Greens ‘seismic’ win could send Labour to the ‘dustbin of history’

Polling expert John Curtice has reacted to the Green Party’s “seismic” by-election win in Gorton and Denton. And he suggests it could be a further step towards putting both Labour and the Conservatives in the “dustbin of history“.

Speaking to the media on 27 February, Curtice:

Greens replace Labour: A working-class woman enters ‘the history books’

Curtice challenged the historic conception that Labour is the “party of working people”. And he suggested the Greens had produced a real masterstroke by putting forward:

a very articulate working-class woman, sounding much more… authentically working class than the vast bulk of Labour MPs

Curtice has long insisted that Starmer’s mimicry of far-right Reform UK is a doomed strategy. He previously highlighted that a right-wing Labour was losing far more voters to the Green Party and Liberal Democrats than it was to Reform. And he suggested actually improving the NHS and the economy would be the real vote winner.

At the same time, a monumental rise in the popularity of the Green Party under Zack Polanski’s leadership has bitten a massive chunk out of Labour’s voter base. And Curtice believes more and more people are becoming aware that Starmer is thoroughly unable to stop Labour’s decline:

Gorton and Denton isn’t an outlier, Curtice insists. Instead, it’s part of a growing trend of the Tory-Labour duopoly tanking and the Greens rising:

The long Tory-Labour march into the “dustbin of history”

As an election for “the history books”, Curtice said:

• The Greens have got their “first ever” parliamentary by-election win.
• The Tories got “their worst ever by-election result”.
• It’s the “first time”, except for “when Labour disowned their candidate” in Rochdale in 2024, that “neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been one of the top two parties in a by-election contest”.
• Labour had its “13th biggest ever fall” in by-election support.

Gorton and Denton didn’t just show that the Tories have little chance of stopping a Reform that’s given the right a fascist face-lift. It also showed that the Greens can defeat Labour by proudly representing hope and compassion.

The seismic shift in British politics is leaving the old establishment parties flailing. And the Tory-Labour duopoly is looking increasingly powerless to prevent their fall into the “dustbin of history”:

Featured image via the Canary