Greens Claim Historic By-Election Victory In Crushing Blow For Keir Starmer

The Green Party has won the Gorton and Denton by-election in a stunning result which saw Labour slump to third place.

In a crushing blow for Keir Starmer, the Greens’ Hannah Spencer came first with 14,980 votes following a bitterly-fought contest.

Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin came second with 10,578, despite his party’s lead in the national opinion polls, ahead of Labour’s Angeliki Stogia on 9,364.

Polling guru Sir John Curtice said it was “the worst possible result for the prime minister”.

It is the first time the Greens have ever won a Westminster by-election and means the party now has five MPs.

The by-election was called following the resignation of former government minister Andrew Gwynne on health grounds.

He won the newly-created seat for Labour at the 2024 general election by more than 13,400 votes.

Labour’s terrible performance will pile further pressure on Keir Starmer, who campaigned in the seat earlier this week and who has endured a torrid time since becoming prime minister barely 18 months ago.

In particular, the prime minister’s decision to block Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing as the Labour candidate will undoubtedly come in for intense criticism.

Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, all-but conceded defeat shortly before 3am.

She told Sky News: “What’s clear is that the Greens turned out their vote higher than they might otherwise expect to have done.

“I want to win elections, that’s what I’m in politics to do, and I wanted Angeliki Stogia to be my colleague in parliament, I think she would have been a fantastic MP.

“But what I think is really clear is that there is a big majority in this constituency that hasn’t voted for Reform, and on the day the Greens have managed to win that argument they were best placed to do that.”

Powell also told BBC News: “We know that we have to give a much clearer account of ourselves as a Labour Party, showing our Labour values, telling that Labour story about how we are on people’s side and dealing with the issues that they face, particularly the cost of living crisis.”

“This just makes us redouble our efforts to do that and make sure that people understand what we’re really about as a Labour government.”

Asked if there will now be more calls for Starmer to quit, Powell said: “I hope not, because something we’ve shown in the past few weeks is that the whole Labour team has come together as one team.

“We’ve had Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, myself, colleagues right across the Labour movement coming together as one team with a united message in this campaign.”