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Politics Home | Rayner Says Labour’s Gorton And Denton Collapse Must Be “Wake Up Call” For Party
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Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has said Labour must “really listen” and “reflect” after the party suffered a seismic defeat to the Greens in the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Posting on X on Friday morning, Rayner said the defeat in Greater Manchester “must be a wake-up call”.
Keir Starmer’s party is today reeling after suffering a collapse in a seat that it had controlled for over 100 years.
Labour fell to third place in Gorton and Denton after winning the constituency with over 50 per cent of the vote at the 2024 general election. This time around, the party’s candidate Angeliki Stogia received around 25 per cent of the vote.
The victor was the Green candidate Hannah Spencer, who won around 40 per cent of the vote, further demonstrating the threat to Labour’s left flank posed by Zack Polanski’s “eco-populist” party.
Reform UK candidate, former academic Matt Goodwin, came second.
The scale of the Labour defeat will put renewed pressure on the Prime Minister, and could be a sign of things to come when elections are held in Scotland, Wales and in councils across England in May.
Rayner, who is seen as the current frontrunner to succeed Starmer, posted: “This result must be a wake-up call. It’s time to really listen — and to reflect.
“Voters want the change that we promised — and they voted for.
“If we want to unrig the system, if we want to make the change we were sent into government to make, we have to be braver. A labour agenda that puts people first. That’s what all of us across our movement need to rededicate ourselves to this morning.”
Several union leaders and Labour left MPs have publicly called on the Starmer government to shift further to the left after losing a significant amount of support to the Greens.
Steve Wright, general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said: “Labour’s entire strategy of framing politics as ‘it’s us v Reform’ is in tatters after its very first electoral test.
“That approach was rooted in a cabinet pursuing a politically rightward agenda and telling voters they only needed to be marginally less bad than the alternative. That has now been exposed as a fundamentally flawed and unserious strategy.”
The Prime Minister is also facing criticism over the decision taken by him and other senior Labour figures not to let Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham be the party’s candidate in Gorton and Denton.
Burnham said he wanted to stand, but was blocked on the basis that it would mean Labour having to fund a Manchester mayoral election campaign.
Reacting to the by-election result, Mainstream, a soft left Labour group with close links to Burnham, said blocking his candidacy “now looks like a catastrophic error”.
Mainstream’s Interim Council said: “The Gorton and Denton result is an absolute disaster for Labour. Clearly, we now risk no longer being seen as the natural home for progressive voters.
“This loss was avoidable. Angeliki, members and our party staff worked tirelessly, but our leader and sections of the NEC blocked the one candidate who could have won it for us. That decision now looks like a catastrophic error.
“We need an immediate and fundamental reset now.”
