The by-election in the Greater Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton on 26 February is set to be a major moment in British politics.
The contest is seen as a referendum on Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer – and a crucial test both for the anti-immigration Reform UK and the left-wing Green Party.
Earlier this week the Labour Party’s ruling National Executive Committee blocked the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham – who is widely seen as a potential challenger to Starmer as prime minister – from standing for the seat. Labour is yet to select its candidate.
Then, on Tuesday, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party announced its candidate for the by-election: GB News presenter Matt Goodwin, who has a long record of making controversial comments about ethnicity, Islam and Muslims.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski has accused Goodwin of having a “track record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.
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Goodwin’s record is likely to cause a stir in a seat where more than one in four voters are Muslim and around 44 percent of people are ethnic minorities.
On Thursday evening, the Greens will vote for their candidate.
Two frontrunners have emerged: Hannah Spencer, a plumber by trade, and Fesl Reza-Khan, a former soldier.
Both are well-known organisers within the party. Spencer has not announced her candidacy but has been widely reported to be “the favourite” for the role.
Middle East Eye spoke to both on Thursday morning about their backgrounds and politics – and why they believe the Greens must win the by-election.
Neither are career politicians
Spencer, 34, has lived in Greater Manchester all her life and is the leader of the Green Party on Trafford council, having first been elected as a councillor in May 2023.
Reza-Khan, 50, is the party’s international coordinator and sits on its executive committee. He joined the party in November 2023, after Israel’s genocide in Gaza began.
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Born in Pakistan, he arrived in Britain aged six and grew up in Oldham.
From 1996 to 2000 Reza-Khan was in the army. He joined at 17 and “started off as a soldier in the Parachute Regiment”.
Eventually he transferred to the officer training corps in Birmingham and trained to become a fully commissioned officer.
“It taught me resilience, especially with the Parachute Regiment – that the limits I thought I had, I could go way beyond them,” he said.
“It taught me to not run away from danger. It taught me self-reliance and belief in myself. These are things that when you’re growing up in the ghetto in Oldham, you lack.”
Spencer told MEE she has “lived in Greater Manchester all my life”.
“I work as a plumber, something I’ve done since leaving school at 16. I’m actually currently training to become a plasterer too! I lived in the constituency and still work there.”
Why did she join the Green Party?
“I joined just after Covid,” Spencer said, “because I was so fed up of politicians deciding things that suit their interests at our expense.
“I was so angry at the gap between the super rich and all the rest of us getting bigger.
“I saw that so few politicians are from backgrounds like mine and I realised the only way we can change things is having a wider range of voices in parliament.”
‘We’re a city united’
Reza-Khan, meanwhile, runs an investment company which has begun a range of startups. His wife, Armeena Rana-Khan, is a prominent Pakistani actress.
Reza-Khan told MEE his life changed during the deadly 2017 Manchester Arena bomb attack, which killed 22 people.
“The bomb went off a few hundred metres from my flat. I went out and saw a lot of the aftermath live in action,” he said.
“I started ringing around and we formed a community group. I was elected as chair.”
Days after the attack, Reza-Khan found himself addressing a crowd of thousands at a vigil he had organised in Manchester’s St Ann’s Square.
“I had three messages. To the terrorists: you are terrorists and you won’t divide us. To the far right: we’re a city united. And finally to the Muslim community: come together and stand with the non-Muslims and the wider community. We’re the same. We said, ‘When you’re hurt, we’re hurt. Let’s stand together.'”
Since then he has been involved in local community organising, but joined the Green Party in November 2023, feeling that British Muslims had been “abandoned by Labour”.
Challenging Reform’s politics
Both Spencer and Reza-Khan believe the stakes are high in the upcoming by-election.
“This is such an important by-election because this is a chance for people to reject the usual stuff from the same old parties,” Spencer said.
In particular, she added, the Green Party must challenge Reform UK.
Reform candidate Matt Goodwin: From ‘liberal left’ to Islamophobia sceptic
“We need to show that Reform only care about protecting their own interests and fuelling division, blaming migrants and Muslims and whoever else they use as scapegoats,” she said.
Goodwin, the Reform candidate, has repeatedly insisted that British-born people with immigrant parents are not necessarily British.
In 2024, he claimed that “millions of British Muslims – millions of our fellow citizens – hold views that are fundamentally opposed to British values and ways of life”.
Reza-Khan told MEE: “This country took a small, little immigrant boy with no horizons other than the streets around him, and it gave me an education, a future and a sense of belonging.”
He said Goodwin’s statements went “to the heart of my identity”.
“We are the very people that people like Goodwin stigmatise and tell stories about. Here is a chance for him to look me in the eye and for me to look him in the eye, and for me to challenge these lies about immigrants,” he added.
Spencer said the by-election is a “chance for people to see that the Greens do care about working-class communities and that many of us are from those backgrounds ourselves.
“We can offer hope, and a voice to people who’ve been ignored for too long.”