Gorton & Denton by-election thread

[fromorbit]

This dramatic byelection to be held on Thursday 26 February 2026 is looking likely to have a confrontation over sex and gender with the Conservative's just announced candidate Charlotte Cadden being a trustee for Sex Matters. Another factor is with a large Muslim population in the area the group Muslim Vote has endorsed the Green candidate despite one of their aims to be remove teaching about LGBT issues from schools when religious parents object. Obviously in conflict with Green policy.

Candidates

• Angeliki Stogia will be the Labour candidate in this year's election. Ms Stogia moved to the UK from Greece in the 1990s and has served as a councillor in Whalley Range since 2004.
• Reform UK have selected GB News presenter Matt Goodwin as their candidate. He studied at the University of Salford and went on to have a career as a commentator and academic.
• The Liberal Democrats have selected local campaigner Jackie Pearcey as their candidate. She lives in the constituency and previously won 2,600 votes at the 2017 elections.
• The Green Party have put forward Hannah Spencer to stand for them at the by-election. She is a plumber by trade she is from Bolton and has lived in Greater Manchester all her life, and is based in Hale where she is a councilor. She doesn't believe biology is important in deciding gender.
• The Conservative Party have chosen former detective chief inspector Charlotte Cadden as their candidate. She served for 30 years in GMP and London's Met.
• The Re-join EU Party have announced that Joseph O'Meachair will be their candidate. He is a member of the party's executive committee and lives in the North West.

Sebastian Moore (Social Democratic Party)
The Social Democratic Party announced on Friday 30 January that the current SDP North West Chair Sebastian Moore will be running as their candidate in the by-election.

Nicholas Brendan Buckley Advance UK

He is a British charity worker and political figure who previously represented Reform UK.

Dan Clarke is the Libertarian Party candidate

Sir Oink A-Lot
Sir Oink A-Lot is The Official Monster Raving Loony Party candidate

https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/parl.gorton-and-denton.by.2026-02-26/gorton-and-denton/

The just announced Conservative candidate has serious form:
Former detective chief inspector Charlotte Cadden is a lesbian served for 30 years as a Police Officer, both for Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan Police - Charlotte is a trustee of the charity Sex Matters, a member of the LGB Alliance Business Forum. She coordinates the Women’s Rights Network in Greater Manchester, In 2023, she set up the national Police SEEN.

Galloway's Worker's Party have now decided not to stand. They may have attracted a bunch of Muslim votes which will now go elsewhere.

Any hustings are going to be rather interesting.

How I saw someone put it was: the Tories knew what they were getting with Boris. They knew there would be scandals, they knew he would make silly mistakes, they knew he had zero attention to detail or patience for the boring side of government.

But he was popular and could win an election and, after winning the election, could bully Parliament into getting Brexit done. That was the other side of the ledger.

When he became unpopular, and insisted on marching MPs into the lobbies to vote for stupid and unpopular things (eg the Owen Paterson affair) only to u-turn on what he'd made them defend, he ran out of what goodwill he had and they dumped him.

Starmer didn't even make much of a policy offer. The case for Starmer was that there would be a period of dull competent centrism, without scandals and sleaze and making MPs defend stupid things before u-turning on them.

That worked out well.

I genuinely think he is high functioning asperger's - it is why he comes over so wooden and without emotional expression. He's also got no natural political instinct and very poor judgment. His job was done the day Labour were elected...and every day since then he's been on notice.

I'm a little ADHD myself, and I'm very sensitive to seeing it in other people, plus autism, Asbergers etc. Ironically, I'm probably more uncomfortable or clunky in the presence of such people than "normies" who might ignore subtle signs.
I saw it with Truss, this weird "I'm terrible with normies, but can't survive without their approval" inability to read the room, and now Starmer, but at a different level.
This is a guy with no real philosophical core other than "rule of law" yet he sets my teeth on edge with his moralising virtue signalling. He'd be a perfect Archbishop of Canterbury, it's not as if his atheism would make any difference with the current CoE heirarchy, lol.
For me, his biggest failing personally as a leader is not that's he's made bad decisions or is bad at leading. It's that he has no idea of what leadership means. It doesn't mean waiting for a report from vetting/secret service on Mandelson for it to say "...as a result Mr. PM, do not hire Peter Mandelson...", it means getting the report setting out the issues associated with him, and deciding not to hire him.
This isn't leadership, it's not box ticking, it's responsibility avoidance.
It informs everything, allowing the drift on SC ruling roll out, "negotiating" surrender deals to foreign politicians who smell him a mile off, u-turns, relaunches, mission statements by the dozen, not so much surrender to the inert state, but contentment that an inert state is fine as long as it's not the Tories running it, and even on Reform, he has no stable core beliefs, so his verbalized objections to Farage ring hollow.
He achieves for Labour in one term what the Tories did to themselves in 14 years.

I wonder how much of the current scandal is down to his woman problem. Sue Gray is also a stickler for process, but pointing out red flags on senior appointments was a big part of her job at the Cabinet Office. I don't believe for a second that Sue would have recommended appointing Mandelson when there were equally credible but less morally sketchy alternatives on the shortlist.

Interesting that apprarently Starmer's initial instinct was to appoint George Osborne, and it seems McSweeney's lobbying is what persuaded him. This is coming to be a recurring pattern with Starmer - on the rare occasions when his instinct is correct, he allows himself to be talked out of it.

By all accounts, Starmer deeply dislikes Mandelson. Yet he ignored all the danger signs, the vetting raising multiple concerns, and appointed him anyway because his little friend McSweeney said so.

Woman problem? You don't say. Put Starmer in a room with JKR and Rosie Duffield, and see the problem very clearly, lol.

Just seen some odds
Greens just ahead of Reform.
Labour some way back.
Tories and LDs behind Advance UK and the Workers Party.
It's a fever dream.

Betting odds on elections reflect the bets that are laid not the actual chances of any particular party winning the election. If the odds on the Greens are low that just means that Green punters are putting on bets.

Hokay. But don't the betting companies have to factor in actual likelihood of winning?

It's mostly educated guesswork. Rob Ford has given his thoughts, and Andrew Teale of local by-election data fame (it's a nerdy niche of political science but he does it well) will do his usual eve of poll preview.

Don't take me at all seriously, but the demographics of the seat mean I'm guesstimating the Reform share at 34-36%. They might get less (maybe 30-31) but I think they'd struggle to get much over 36.

The small parties (Tories, LDs, Advance and the odds and sods) probably won't get more than 10% between them.

So if we ballpark Reform at 35 and others at 10, it's all about how the 55 divides. Reform will win if Labour and Greens are more or less evenly split. If Greens are clearly ahead of Labour or vice versa, they won't win.

Tactical voting is a thing, but it isn't very clear which of Labour or Greens is best placed to beat Reform, and pollsters say Green voters are extremely resistant to tactical voting appeals. It would be easier for the Greens to push Labour's share below 20 than vice versa.

There's no reliable polling, so I'm largely going by instinct here and my figures might be completely off, but that's what will figure into betting. That, and a certain amount of sentiment - you'd think the punters at the Political Betting site would be hard headed, but a surprising number of them are Liberal Democrats talking themselves into outcomes they'd like to see, like Kamala Harris winning in a landslide.

You can actually extrapolate quite a bit from the candidates. Labour had their own psychodrama of course, but after excluding Burnham, it made sense they would go for a standard issue councillor. Angeliki Stogia may be a perfectly good candidate, but she's very much a Labour comfort zone candidate.

My best insight into Reform thinking is that they'd have stood Zia Yusuf if it looked like an easy win, or a Sarah Pochin local councillor type if it looked like a long shot, but choosing Goodwin suggests they thought it was a toss-up. He's high profile and very energetic and will put in a huge amount of effort, but while they'd love him to win, a close second wouldn't worry them too much.

I still think the Greens missed a trick by not standing Polanski, but that probably indicates they're not all that confident, and didn't want to take the chance of standing the leader and having him lose.

So all three parties expect it to be probably a close run thing, but with a high chance of failure that might have been embarrassing if they ran too big a name.

Only when they give the initial odds before there are any bets. Once bets are laid the odds will lengthen or shorten depending on how much money is put on. The odds will be adjusted to ensure the bookies make a profit.

The MGs give their thoughts on Konstantin Kisin and the "is Sunak English?" question.

JR Mogg predicting Starmer out very much sooner rather than later.
Poor old The King Of The North will have to play alone on his throne, he's not in the big boys' (and girls') playground . He'll have to bide his time sorting Manchester's bus timetables until either the next leader/PM fails, either before the GE, or straight after.
Our Ange? Ah, shucks! She will be the one who lights the fuse (after Mandelson so kindly gave it to her) to detonate Starmer, but her unreconciled tax affairs rules her out.
Streeting? I didn't know this, but he's one of the biggest cheerleaders of Mandelson all thru his career including official invites to help him campaign. The stink is sticking to Streeting worse than Starmer. No go this time, and like Conservative voters abandoning the party for deception in office for a decade plus, Labour voters, and the rest of the country will never accept Wes as PM.
Mahmoud? No Mandelson connection, but after the Starmer weak tea faux left "leadership", Labour MPs and members will not accept a more rightward turn.
50 MPs already rebelling against her proposals to reduce illegals.
The party is going left.
Ignore Jacqui Cooper etc, the New Labour stench over Mandelson sticks to her as well, even if she like Milliband has no links.
No likely surprises...ignore the buzz for the likes of Al Carns.
Leaving, leaving...the one senior Labour minister who's seen it all, genuinely distanced from New Labour, totally untainted by Milliband, has seen things right from the top of the mountain.
Ed Milliband.
#MillieForPM

I'm a little ADHD myself, and I'm very sensitive to seeing it in other people, plus autism, Asbergers etc.

WTF?🤯
Not only are you doing mansplaining on FWR, you're self identifying as ND with a special gift.🤦‍♀️

Hmm, detecting a little hostility here. No special gift needed for that.

It's not hostility, it's reality.🤷‍♀️

Good analysis.

Reform have a solid chance especially if they can get usual non voters out simply because of the size of base.

The Green vs Labour division is going to be decisive. Fascinating to see how it will play out. I think the Greens have a good candidate which will help.

It is all a trial run for the May elections in many way at least in the mobilisation of the parties.

I am reminded of Isle of Wight East, where the Greens put up their best candidate. At the previous GE, both Labour and Greens had a good showing (18k and 11k respectively). There was a fair bit of recrimination from both sides saying "well if you lot had just voted for us, we wouldn't have Sausage Seely as the MP again". Which rather ignores two points.

Firstly, Seely was pretty popular locally, and compared well with the previous Tory MP, sadly struggled with medical problems and became rather (more) lacklustre in his last term. There's a couple funny stories about Tiger Turner but that's not the point.
Secondly and more importantly, adding the L+G together, you still only have 29K, which doesn't trouble Seely at 41K anyway.

When the constituency was rightly split in twain due to population size, the L + G figured it out and put their best candidates on West and East respectively. Labour ran a fantastic campaign with a popular well-liked local councillor and won IoW West. The Tories or Reform would have squeaked a win if all votes went to one of the two parties, but (oh dear what a pity never mind) they didn't do that.

Greens at the same time contested IoW East and I watched the campaign. The candidate had been very active locally and on social media. She's a good egg, I've got time for her (notwithstanding her TWAW opinions which are after all in line with the zeitgeist in the younger greens). She came third to Con and Reform.

Lessons, I don't know. But the greens electoral calculus has often been a bit iffy and much optimistic from what I've seen here on Craggy Island. I don't see them taking this bye at all. Third place I reckon, behind Reform and Labour (in any order), but beating the tories.

@TooBigForMyBoots I didn't realise @1984Now was male, although I have wondered, because of the posting style. Are you guessing or is there evidence you can link?

@1984Now
Are you male (or at least willing to declare male sex, since proof isn't available in an anonymous online forum)? If you are, I think you should use an explicitly male name when posting on this board.

I personally do not want to interact with men on FWR. There are many online forums for political debate and discussion and most of them are heavily dominated by men. If you are male I would prefer it if you left this forum as a place for women's voices.

Yes, he's said he's male.

I have no automatic problem myself with men posting here. I don't see why he should have to declare his sex? Posts stand on their own merits and on the content they contain.

In some ways the Greens winning the seat might be a good thing in the longer term; because the ludicrous nature of many of their policy positions would inevitably be exposed.

Who made you Head Girl of FWR Merveille?

@Sausagenbacon I'm not dictating to anyone else. I come here as occasional relief from the relentlessly male perspective elsewhere. Men are free to contribute to MN, but I believe it was intended primarily as a space for women and I think it would be courteous of men who come here chose usernames that make their sex clear. (quite a few do). That enables those of us, like me, who don't really want to interact with men in this space, to avoid doing so.