Candidates traded blows in lively and feisty debate
It’s one of the most high-profile and hotly contested by-elections in recent memory. So it’s perhaps not surprising that when the main candidates bidding to become Gorton and Denton’s next MP met at today’s Manchester Evening News hustings things got a little feisty.
The tone was set from the off when Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin entered the room and shook hands with his rivals. “Welcome to Manchester,” he was pointedly told by Labour’s Angeliki Stogia.
Green candidate Hannah Spencer, a plumber and councillor in Trafford, was also quick to get her blows in when, in her opening statement, she described the election as a ‘straight-up race between the hardworking, local Mancunian who’s lived here all her life and the Reform candidate, who’s an academic bussed in from south, spreading that party’s message of division’.
Mr Goodwin had his own consistent attack lines as well, repeatedly accusing Labour of neglecting the constituency and criticising Gereen Party proposals to legalise all drugs, an idea the Reform man said ‘would be a nightmare for Gorton and Denton‘.
You can watch the full hustings here…