{"id":434617,"date":"2026-02-19T18:16:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434617\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T18:16:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:16:06","slug":"we-are-the-forgotten-little-town-will-disenchantment-in-denton-leave-it-ripe-for-reform-greater-manchester","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434617\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We are the forgotten little town\u2019: will disenchantment in Denton leave it ripe for Reform? | Greater Manchester"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re unsure whether you\u2019ve crossed the border from Manchester into Tameside, the Reform posters will probably give it away. In windows, on walls, and staked on garden posts, Denton is awash with turquoise blue as the 26 February byelection<\/a> looms.<\/p>\n

Near the town centre, Ian Singleton and his wife, Irene, have one of Reform\u2019s turquoise banners standing proudly in their front yard. Ian was born in Gorton, in Manchester<\/a>, but for the best part of the last three decades, the couple have lived on the other side of the constituency, in Denton.<\/p>\n

Since then, Ian, 68, who served in the army and used to work in the building trade, has seen the high street decline.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve [only] got two pubs,\u201d he said, adding that social spaces have been replaced with \u201cmore hairdressers, nail shops, takeaways and barbers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the government, between these and some of the Tories, they\u2019ve killed the little businesses,\u201d Ian said. \u201cThey\u2019ve killed the pubs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only that, everything\u2019s just gone so expensive as well, hasn\u2019t it?\u201d Irene, a 66-year-old former textile worker, added.<\/p>\n

The couple have two children, in their late 30s and early 40s, who are renting houses. \u201cThey find it virtually impossible to buy one,\u201d Ian said.<\/p>\n

The Gorton half of the constituency has seen rapid change in recent years \u2013 median house prices in the Levenshulme area rose at twice Manchester\u2019s overall rate between 2013 and 2023. Photograph: Peter Byrne\/PA<\/p>\n

He also thinks England<\/a> is missing a strong sense of identity, and national pride. \u201cYou look at the Welsh, you know when they\u2019re Welsh,\u201d he said. \u201cThem flags and them dragons are flying high.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Singletons\u2019 disenchantment is symbolic of a community that is only six-and-a-half miles from Manchester city centre, but sometimes feels much further. Greater Manchester\u2019s Metrolink system has bypassed Denton, the congested routes out of the town make buses slow, and the railway station was named Britain\u2019s least-used for 2023-24, with only one return train service a week.<\/p>\n

Council tax rates have gone up, but bin collections have been cut, roads are scarred with potholes and streets near the centre are scattered with fly-tipped rubbish. It has all contributed to a sense of malaise, of Denton being left behind. \u201cWe are the forgotten little town,\u201d one resident wrote on Facebook, noting that while seasonal decorations go up elsewhere, Denton misses out on lights at Christmas or poppies in November. \u201cNothing,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe little lost town. Forgotten. It\u2019s just the way I feel. There are lots of good people in Denton who feel the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gorton half of the constituency has seen rapid change in recent years \u2013 median house prices in the Levenshulme area rose at twice Manchester\u2019s overall rate between 2013 and 2023. With almost twice as many votes as Denton, it is playing host to a straight fight between Labour<\/a> and the Greens, who each argue they are best placed to beat Nigel Farage\u2019s party.<\/p>\n

But that division leaves an opportunity for Reform\u2019s candidate, Matt Goodwin, if he can pile up votes on the Denton side. He has positioned himself as the person to come to residents\u2019 aid as \u201ca very loud champion who will draw attention to those issues\u201d he said last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to be a staunch Labour supporter,\u201d Ian said. \u201cWith Labour, it was the party of the working people, and it just turned its back.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, though, he is uncomfortable with some of the sentiment behind the St George\u2019s flags that have been strung from buildings and lamp-posts since last year. \u201cI think sometimes people who use it are racists, and are anti-foreign people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another Denton resident, who did not want to be named, said it was the economy that had pushed him to back Reform, similarly nailing his colours to the mast with a poster in his garden.<\/p>\n

But he said a relative had warned him to \u201cput it at the back, in the bush, because if people see it they\u2019re going to think you\u2019re a bigot or a racist\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be very honest with you, hand on heart, there\u2019s a lot of Reform\u2019s policies that I\u2019m not happy with,\u201d he said. \u201cFor example environmental policies, and I don\u2019t want to see people that are legally contributing to society being sent back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had to sacrifice some of my beliefs, I think, to support Reform,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A woman walks through a Manchester shopping area. The decline of the high street is an issue that is important to many voters. Photograph: Christopher Furlong\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Green candidate, Hannah Spencer, rejects the idea that only Reform can persuade Denton\u2019s voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think any party has got any area in the bag,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it was a mistake I think Reform made by assuming a white working-class community was just going to vote for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the same token, there are pockets of support for Reform in Manchester, too. Flags that have started appearing since September have in some parts led to tensions, with hostile reactions in local Facebook and WhatsApp groups. \u201cThese streets belong to everyone who lives on them,\u201d one resident wrote on WhatsApp, saying \u201cflags that make people feel unsafe\u201d have \u201cno place\u201d in Levenshulme.<\/p>\n

But the rapid gentrification has, in some quarters, pushed people towards Goodwin\u2019s party. \u201cReform all the way,\u201d one resident wrote in a local Facebook group. \u201cLeve [Levenshulme] was built with proper people, not you weirdo Chorlton [a leafy, high-income Manchester suburb] wannabes.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Levenshulme, one of those \u201cnormal, bog-standard\u201d pubs that once filled the high street, one drinker said: \u201cI\u2019m voting for Farage, because we need a change, don\u2019t we?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another punter was also voting Reform and said \u201ca lot of people I speak to are voting the same\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you see round here is all these Green [posters], I don\u2019t know where they\u2019re coming from, they seem to be in every garden,\u201d he added. \u201cLiberal lefties, they can all piss off back to Chorlton.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Robert Ford, a professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said that finding their supporters in the area may prove tricky for Reform.<\/p>\n

Reform candidate Matthew Goodwin at hustings in St Peter\u2019s Church, Levenshulme, for the Denton and Gorton byelection. Photograph: Mark Waugh\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the challenge for Reform is logistical and organisational,\u201d he said. \u201cHow do you find those voices and engage them?<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, some of them may show up anyway,\u201d he added. \u201cThese are areas where if you go knocking on doors you might find one receptive voter for every five or six hostile voters, and that\u2019s potentially quite a bruising experience if you\u2019re a canvasser.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Ford said, Reform\u2019s path to victory could \u201ccome through the middle on a divided vote\u201d \u2013 if support for Labour and the Greens splits evenly, \u201cthen Reform don\u2019t need to win overall\u201d. <\/p>\n

But he added: \u201cAnyone who tells you what\u2019s going to happen in the wee small hours of Friday morning two weeks from now is either a fool or a fanatic. There really is no way of knowing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the overall picture, Ian Singleton is clear on his hopes: he views Goodwin as the most likely path to political change \u2013 as a \u201clad from around this area\u201d who, along with his party colleague Lee Anderson could be \u201cthe voice of the working person\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s put it this way; I don\u2019t think they can do any worse, I really don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re unsure whether you\u2019ve crossed the border from Manchester into Tameside, the Reform posters will probably give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-434617","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}