Luke Graham: Gorton’s lesson is not to take the easy negative option but the harder positive opportunity

Luke Graham was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Ochil and Perthshire South from 2017 to 2019, the candidate in Perth and Kinross-shire in 2024, and a former head of the Downing Street Union Unit.

While Iranian airstrikes and the latest developments in the Epstein files continue to dominate headlines, the result of the Gorton & Denton by-election deserves a second glance, looking beyond the Green’s headline victory.

This by election was not merely a local contest. It offered a snapshot of the unsettled and volatile condition of British politics in 2026 — and a warning about the direction of our modern election campaigns.

The Green Party’s victory was undeniably striking. Labour, despite clear voter frustration, still mobilised close to 10,000 votes. Reform UK, which had publicly signalled strong confidence of victory, secured just over 10,000 but fell short. The Conservatives and Lib Dems were never really contenders for this seat. Taken together, the numbers suggest three important conclusions.

First, Reform’s support, though real, may well have reached a ceiling. National polling continues to show Reform ahead, yet the party has now underperformed in successive by-elections and has fallen more than eight points from its November high-water mark. By-elections are imperfect barometers, but they do test GOTV ability and voter motivation. Reform’s difficulty in converting polling strength into parliamentary wins raises a serious question about whether it really can covert high polling percentages into a large swathe of seats in the House of Commons.

Second, Labour’s position is fragile but not collapsed. Even amid significant dissatisfaction with the government, Labour retains an organisational machine capable of turning out votes. That matters in marginal contests.

Third — and most troubling — the manner of this campaign may prove more consequential than the result itself.

The Gorton & Denton contest was bruising.

Personal accusations surfaced early. Nigel Farage publicly alleged links between the Conservative candidate and an LGBT charity in a manner that was, at best, misleading. The Reform candidate faced allegations of misconduct and locally Labour and the Greens went heavy on the doorsteps.

But it was the Green Party’s campaign tactics that marked a potentially more significant shift. A targeted Urdu-language video featuring images of Kier Starmer alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was plainly designed to target a local Muslim community. The advert urged voters to “punish” Labour for its stance on Gaza, implicitly suggesting sectarian alignment. This was not accidental phrasing. It was calculated messaging.

There is nothing new with political parties tailoring communications to different communities. However, what makes this case distinct is the explicit framing of electoral choice along ethnic and religious lines, particularly in the context of an international conflict. This is not merely sharper campaigning; it is the normalisation of targeting voters along ethnic and religious grounds.

This kind of approach by the Greens would have been unthinkable under Caroline Lucas, who’s leadership of the Green Party focused on the climate, tackling inequality and pro-EU arguments. The tactics deployed in Gorton & Denton represent a departure from that tradition. They move the Green party into terrain historically occupied by more overtly nationalist movements — including elements of SNP and Plaid Cymru strategy — where identity becomes the organising principle of electoral competition.

This shift should concern us as Conservatives not simply because it benefits a rival party, but because of its broader implications for our democracy. Just as the 2014 Scottish and 2016 EU referenda became totemic political moments, reshaping party alignments and entrenching identities for years, religious campaigns risk creating similar hardened blocs within constituencies. Short-term gains can produce long-term fractures and build political tribalism.

Although the Greens are guilty in this instance, it’s important to remember that it was only a few months ago that Robert Jenrick turned up on a street in Birmingham, far from his constituency, to use local deprivation as a backdrop and evidence for divisive rhetoric. Ambitious politicians of all political stripes are not immune from the temptation of this kind of “emotion first” politics.

But this is what happens when a political system has been as battered as ours; selfish politicians have used national strife and instability as political opportunity, acting in recklessly unprepared way with poor results. When voters lose faith in large national projects — large scale infrastructure, productivity growth, defence renewal, or economic transformation — campaigns increasingly pivot toward emotional mobilisation. Outrage substitutes for vision.

This is the deeper lesson of Gorton & Denton. The volatility of Reform’s vote share, Labour’s fragility, and the Greens’ resort to identity-based messaging all point to a political environment hungry for conviction but starved of credible national direction.

For Conservatives, this presents both a danger and an opportunity.

The danger is obvious: fragmentation of the centre-right vote, further erosion of civic cohesion, and a political culture driven by grievance rather than aspiration. Reform’s rhetoric thrives where voters feel unheard. Identity politics flourish where national purpose is absent.

The opportunity lies in rebuilding something more durable.

Having been humbled in the 2024 General Election, our party has the rare political space to reconstruct its offer. The task is to articulate a compelling national project — one that addresses economic dynamism, defence resilience and social mobility without resorting to sectarian shortcuts.

As developments in the United States and elsewhere demonstrate, it is possible to win power and simultaneously deepen division. Britain, at a moment of international instability and economic uncertainty, cannot afford to further fracture our people or state.

Gorton & Denton was a by-election. Its parliamentary arithmetic is minor. Its cultural implications are not. If politics continues to descend into ever narrower identity politics and escalating grievance, the fragmentation of our party system will accelerate.

Any politician knows the importance of winning an election – if you don’t win, you’re not in. But in the rush for victory, all parties should consider the profound and lasting impact of their campaigns on our communities – we should not abandon the key tenants of our culture and democracy to win individual battles, but ultimately lose the war for the soul and cohesion of our country.