![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ap26058418028297.jpg\")
<\/p>\n London
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n The special election in northern England was supposed to be neck-and-neck-and-neck: a three-way scrap between the governing Labour Party, fighting to keep control of a seat in its historic heartland, and two outsiders \u2013 the hard-right populist Reform UK party, and the new-look progressive Green Party.\n <\/p>\n
\n In the end, it wasn\u2019t even close.\n <\/p>\n
\n Hannah Spencer, a 34-year-old plumber and member of the local council, won the seat in Gorton and Denton, near the English city of Manchester, with 14,890 votes, more than 40% of the total votes cast. Reform UK, which has led in most national polls for more than a year, came second with 10,578 votes, while Labour trailed in third, with 9,364 votes \u2013 around 25% of the total.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI didn\u2019t grow up wanting to be a politician. I\u2019m a plumber,\u201d Spencer said after the results were announced, apologizing to customers for having to cancel work now that she\u2019s moving to Westminster. Spencer, who campaigned heavily on cost-of-living issues, said she stood as a candidate after questioning the value of \u201chard work\u201d in today\u2019s Britain.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWorking hard used to get you something. It got you a house. A nice life. Holidays,\u201d she said. \u201cBut now, working hard \u2013 what does that get you? Because talk to anyone here, and they will tell you. The people who work hard but can\u2019t put food on the table. Can\u2019t get their kids school uniforms. Can\u2019t put the heating on\u2026 Life has changed.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The result is an embarrassing defeat for Prime Minister Keir Starmer in what is the Labour Party\u2019s electoral backyard, made up of working-class voters, students and a large ethnic-minority population. Andrew Gwynne, the outgoing Labour MP who stood down due to health reasons, won the seat with more than 50% of the vote in the 2024 general election. Now, the Green Party has upended Starmer\u2019s claim that only Labour can stop Reform from becoming the next government \u2013 an outcome that many experts have been predicting.\n <\/p>\n
\n Spencer\u2019s victory means the Greens now have five lawmakers in a parliament of 650, but more importantly marks the first time the Greens have won a by-election \u2013 a major boost to her party ahead of local elections in May, when voters will choose lawmakers for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments and elect local council members in England. By-elections \u2013 votes held in individual seats between general elections \u2013 often have outsized significance, acting as a weathervane for national politics.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe starting gun has fired on local elections in 70 days\u2019 time,\u201d Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens, said at a victory rally early Friday morning. \u201cThis is an existential crisis for the Labour Party.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Several recent Labour decisions have now been called into question. Among them is the party\u2019s decision to target Reform UK \u2013 an upstart party led by Nigel Farage, the architect of Brexit and a friend of US President Donald Trump \u2013 as the \u201creal opposition.\u201d Despite winning just four seats at the last general election, Starmer decided early to elevate Reform to the status of Britain\u2019s potential government-in-waiting, hoping that the prospect of Farage as prime minister would encourage voters to back Labour.\n <\/p>\n
\n But the Greens\u2019 victory means Labour is now fighting on two fronts. Having proclaimed Reform as the de facto opposition, Labour spent much of its first year in government trying to appeal to right-wing voters by hardening its rhetoric and policy on immigration.\n <\/p>\n
\n Analysts questioned the wisdom of that strategy at the time. Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King\u2019s College London, told CNN that Labour seemed happy to risk upsetting progressive voters with its tougher stance on immigration, since those voters \u2013 faced with a choice between Labour and Reform \u2013 would ultimately \u201cvote Labour to keep those bastards out.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Now, that strategy may have backfired, as Labour realizes that chasing voters to its right has caused it to leak voters to its left.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cOur politicians have an absolutely appalling mental perception of what a northern voter looks like and thinks like,\u201d Menon said. \u201cThis idea that everyone north of Watford is a total oik who\u2019s basically a racist seems to be the common view now in our politics.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Spencer\u2019s victory casts doubt on that view. The Greens courted the constituency\u2019s ethnic-minority voters, even publishing pre-election material in Urdu and Bangla. In her victory speech, Spencer criticized \u201cdivisive figures who constantly scapegoat and blame our communities for all the problems in society.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Her remarks were a thinly -veiled attack on the Reform candidate Matt Goodwin, a former academic-turned-hard-right-activist, who had refused to disown his claim that people born in Britain from ethnic-minority backgrounds are not necessarily British. \u201cIt takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody \u2018British,\u2019\u201d Goodwin said during the campaign.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Reform](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2026-02-27t051030z-1217694678-rc24ujahmuz4-rtrmadp-3-britain-politics-by-election.JPG\")
<\/p>\n
\n Farage said the result was a \u201cvictory for sectarian voting,\u201d and a victory for \u201ccheating in elections,\u201d without providing evidence. Concerns were raised, however, by Democracy Volunteers, a group of independent election observers, about \u201cextremely high\u201d levels of family voting, in which a family member is seen to be influencing somebody else\u2019s vote, for instance by entering a polling booth with them.\n <\/p>\n
\n The result has also called into question Labour\u2019s decision to block Andy Burnham, the hugely popular Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester who is seen as a potential leadership rival to Starmer, from standing in the election. Karl Turner, a Labour MP, told the BBC that he had \u201cbegged\u201d Starmer not to block Burnham from standing in the election, saying he was \u201cwithout a shadow of a doubt\u201d that he would have won.\n <\/p>\n
\n Labour\u2019s decision to hold the by-election earlier than necessary now also appears to have backfired, since it will boost the Greens ahead of local elections on May 7. Labour MPs have previously told CNN that a disastrous set of results in those elections could prompt the party to oust Starmer as leader.\n <\/p>\n
\n Starmer said the result was \u201cvery disappointing.\u201d He pointed out that incumbent governments \u201coften get results like that mid-term,\u201d but stressed that he understands voters are \u201cimpatient for change.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Polanski, whose leadership has re-energized the Green Party, looks set to profit off that impatience.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cLabour\u2019s electoral stranglehold is over,\u201d he told a crowd in Manchester. \u201cThis is a seismic victory. We have torn the roof off British politics. And that\u2019s because people now recognize there is an alternative.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 The special election in northern England was supposed to be neck-and-neck-and-neck: a three-way scrap between the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":792666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-792665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116142991526098568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=792665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/792665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/792666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=792665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=792665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=792665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}