Four days ago, Keir Starmer arrived in Gorton and Denton and delivered the following impassioned statement: ‘I want to bring communities together in unity and hope,’ he proclaimed.
Well, this morning the Prime Minister has his wish. He has indeed brought Britain together. We are a united nation at last.
Black, white. Rich, poor. Young, old. Man, woman. North, South.
Everywhere you look, the view is the same. People hate – with a loathing so visceral I have seen nothing like it in my 30-plus years working in and writing about British politics – Sir Keir. And they want him gone from office.
Yesterday’s by-election result did not simply represent a defeat for Labour. It was an evisceration. A rending of the bond between the party and people so brutal and uncompromising it defies rational analysis.
This was not simply a safe seat, nor even a fortress. It was Labour’s Fort Knox. The last time the party lost in Gorton was a century ago. Since its inception as a distinct constituency in the early eighties, Denton has only ever returned a Labour MP.
And now it has been plundered. For weeks, Starmer’s acolytes told us this was, ‘a two-horse race’, between Labour and Reform. But in a two-horse race the Prime Minister couldn’t even manage to come second. They have collapsed to third, more than a thousand votes behind Reform, and a staggering 5,000 votes behind the Greens.
This morning, stunned Labour MPs are trying to come to terms with their loss. But the first thing they have to realise is that the seat was not lost, but sacrificed. In a desperate and futile attempt to save Starmer’s own political skin.
Winning candidate Hannah Spencer and Labour’s Angeliki Stogia, who came third – a staggering 5,000 votes behind the Greens
Zack Polanski and Hannah Spencer celebrate. Yesterday’s vote was not a endorsement of the New Green’s hard-left menu. It was a cry for help from voters, writes Dan Hodges
Never has a Prime Minister been so personally responsible for placing his own ambition before that of his party and his country. First, there was the decision to block Andy Burnham. We will never know if Manchester’s mayor could have saved this seat. But Keir Starmer didn’t even bother to find out. Terrified the self-styled ‘King of the North’ would march south to steal his crown, he defenestrated him. With the result that if Burnham is the King of the North, then Starmer is now Richard the Third. His blocking of him is the political version of the vanishing of the two princes in the Tower. And like Richard, Starmer will now have to live with his infamy.
Then there was the strategy Starmer employed to try to retain the seat. Ever since his party conference last year, Sir Keir has been telling his party and the nation at large that he was ‘the man to stop Reform’. He would, he vowed bombastically, stand tall against their ‘division’.
And what did he do over the past month? Spent every waking hour talking Reform – and its ill-appointed candidate, Matt Goodwin – up. And claiming – no, not claiming, but flat-out lying – that the contest was a straight fight between Labour and Nigel Farage’s insurgents.
And what did his duplicity gain him? The spectacle of both Reform and the Greens storming past as he was consigned to the humiliation and oblivion of third place.
But there is a final reason why this defeat rests squarely on Starmer’s puny political shoulders. I spent yesterday standing outside Gorton and Denton’s rainswept polling stations. And I heard the same message again and again.
Starmer spent weeks talking Reform’s candidate Matt Goodwin, pictured arriving at the vote count, up – and insisting it was a straight fight between Labour and Farage’s party
The Gorton and Denton seat was not lost, but sacrificed. In a desperate and futile attempt to save Starmer’s own political skin, writes Dan Hodges
From Chris the IT man. From Hussan the delivery driver. From Nadine the teacher. ‘He promised change but he hasn’t delivered it.’
‘Nothing’s different. We were promised things would be different under him.’
‘Nothing changes.’
I wrote last weekend, following a week in this gritty Northern constituency, that Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare was coming true. Both Labour’s political flanks were collapsing simultaneously – with disillusioned voters on the Left defecting to the Greens, and disillusioned voters on the Right of the party defecting to Reform.
In one sense that’s what happened. But it goes much deeper than that. The antipathy towards Keir Starmer transcends the traditional political divide. No-one – from your woke, effete, bleeding heart metropolitan liberal, through to your testosterone fuelled, white-van driving, small-boat despising Red Wall dweller – likes, admires, understands, empathises with, supports or embraces the Prime Minister. As one despairing minister said to me yesterday, ‘I don’t know what it is. And it isn’t really fair, because I personally like him. But everyone completely despises Keir.’
In the days ahead there will – rightly – be a focus on some of the disturbing sub-currents emerging from this election. One will obviously be the stunning breakthrough of the Greens, a party that has seemingly cast aside its fluffy environmentalism in favour of a darker, sharper-edged, political sectarianism.
But let us be clear. Gorton and Denton is primarily a traditional, blue collar, Northern working class seat. And yesterday’s vote was not a endorsement of the New Green’s hard-left menu of drug liberalisation, trans rights and Islamic fundamentalism. It was a cry for help from voters who believe – rightly – Labour has turned its back on them.
There will also be calls for an investigation into the so-called ‘family voting’ – where a voter is accompanied by another person into polling booths with the concern that they could be influencing their vote – which a group of electoral observers claim to have seen in a number of polling stations. And again, it’s important this issue is taken seriously.
But I can only report what I saw with my own eyes at polling stations across the constituency. I spoke to dozens of Muslim voters. And it was clear to me that they were not defecting from Labour because they were being coerced. They were doing do because they feel betrayed by Keir Starmer. And in that they are far from alone.
There is a tendency within Westminster to overstate the significance of parliamentary by-elections. But there is no way of overstating the significance of what happened last night.
The voters of Gorton and Denton did not just make a statement yesterday. Instead, they spoke for a nation. I’ll let Mahmood, a supermarket worker I spoke to, have the last word. ‘It’s Starmer. He said he’d be different, but he hasn’t been. I’ve always voted Labour. But he has to go now.’
Britain has spoken. Now the Prime Minister must listen.