{"id":507129,"date":"2026-02-27T08:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/507129\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T08:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T08:11:09","slug":"green-party-wins-gorton-and-denton-by-election-with-labour-pushed-into-third-by-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/507129\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/core\/website\/assets\/static\/news\/incident-types\/light-mode\/analysis.77b314ef10.svg\" alt=\"Analysis\" draggable=\"false\" class=\"ssrcss-to2z4d-ContributorImageComponent e2hr5uu0\"\/>Green Party&#8217;s historic success means future of British politics is more uncertain than everpublished at 06:25 GMT<\/p>\n<p>06:25 GMT<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-5adjh7-Contributor etflsgg2\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/7b2e0a68-6940-426c-9b33-973f83545689.jpg.webp.webp\" width=\"64\" height=\"64\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Professor Sir John Curtice<br \/>Polling expert<\/p>\n<p>      <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Hannah Spencer with Zack Polanski\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/9c82b0ab-6ed1-413e-8255-46edcfa81dc5.jpg.webp.webp\"  width=\"5303\" height=\"2984\" class=\"ssrcss-egie1y-Image edrdn950\"\/>Image source, EPAImage caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Greens&#8217; new MP Hannah Spencer celebrated with a selfie with party leader Zack Polanski<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hitherto, the Greens had never won more than 10% of the vote in a parliamentary by-election, a figure they reached in the Somerton and Frome by-election in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Now Hannah Spencer has already claimed her place in the history books as the first ever Green candidate to win a parliamentary by-election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Not only did Spencer win, but she won well, significantly outperforming the expectations of the polls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rather than winning narrowly, the party won 40.7%, enough to put them as much as 12 points ahead of second placed Reform. It represented as much as a 27.5 point increase on the party&#8217;s share in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Labour, who had not hitherto lost an election in the area since 1931, fell into third place. The party&#8217;s 25.4% of the vote represented a near halving of their 50.8% of the vote in 2024 and the 13th biggest ever fall in the party&#8217;s support in a by-election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Meanwhile, the Conservatives lost their deposit with just 1.9% of the vote, their worst ever by-election result.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Apart from the exceptional circumstances of the Rochdale by-election in 2024, when Labour disowned their candidate, leaving George Galloway to defeat a second-placed independent candidate, it is the first time that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been one of the top two parties in a by-election contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With the two parties both running at 20% or less in the polls, the Conservative-Labour duopoly that has long dominated post-war British politics has never looked weaker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Conservatives are struggling to fend off the challenge from Reform, and now, at the other end of the spectrum, Labour&#8217;s traditional position of the principal party of the left of British politics is evidently under threat from the Greens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Doubtless the result will raise fresh questions in Labour MPs minds as to whether Keir Starmer should remain prime minister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Green Party&#8217;s historic success means future of British politics is more uncertain than everpublished at 06:25 GMT 06:25&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-507129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}