The by-election in Gorton & Denton is looking like a two-way race between the Green Party and Reform UK, but Labour are still fighting to win.

According to a new report in the Telegraph, Labour are throwing the kitchen sink at the race. Or, to be more specific, they’re using the sink — and everything else in the kitchen — to prepare delectably illegal meals for potential voters (allegedly):

Labour referred to police over freebie gala dinner for 600 Gorton & Denton voters – attended by senior Labour figures including deputy leader Lucy Powell
Electoral law bans using food and drink to corruptly influence voters
Paywall-free link in replies👇 https://t.co/8X3kGppkUh

— The Prole Star (@TheProleStar) February 14, 2026

Will anything happen as a result of this?

As we’ll get to, probably not — not if Reform’s own by-election scandal is anything to go by.

Labour hosts “freebie gala dinner”

As reported by the Telegraph, the dinner took place at a South Asian restaurant, and fed 600 people. The venue had posters up showing images of Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia.

Speaking at the dinner, Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell said Gorton & Denton should vote for Stogia or:

we’re going to end up with Reform in Manchester and we’re not having that

Presumably eluding to the multiple paedophile-related scandals engulfing the Starmer government, Powell also said:

We have not got everything right. We have tried our best and we have done some really good things … but I understand we haven’t got everything right.

That’s certainly one way of putting it.

For reference, Labour’s recent paedophile-related scandals include:

So yeah, they haven’t “got everything right”; that’s true.

Will anything come of this?

As the Telegraph also reported, the police investigated Reform UK for a buffet last October, but dropped the investigation. The Telegraph added:

The party had provided a buffet to supporters before a council by-election in Northamptonshire.

According to guidance from the Electoral Commission, the law “does not apply to ordinary hospitality”.

As you can imagine, then, Labour are confident they’ll get off with this. One of their spokespeople said the report is a “desperate, politically motivated move”.

It’s also the case that the police have dropped a case into Reform related to the Gorton & Denton by-election:

For the third time.

But who’s counting, eh?

What’s a little electoral fraud between friends. https://t.co/A5mJqd3Kwp

— Don McGowan (@donmcgowan) February 14, 2026

For more on that story, read:

Featured image via the Canary

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper assures @TrevorPTweets that Labour has strengthened its vetting processes following the scandal surrounding Lord Doyle’s friendship with Sean Morton.

pic.twitter.com/H3satN60tJ

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 15, 2026

Greg Jackson (Alamy)

7 min read33 min

“A very senior mandarin in the energy space said to me that the traditional model of the energy companies was to keep quiet and hope nobody understood what they were doing, and not to wake the sleeping dog,” Greg Jackson recalls, over a video call in a black hoodie, having just returned to the UK. “And I said, ‘Well, my job is to come in and poke the sleeping dog with a stick relentlessly’.”

Jackson has just returned from China, where he was part of the Prime Minister’s delegation. The Octopus founder is in as boisterous a mood as ever.

“Companies are often extremely entitled, or they behave in an entitled way. I’ve seen energy bosses demanding that the Energy Secretary actually make them more trusted,” a disapproving Jackson reports. “Trust is earned, not bestowed,” he adds.

Despite Jackson’s Octopus being only 10 years old, it has achieved continued astronomic growth after breaking ‘double unicorn’ status in 2022, reaching a valuation of $2bn, and has become one of the most recognisable in the UK, levering its outsider status for success.

In Whitehall, Jackson has seen similar achievements. The founder is a regular at political events, sitting on boards across Westminster while also recently securing a £25m investment from the government in his Octopus Energy spin-off, Kraken. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has described him as a “friend”, and insiders see him as the corporate figure who has the closest ties to the government.

In spite of this, Jackson recoils at the idea of being politically influential.

“I’ve got literally no view of politics,” he says unconvincingly, before launching into a 10-minute explanation of UK-China policy and the benefits of free trade. Jackson’s ideology, if he has one, is neoliberal. He believes in low subsidies, high competition and transparency, making him an odd bedfellow of the Labour Party.

“I don’t believe in party politics, but I do believe in the power of competition and the power of free enterprise.”

A close adviser of a previous Conservative chancellor described Jackson as “very good at identifying power, getting close to it and using those relationships to build credibility. He’s always coming to the government with solutions rather than just problems. A lot of companies can learn from that”.

After the change of government in 2024, Jackson was appointed to the government’s Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, before becoming a Cabinet Office board member in July last year. In January, he was appointed as co-chair of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s attempts to use AI to improve customer service experiences.

He has been vocally supportive of a number of government policies: in the last year alone, he endorsed the Workers’ Rights Bill, supported plans to build a ‘clean-power army’, and co-signed the government’s “international investment summit”.

I’ve seen energy bosses demanding that the Energy Secretary actually make them more trusted

Rumours have swirled that Jackson was on Labour’s longlist for a potential investment minister, before it was offered to his former colleague Benjamin Wegg-Prosser and ultimately Baroness Gustafsson, who accepted (before later resigning). Jackson says he doesn’t know whether he was considered but would not have accepted the job anyway.

He has also faced sustained criticism from some in the labour movement. Energy tycoon and Labour mega donor Dale Vince has engaged in a war of words with Jackson over green energy, both accusing the other of doing climate deniers’ bidding.

Miliband has remained a supportive ally of Jackson, however, launching numerous major policies from his sites, meeting regularly with him in Whitehall and name-checking Octopus’ successes. Their friendship has caused controversy for them both.

In some ways, the two are unlikely allies. Despite his links to the Labour Party, Jackson is not and has never been a party donor, and labels himself a free marketeer. He prompted criticism in 2021 when he admitted that his companies do not have human resources departments.

One of Jackson’s biggest squabbles is with the GMB union, which represents Jackson’s workforce in Octopus.

A GMB spokesperson describes Octopus as having a “frat-boy culture”, describing it as “beyond baffling” that Miliband and other ministers “persist in indulging this divisive figure”.

“GMB members in Octopus are increasingly outraged by the government’s embrace of a man who refuses to recognise unions. Mr Jackson runs his firm in a way more attuned to a frat-boy culture than a professional business environment,” they say.

“Despite not having basics like a HR department and failing to meet the simplest balance sheet requirements designed to protect consumers, he is given key access. This completely undermines Labour’s pro-worker and pro-consumer position.”

Jackson maintains that he is not anti-union – rather, he simply believes they are not needed in Octopus.

In a statement, Jackson also refuted the GMB allegations around the company’s culture. He said:  “Octopus is repeatedly named one of the best places to work in the UK, has a negative gender pay gap (women earn more), and every employee is a shareholder. Hardly a frat-bro culture – rather a model modern employer.”

Despite Jackson’s clear influence on policy and political discourse, he has rarely faced accusations of sleaze, which has dogged Westminster’s lobbyists in recent years. Unlike many other businesses, Jackson is very open about the issues he is pressing on the government privately, whether that be onshore wind, energy pricing models or the futility of some forms of clean energy such as hydrogen.

“I think one reason we have cut-through is, ultimately, I’d rather share with people the uncomfortable secret truths and then discuss it than hide behind closed doors, just making it worse.”

Jackson’s ability partially comes from knowing his sector inside out, and from focusing on changes benefiting the consumer.

“He is left-field. He’s always wearing a fleece and jeans. He’s very down to earth and easy to get on with,” says one observer. “Octopus are doing some quite unusual stuff, and it’s compelling. He can walk into any room in Whitehall and say, ‘If you get rid of X, Y and Z random pieces of regulation, I can do this for consumers.’ It’s very persuasive – and he’s always in the room.”

Yet Jackson has not managed to convince the new government on his most controversial ask: zonal energy pricing. He argues that Octopus would be able to cut energy bills by £100 a year if the switch were made to a system whereby prices varied across regional zones in the country, depending on their supply and demand. The proposal was shot down by other major operators on the grounds that it would create a “postcode lottery” for energy.

Miliband considered the policy before ultimately dropping it over fears it could put off investors. The defeat marked a victory for Centrica, the owner of British Gas and chief rival of Octopus.

With success came critics, who are capitalising on recent problems – including Ofgem’s anonymised rebuke of companies for failing financial resilience targets. Jackson, who admits Octopus was one of the firms that failed the test, argues the requirements are too stringent. Centrica’s CEO Chris O’Shea described it as “criminal” that Ofgem had not punished firms like Octopus further.

Jackson’s portrayal of rival energy companies is compelling – he paints them as a cartel, cautiously protecting margins at the expense of consumers. “One of them texted us to say they had 150 lobbyists up against us,” Jackson says of the zonal pricing spat. “We have two on our side.”

While he only has two lobbyists, Jackson in himself has the executive lobbyists are scared to represent. One tells The House: “You never want to represent someone who knows all the decision-makers better than you.” 

We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.

Laundry day (or days, as the case may be) can be a real pain, especially in the wintertime.

Between the mud from the eternally-soggy weather, and that gross mildew smell, it’s such a faff making sure your clothes are properly clean.

Some will suggest drying your washing outside to help keep things fresh and avoid making any condensation problems in your house worse.

But I, for one, do not trust British winters (or springs, or even most summers) with my washing – the rain is just far too unpredictable.

Yes, you can crack some windows open for a bit (and we do!), but in my experience, that can only do so much.

So, if you want to level up your laundry day, whatever the weather, here are some of the best buys on the internet, according to the customers who’ve fallen in love with them.

Haris Malekos

6 min read7 min

Late last month, Chancellor Rachel Reeves defended her decision in the November Budget to freeze the threshold at which graduates start to pay back their loans as “fair and reasonable”.

She was responding to Martin Lewis, the TV personal finance expert, who earlier that week argued it was “not a moral thing” to do because it was essentially treating debt like tax. “It’s a contract that the government signed with young people who had not been given any education on these loans,” Lewis said, who urged Reeves to “please have a rethink”.

Since then, the Labour government has faced a backlash from a generation of ‘Plan Two’ graduates, seemingly leading ministers to strike a more emollient and open-minded tone on the question of whether student loan reform should be on the table.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said last week it was a “debate clearly rumbling and worth having”, while Labour Deputy Leader Lucy Powell has this week acknowledged that there are “absolutely” issues around the Plan Two student loan interest. 

Under the Plan Two agreement, graduates are charged interest on loan repayments equal to Retail Prices Index (RPI) plus up to three percentage points. However, monthly repayments often do not meet interest, leaving many graduates with debt larger than what they originally borrowed, years after leaving university. Some people have shared details of such cases on social media, fuelling the growing wave of outrage.

Former education secretary Alan Johnson, who is now chancellor of the University of Hull, last week told BBC’s Today programme that the current system is “horrendous”.

It is noteworthy that there are now significantly more MPs with Plan Two student loans than ever before, which is helping calls for reform gain traction in Westminster. Plan 2 loans were issued to English undergraduates who started courses between 2012 and 2022.

PoliticsHome understands that several Labour MPs in this cohort have had discussions with sympathetic ministers about what can be done to help address the sense of unfairness.

It is currently seen as unlikely that the Labour government will commit to a task as significant as overhauling the student loan system, especially given the many other major policy challenges that it is already grappling with, like thorny and complex SEND reforms.

Speaking on Thursday, Reeves said she would lower student loan repayments by cutting inflation. “But by getting inflation down, we can also reduce the interest on student loans and I think that will make a big difference in making that more affordable,” she said.

However, there are no signs of the debate disappearing. 

Two Labour-aligned think tanks, The Institute for Public Policy Research and Labour Together, are preparing new pieces of work in this area, PoliticsHome understands, while Plan 2 MPs like Labour backbencher Chris Curtis are publicly calling for changes to the system. Clips of New Statesman journalist Oli Dugmore calling for reform on BBC Question Time have gone viral.

It is for this reason that other political parties are starting to look at it.

PoliticsHome understands that the Conservatives, under whom the current student loan system was created, are looking at student loans as part of work on their wider higher education policy. The Tories have been warned that they must rebuild support among young people to have a route back to power, with just 8 per cent of 18-24-year-olds and 25-39-year-olds voting for them at the 2024 general election, according to YouGov.

Former Conservative education secretary Justine Greening told PoliticsHome that Kemi Badenoch’s party should take the lead on student loans to help “reconnect with young voters”.

She told PoliticsHome: “The very system that was supposed to support aspiration and social mobility has now become a system that has the opposite effect. Many young people, especially with fewer family resources to fall back on, are understandably scared of the student debt that they are going to have to take out if they want to get to university.

“It means that tuition fees and student loans are a mainstream ‘retail’ policy, just like income tax rates. If it wants to build a connection to those generations, then the Tory party needs to lead on this and come up with real solutions.”

A former Conservative adviser who worked close to the issue in recent Tory administrations was sceptical about a “total rewriting” of the system, however.

“My sense is that officials know a lot of people have issues with the student loan system, but anything to make it more affordable is going to result in the taxpayer picking up more of it, which isn’t fair for half of the population who don’t go to university,” they said.

Reform UK, which, if a general election were held tomorrow, would be in a strong position to form a government, according to opinion polls, pledged in its 2024 manifesto to scrap interest on student loans and extend loan capital repayment periods to 45 years. 

When asked about the party’s current position, a Reform source told PoliticsHome: “We are prepared to be radical to end the injustice of high student debt.”

“Young people should learn vocational skills that earn good wages, or degrees that are genuinely useful to them and the country,” they added.

PoliticsHome understands that Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats are planning to release a university policy paper in the coming weeks.

There is some nervousness among Lib Dem figures about making universities a major policy focus, with the coalition-era U-turn on tuition fees and subsequent electoral backlash felt to be a ghost not yet fully exorcised, PoliticsHome understands. 

However, the party is understood to be considering how students can be protected from changes to their contract, capping total payments in real terms, and whether the use of RPI can be replaced.

Meanwhile, a Green Party spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “The government has become a Student Loan Shark, with people on Plan 2 student loans — the vast majority — finding themselves saddled with debt for over 30 years. We strongly oppose plans to freeze the loan repayment threshold and want to see the exorbitant interest rate cut. 

“Ultimately, the Green Party wants to see the restoration of grants and the end of tuition fees. Education is a right, not a privilege, and we need to see it as public investment, not private debt.”