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.

Both posters seem v nice and sensible FWIW. But I don’t think Marty is Hannah.

Good detective work 🫆

Looks like hannahcolobus gives out plumbing and heating tips so that checks out

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/property/4752944-gch-from-scratch-estimates

Yes, I wasn’t sure how much info I should give on the thread so I thought people would do their own research 😂 had already advanced searched Hannah too and she does actually sound like a nice, down to earth woman who has given people lots of useful info about property and plumbing.

She sounds working class when she talks about buying her first house at 24, in a post from 2016. She says she worked 3 jobs and had to put her mum on the mortgage - the house cost something like 86k. So all the rest of the money seems to have come after that, maybe from property renovation which she seems quite handy at, not just plumbing.

I think house prices have risen considerably in the last decade.

Good points.

She certainty seems a pretty sensible person in many respects. I guess full details will come out. I guess I am just pretty jaded by the way middle class Brits either pretend to be either posher than they are, or poorer than they are so I get way more suspicious of it all.

I suspect she and Goodwin would get on really well if they just stuck to talking about property.

Meanwhile another fake accusation is circulating this time about Goodwin.

Fact check: Image of house in Gorton and Denton constituency appears edited
A social media poster accused Reform UK’s candidate of misrepresenting himself.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/reform-uk-conservative-party-manchester-greens-b1270285.html

Labour door knocking is revealing their vote is holding up it seems. If Reform win and Labour come second it will make the Green campaign look bad and vica versa. That is the problem with the "only way can stop the evil Farage is vote for us type campaigns."

Labour Still Hopes Burnham Could Deliver The Party A By-Election Win

PoliticsHome understands that when canvassers come across a resident who is a Burnham fan on the doorstep, which is described by sources in the area as a frequent occurrence, they can tick a box to indicate that the party should send a letter from the mayor to that constituent.

Multiple people who had door-knocked in the seat said they did not find that the scandal around Peter Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador was being raised by locals, but that residents were proactively bringing up the "Trigger Me Timbers" story and could even name the WhatsApp group.

Labour sources indicated they were increasingly confident of Labour holding the constituency because the party looked like it could be a "strong second" to the Greens and Reform respectively in different wards.

"Our vote in the Muslim community is holding up really well," reported one Labour MP. "The by-election is anything but written off, and some of it will depend on getting out the vote – where one would assume Labour has an edge."

"Nobody talked about the selection row, but people did praise Burnham," they added.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/labour-still-hoping-burnham-deliver-byelection-win

I have a theory, and it's no more than that, that the Labour vote may be a bit more resilient in Mancs just because of the Burnham brand. Stogia seems to be very actively associating herself with Burnham.

Gawain Towler of Reform (take this with as much salt as you like, but I know him to be honest) says their canvassing returns still put Labour in second. But I suppose when turnout is important, it matters if Labour people are depressed and Greens energetic.

Hannah Spencer seems like a good candidate, but I'd caution that the Greens have no councillors in the area and little historic organisation. I think Caerphilly had a particular set of circumstances where the Plaid candidate was an unusually high profile local councillor who had stood for Plaid in the constituency at every election for decades. He wasn't introducing himself, he was the reassuring familiar face versus the newbie Reform candidate.

Makes sense. The Caerphilly comparison is not sensible due to the political background of the areas and the demographics too.

She’s the type of person I’d like to vote for if the Greens weren’t so mad.

What do they mean by the “Trigger My Timbers” story? Sorry if I’m being dense.

It depends how much the dislike of Starmer feeds into votes, a few quotes in this article

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/gorton-denton-byelection-starmer-labour-reform-greens-b2917427.html#

Nice detective work.
I love that you are more capable of basic research than the Telegraph though.

Fascinating article. Note that though Polanski breaks his own TWAW rules here by accepting that Muslim Vote endorsement though he hedges a little. Muslim Vote supports MPs who are 100% against TWAW, and they explicitly want religious exemptions in schools to avoid LGBT education too. We get it Zack men with beards get to say whatever they want and treat women as second class, women are silenced. The Mothin rule always always applies.

Note the Muslim Vote endorsement is potentially going to raise Reform turnout. The idea that Gaza should be a key aspect of a UK byelection more than economy, law and order etc is exactly the sort of idea which switches people to voting for the right.

Muslim Voters Could Swing By-Election In Gorton And Denton

One reason for Labour optimism heading into the by-election is a belief that the area's older voters, particularly older Muslim voters, remain loyal to the party.
Labour peer Lord Wajid Khan, who has been closely involved in the review into Islamophobia, has been helping the party's dialogue with ethnic minorities groups in the constituency.
There is also a belief among Labour figures that Gaza as an issue is not as salient as it was earlier in the conflict. Labour candidate Stogia, a local councillor, told PoliticsHome she hosted an event for several dozen Muslim women in February and Gaza was not brought up once. She also claimed that the local Labour Party had experienced less of a backlash than elsewhere in the country, as Manchester City council was one of the first authorities to call for a ceasefire after the October 2023 attacks...

There is also a logistical challenge posed by the by-election falling during Ramadan, shortening the window for when Muslim voters can go to the polling station....

Polanski has welcomed the Muslim Vote endorsement, but stressed in an interview with PoliticsHome that voters should be treated as individuals.
“I think any organisation that wants to back the Green Party because they align with our values is something that I applaud and welcome,” he told PoliticsHome.
“I think we also know that whether they're religious groups or any demographic groups, people don't necessarily all vote the same way, and I think it's important that we always treat people as individuals.”

https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/muslim-vote-swing-by-election-gorton-denton

It’s the name of the WhatsApp group that Andrew Gwynne (disgraced ex MP) was on - and the main reason for the by-election (although he officially stepped down for ‘health reasons’).

Thank you! That had passed me by.

Greens really want to lose that reputation for being nice

Green campaigners thrown out of assisted living complex
Party issues apology over ‘distressing’ incident at Gorton and Denton care home

https://archive.is/m2B4A

I totally agree, I’m not sure in what context Goodwin said that Sunak couldn’t be English, identity is complex, but those born overseas who choose to settle here do need to embrace the English/British culture, but that doesn’t mean they automatically become English/British. They also retain their own cultural heritage. I think the issue Goodwin has is with those who come here to live from overseas and who reject our history and culture and who do not integrate. I’ve known people who have lived in the uk for 20 plus years who I couldn’t converse with, had to get their grandson to translate for me. That’s not good, no better than English people who migrate to Spain and don’t bother learning a word of Spanish. Society suffers.

Idiots.

Grubby, very grubby behaviour & typical heedlessness of others from the Greens.

What did they do?
I can't get the link to work.

They were knocking on doors in a sheltered living place. So not a retirement home where they burst in and started harassing the residents in the lounge or anything (which would be bizarre). But one of those semi independent living places where residents have their own flats/houses overseen by wardens who can quickly check on them. The problem is even though the residents are living independently with their own front doors, they are often quite vulnerable and frail and not used to people they don't know knocking on the door. I can see how some would become frightened and why the staff would have told them to leave. My grandad lived in one of those places and would have absolutely loved bending the ear of any canvassers. But you can't make that assumption about all the residents and really the canvassers should have known better. They were asked to leave and did leave but as I said, probably should have clocked it wasnt the place to go door to door.

Oh how strange.

I actually live in sheltered housing myself and Jenni Minto (my MSP and Scottish Minister for Women's Health) came round to see if I fancied supporting the SNP in the next election.

So I asked her what a woman was.

Dear me.

Jenni Minto and I did not part on terribly good terms.

And she got more of the same from my GC neighbour next door.

🤣

I almost felt sorry for her, except she was so determined that men could become women, just because they felt like it.

Hustings by Manchester Evening News

Six things we learned at the Manchester Evening News' by-election hustings
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/terrible-oasis-knowledge-one-womans-33415749

video

Well now I feel patronising for what I said! Sorry!

Green party's dodgy attitude about women aside, whats the general attitude towards canvassers visiting the assisted living communities? My granddad would also be the same about giving the canvasser (any political party) a detailed grilling on the policy. But clearly some residents found it distressing. But maybe then it's patronising to not visit those places because they can't handle visitors.