics”.Most Labour MPs do not believe Starmer will face a renewed leadership threat immediately, but a much bigger round of elections on May 7, to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and English local councils, now looks more perilous for the prime minister.Spencer, in her victory speech, said: “Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires . . . We are being bled dry.”Reform’s candidate, Matthew Goodwin, claimed the result represented “the emergence of a dangerous sectarianism in British politics”.“What you saw was a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives that came together to dominate the constituency.”Anna Turley, Labour chair, called the result “clearly disappointing”. She said: “We have had thousands of conversations over the last few weeks and we know the majority of voters here did not want the poisonous politics of Nigel Farage and Reform.”But the Conservatives, who finished fourth with only 706 votes, said Starmer had “killed the Labour party”.Jim Pickard in LondonThe bitterest pill for Labour is that some activists had convinced themselves that the party could win the by-election. Many saw Starmer’s visit to the constituency at the start of the week as proof that Labour was in with a chance.“We all know we are in a hole,” said one aide. But he suggested that the Greens could lose some momentum as the media start to examine their policies more closely. “I think that taking early defeats is obviously something we’d rather avoid but it does give an opportunity to expose some of our opponents,” he said.Jim Pickard in LondonOne fascinating angle in the by-election was that the Tories and Liberal Democrats both got under 1,000 votes.

The Lib Dems tried to put a brave face on their meagre 663 votes, suggesting their former voters had switched to the Greens to block Reform.Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader, said: “This result shows people are bitterly disappointed with Labour but horrified by the rise of Reform.”Jim Pickard in LondonMajor unions have urged Sir Keir Starmer to shift to the left following the election result. Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, said the result was “a wake-up call”. She added that “Labour need to now ditch the gimmicks and get back to being Labour.”Andrea Egan, general secretary of the UK’s largest union Unison, said progressive voters “want to see progressive values robustly defended against the far right, not gleefully abandoned”.

Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright said “Labour’s strategy of pursuing a “politically rightward agenda” has been “exposed as a fundamentally flawed and unserious strategy”.Jim Pickard in LondonThe pressure on Starmer to shift to the left has just accelerated, according to many Labour MPs. The Gorton result — in their view — has proved that Starmer’s attempts to chase Reform-minded voters have been a failure that has alienated Labour’s natural left-leaning base. “It’s such a big psychological blow,” said one party strategist. “The entire worldview of the Labour right for decades is that things like this aren’t meant to be possible.” Several of the most influential figures who had been pushing Starmer towards more rightwing lines on immigration and welfare have now quit his inner circle: Morgan McSweeney, Paul Ovenden and, of course, Lord Peter Mandelson. That will make it harder for Starmer to resist a drift to the left to try to claw back supporters tempted by the Greens.Adam Langleben, director of Progress, the Blairite think-tank, told the FT: “Any lurch to the left would be as disastrous as the Tories’ lurch to the right to see off Ukip and then Reform. People won’t vote for a diet option if full-fat is on the menu. Labour needs to find its own way with clear leadership, vision and hope.”Jim Pickard in LondonSeveral Labour MPs have already criticised the leadership for blocking Andy Burnham, the locally popular mayor of Greater Manchester, from standing in the seat — although there was no guarantee that he would have won. Burnham’s attempt to become the candidate was blocked by a panel of the party’s ruling national executive council.The NEC argued that letting him stand would have precipitated an expensive by-election for the Manchester mayoralty and a potential loss there to Reform UK.In reality, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer did not want one of his strongest potential leadership rivals returning to Westminster when his premiership was already fragile. His leadership is now in greater danger — but at least he does not have Burnham breathing down his neck in the House of Commons. Other potential leadership rivals do not appear to be in a strong position to strike. Angela Rayner is awaiting the result of an HMRC investigation into her tax affairs, while Wes Streeting has been somewhat damaged by his friendship with disgraced former US ambassador Peter Mandelson.Ella Hollowood in LondonBeyond the by-election result in Gorton and Denton, national polling for a general election provides a broader picture of where Labour’s 2024 voters are heading. FT analysis suggests that across the country the party’s losses are concentrated among voters switching to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, rather than to Reform. Around one in four 2024 Labour voters now say they would back one of those two parties, compared with just over one in 10 who would choose Reform.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.George Parker, political editorIt was a historic moment for the Greens, but there was one thing strangely missing from the victory speech of Hannah Spencer: the environment.Under the new leadership of Zack Polanski, the party has become a powerful leftwing insurgency, but traditional campaigns about saving the planet have been pushed into the margins as the Greens target the urban vote.Spencer’s victory speech in the early hours of Friday morning gave a strong flavour of how the Greens intend to fight the next election, with a vivid leftwing agenda intended to leave Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour looking pallid by comparison.“We are working to line the pockets of billionaires — we are being bled dry,” the 34-year-old plumber said in a powerful victory speech.But climate change and other traditional Green preoccupations did not get a look-in. Instead the Greens are deploying the language of class warfare, arguing that the “rich” are benefiting from the graft of working people.For Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves, the need to prove that centrist, fiscally prudent economics can deliver for working people is becoming increasingly urgent.Jim Pickard in LondonHeidi Alexander, transport secretary, said there was no “sugarcoating” the “disappointing” result.But she told Times Radio it was not unusual for governing parties to lose midterm by-elections and people should therefore not over-interpret the result. “There is not a direct read-across from what happens in by-elections, where there are some quite unique dynamics at play, and then what happens in a general election,” she said.“And whilst people in Gorton and Denton yesterday may have voted for a Green member of parliament, that doesn’t then mean that a majority of people in this country want to vote for Zack Polanski to be their prime minister, or for that matter, for Nigel Farage to be their prime minister.”Ian Smith in LondonUK government bonds were slightly weaker at the open, pushing the 10-year gilt yield up 0.02 percentage points to 4.29 per cent.But that still leaves UK borrowing costs close to their lowest in more than a year, after a strong rally since the November Budget on a mixture of a brighter outlook for borrowing and the prospect of faster Bank of England interest rate cuts. Pooja Kumra, rates strategist at TD Securities, said investors “pretty much expected” the by-election outcome. “With no clear alternative, we expect [Starmer] to remain prime minister until May, when his leadership will be more thoroughly scrutinised.”But Gordon Shannon, a fund manager at TwentyFour Asset Management, said the result was a “clear sign of what’s to come in May”, adding it “certainly makes Starmer’s position less tenable”.Maxine Kelly in LondonLabour’s defeat was “catastrophic” and “couldn’t have been any worse”, according to one Labour MP, who blamed the loss on the government’s decision to block Andy Burnham from running.Karl Turner, MP for Hull East, told the BBC that the Greater Manchester mayor would have won the by-election “without any shadow of a doubt”, adding that Labour’s policy on Gaza also led to it losing ground to other parties.“We can’t possibly out-rightwing Reform on immigration and we can’t out-left the Greens on progressive policy,” Turner said. Philip Georgiadis in London and Jennifer Williams in ManchesterReform chair David Bull has said his party does not believe that the result of the by-election was impacted by “family voting”.Democracy Volunteers, a group accredited by the Electoral Commission to monitor UK elections, claimed it had observed a high prevalence of “family voting”, in which relatives confer in the polling station on what is legally a secret ballot.Asked whether this had influenced the result, Bull told the BBC: “If I am being candid probably not.” Manchester City Council, which is in charge of organising the election and ensuring its integrity, said that Democracy Volunteers had not raised its concerns during polling hours.Philip Georgiadis in LondonLabour’s defeat to the Greens is a “nightmare scenario” for the government, which risks tipping it “into the electoral valley of death,” said Rob Ford, political science professor at the University of Manchester.In a social media post, Ford said this May’s local and devolved elections “may become apocalyptic if the Greens surge in the wake of this victory”. So many Labour seats in Green friendly territory are up — all seats in inner London and many metros. Labour risk being wiped out by Reform in the ‘red wall’ type metros — Barnsley, Calderdale, Wakefield, Sunderlands etc — and being wiped out by the Greens in what we may now need to start calling the ‘Green wall’ — diverse, student and grad heavy Labour areas where Reform are no threat.Maxine Kelly in LondonLeader of the Greens Zack Polanski speaks to the BBC about his party's by-election victory Leader of the Greens Zack Polanski said the party’s historic by-election result had the “potential to transform the face of British politics”.“[Gorton and Denton] was the Green party’s 127th target seat, so that says there’s no no-go areas for the party,” he told the BBC. “We just passed our first electoral test with flying colours,” he said.Asked whether some of the party’s campaign tactics, including leaflets in Urdu that called on the seat’s Muslim voters to punish Labour for its response to the war in Gaza, were appropriate, he said: “Speaking up against genocide and for peace is the peaceful position and the only appropriate position.”FT ReportersGreen party leader Zack Polanski predicted a ‘tidal wave’ of new MPs and said the party was “here to replace Labour”.Labour chair Anna Turley said the result was “clearly disappointing”.Reform leader Nigel Farage said his party’s result left it well placed for the upcoming local and Scottish and Welsh elections. “Roll on the elections on May 7,” he said. The Conservatives said Sir Keir Starmer had “killed the Labour party”.Miranda Green, deputy opinion editorSince Labour’s landslide win in July 2024, Sir Keir Starmer’s strategic focus has been on dealing with the threat from the insurgents on the populist right, Reform UK.But this result in Gordon and Denton will lead to serious recriminations in Labour about 18 months of ignoring the voting coalition on the left and centre left that put Starmer in power. The only question for the Greens is to what extent they now double down on leftwing populism (critics say at the expense of the eco part of their message) to target similarly promising seats.Two of the four seats they won in 2024 were actually Tory seats in rural areas, where this approach may or may not work. Anna Gross in LondonAndrea Egan, general secretary of the UK’s largest union Unison, aired how many on the left of the Labour Party feel this morning about the need for the party to tack left to win over disaffected voters.“The Greens won for a simple reason. Many traditional Labour supporters, in Manchester and across the country, want to see progressive values robustly defended against the far right, not gleefully abandoned,” she said in a statement. “Under Keir Starmer the party is failing on every count, leaving the Greens to fill the vacuum.”Richard Burgon, a stalwart of the Labour left who served in former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, said that “the leadership must stop treating progressive voters with contempt.”Jennifer Williams in ManchesterThe bitter month-long campaign in Gorton and Denton was plagued with controversy and claims of dirty tactics. Labour, Reform and the Greens all accused one another variously of breaching electoral law and presenting misleading information, resulting in at least three reports to the police. Reform also accused the Greens — who ran a targeted campaign for support within the seat’s 30 per cent Muslim population, including through communications in Urdu — of courting “dangerous sectarianism” and “Islamists”.The Green party repeatedly called Reform’s Matthew Goodwin — who had previously questioned whether citizenship was sufficient to be considered British and said the UK had shut down debate on Islam — a “grifter” who had said “very racist things”. “It’s been a very divisive set of campaigns,” said Liberal Democrat candidate Jackie Pearcey, previously a councillor in the constituency for over 20 years. “It’s been rather depressing to see how people have been put against each other,” she added.Anna Gross in LondonNearly three-quarters of votes cast in Gorton and Denton were for alternatives to Labour and the Conservatives, in a sign of how fragmented the political landscape has become and the level of voter frustration at the two main parties.At the 2024 general election, where voter turnout in the seat was almost identical, Labour and the Tories together captured 60 per cent of the vote.Populist parties on the left and right have surged since then, however, with Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK polling at about 26 per cent, ahead of Labour and the Tories at 18 per cent. The Greens, who have veered further left under the leadership of Zack Polanski, are just behind the two main parties at 16 per cent. William Sandlund in Hong Kong Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.The pound was steady in early trading on Friday following the by-election result.UK assets have weakened during previous moments of political peril for Sir Keir Starmer, as investors worry about a rise in borrowing under any successor. But most Labour MPs do not believe Starmer will face a renewed leadership threat immediately. The pound was little changed at $1.35. Futures tracking the FTSE 100 rose 0.2 per cent.Anna Gross in LondonReform UK’s second place in the Gorton and Denton by-election is a disappointing result for a party that has led national polling since the 2024 general election.Nigel Farage’s party was unable to come up through the middle when the progressive vote was sharply divided, suggesting it will struggle if left-leaning parties and voters work together to keep him out of power.At the same time, the rightwing populist party will take comfort from some aspects of its performance in what was a Labour stronghold.Reform doubled its vote share to 29 per cent from 14 per cent in 2024. And with the Tory share of the vote falling to just 2 per cent from 8 per cent, Reform has demonstrated they are consolidating the rightwing vote.Reform chair David Bull said on Thursday night that Gorton and Denton ranked 440th in terms of the party’s target seats. This is in large part because Reform will struggle to attract voters in more ethnically diverse seats, particularly those with large Muslim populations, and in areas with higher populations of young people.Anna Gross in LondonTurnout for the by-election was 47 per cent, only fractionally down on the 2024 general election, in a sign of how intense campaigning has been in the seat.The total progressive vote, including Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, constituted 68 per cent of votes at this by-election, down from 78 per cent at the 2024 general election.Labour received 25 per cent of the vote, the Greens 41 per cent, and the Lib Dems 2 per cent.In 2024, Labour received 50 per cent of the vote, the Greens 13 per cent, George Galloway’s Workers Party 10 per cent and the Lib Dems 4 per cent.Anna Gross in LondonGreen Party leader Zack Polanski has predicted a “tidal wave” of new MPs at the next general election. Polanski said that his party could win 100 seats if the by-election result was replicated across the country. “When I was elected leader of the Greens I said we were here to replace Labour and I meant it,” he said.At the last general election the Greens won 6.7 per cent of the national vote and four seats at Westminster but the party came second in 40 constituencies, 18 of which were in London. In all but one of those seats, the party was second to Labour.A Green victory had been the result most feared by many Labour strategists, in case the party becomes seen as a viable alternative for leftwing voters hoping to block Nigel Farage. “People everywhere will now know that voting Green is the way to defeat Reform,” Polanski said. Anna Gross in LondonSir Keir Starmer is likely to face recriminations from within his own party about what has been widely seen as an attempt to tack to the right on issues like immigration and welfare, to fend off the threat posed by Reform since he took power. Many Labour MPs have blamed the rightward tilt on the architect of the Starmer project, Morgan McSweeney, who stepped down as chief of staff earlier this month.The prime minister is also likely to face criticism for deciding to block Andy Burnham, the Manchester mayor, from running as Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the by-election, amid speculation that Burnham was seeking to mount a leadership bid.Miranda Green, deputy opinion editorFrom four MPs to five for the Greens — but don’t let the small numbers mask how significant this by-election result could prove for the future of the left of British politics. Former Labour leaders Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown could count on voters on their broad wing of politics having nowhere else to go. Indeed this was Blair’s own response with a shrug to those who worried about a disaffected left. Now, Sir Keir Starmer has discovered that enough voters on the left to cause him a serious problem are happy to be tempted away by the Greens under self-styled “eco-populist” leader Zack Polanski. And the “use case” of this newly potent insurgent party of the left has been proved tonight.Anna Gross in LondonProfessor Sir John Curtice said that the by-election result was a “seismic event” that would go down in the “history books and in our political memory”.“It’s not just that Labour have lost, they’ve lost badly,” the veteran election analyst told the BBC.Curtice said that while polls had been indicating for some time that Labour had been losing around one in eight of its supporters to Reform, it had been losing twice as many voters to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.He added that the result showed a “very clear affirmation” of the potential risk that the Greens could pose to Labour, particularly in constituencies with high populations of Muslim or young people.Anna Gross in LondonReform UK leader Nigel Farage said that the by-election was a “victory for sectarian voting and cheating”, referring to reports of “family voting”, in which relatives confer on what is supposed to be a secret ballot.Democracy Volunteers, a group accredited by the Electoral Commission to monitor UK elections, said in an earlier statement that it had witnessed “the highest levels of family voting at any election in our ten-year history of observing elections in the UK”.“Matt Goodwin was a great candidate for us,” Farage wrote on X. “Roll on the elections on May 7. It will be goodbye Starmer and goodbye to the Tory party.”Jennifer Williams in ManchesterThe Green Party comfortably won the Gorton and Denton by-election, with Labour in third place behind Reform UK in second.Plumber Hannah Spencer took the seat for the Greens with a majority of more than 4,000 after a three-way fight.“Life has changed,” said Spencer in a victory speech in central Manchester. “Instead of working for a nice life, we’re working to line the pockets of billionaires. We are being bled dry. And I don’t think it’s extreme or radical to think working hard should get you a nice life.”Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.