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.

I can't understand the rationale of voting either Reform or Greens anywhere. They are two sides of the same coin. Labour may not be great but they are better than these two alternatives.

Tim and Camilla give their last minute take

I see on Guido that the Greens are sending out comms to journalists detailing "Hannah Spencer MP"'s movements tomorrow.

Maybe this is pure Zackism - you can manifest a victory if only you believe hard enough.

Would you able to sum up? I’m intrigued but not sure I can listen rn do they guess the outcome?

Protest vote. On both counts.

I guessed as much but then it leaves us open to one or other, far left or far right, gaining power either locally or in parliament.

They don't, but there's some entertaining stuff on the tactics Labour and Greens are using against each other, and Alister Heath talks about his worry about sectarian voting - that bits of the mainland UK are moving towards a Northern Ireland or Lebanon style of politics where it's not about what party's policies might be best, or whether your MP has done a good or bad job, but purely counting members of particular communities.

To be honest, the legacy parties have been doing that sort of thing for a very long time - mostly Labour, but Bob Blackman MP (Tory, Harrow East) inviting a bunch of his Indian constituents to Parliament to celebrate Modi's birthday is a good example - it's just that the Green campaign has been unusually blatant about it.

I think this betrays Alister's lack of knowledge of left wing politics. Seems to me the Greens are running a classic Galloway campaign.

There's also mention of that curious organisation Hope Not Hate, who have no business intervening in elections while pretending to be an educational charity, but it's amazing what you can get away with if you're an MI5 asset.

Thanks for the run down. I just saw a toe curling cringey SM post from the Labour candidate. About 90% - 95% responding they’ll vote Green (plus general backlash).

On reflection it's not exactly a Galloway campaign, because Galloway notoriously will have leaflets in Muslim areas saying "you all know me, I will be a powerful voice for Gaza and against the Zionist entity" and other leaflets in working class white areas emphasising his left wing economics and anti-woke stuff - make Rochdale great again.

I don't think the Greens are doing that. I suspect that in the Green camp there's a bit of an aversion to even the idea of trying to appeal to working class white voters. Zack's whole "let's own the gammons" approach on SM doesn't exist in a vacuum.

This is a big problem with the idea of an Islamo-left alliance. Adnan Hussain seems to have intuited, and Galloway knows, that at least in theory you could build an alliance between working class Muslims and working class whites based on economic interests. An alliance between working class Muslims and white hipsters based on not liking Nigel Farage - it can be done, but I'm not sure it's got a stable basis.

It can't be as cringy as Zack and Hannah's videos for the Greens.
https://x.com/i/status/2027061137028575539

https://x.com/i/status/2027028728958595555

Worse. I’ve seen a couple on IG one from Labour one from Hannah. Both running comments that are pretty much all pro Green.

Sometimes a bit of ham and cheese works pretty well. I still say that, as a pure bit of advertising, one of the most effective election videos I've seen in recent years was the 2019 one of Boris doing that scene from Love Actually.

Mind you, Zack does have that Boris quality where you suspect he's not very interested in doing the hard yards in politics, but just really really wants to be on TV.

He's not singing, is he? I'M NOT CLICKING THROUGH IF HE'S SINGING

Oh. I see.

The SWP, in their "Stand Up To Racism" guise, have also deployed a squad of canvassers to the area. From the photos, they appear to be almost entirely white and with an average age of about 60.

I'm not sure how voters in Denton will react to Trotskyite retired deputy head teachers, who live in the nicer bits of Manchester, giving them the Big Waggy Finger.

Indeed it has. Great care has been taken to avoid the rise of elective dictatorship in devolved parliaments. Minorities must be represented fairly. Especially if they are Tories.

This is why you don't really have full PR imo. Lists are dodgy , opaque , open to manipulation. Just have Single Transferable Vote and Multi Member Seats. No lists and keep the constitutency link. That AV yoke was a dogs breakfast. No wonder the Referendum was lost. Pile of pants.

The rumour was that the D'Hondt was chosen specifically to discredit PR.

So of course this is how our new, expanded Welsh Senedd will be elected in May, instead of using the previous Additional Member System. 🙄

Most of the elections I've voted in have been STV. There's no electoral system you can imagine that's going to produce a good political class. That's getting the problem the wrong way round. There are lots of bad incentives built into the system and most of them have nothing to do with the voting method.

Also, the Irish political class, a bunch of useless pillocks elected under STV, have become addicted to the idea that you can improve the people by tinkering with the Constitution. This is also getting the problem the wrong way round, and probably helped inspire the SNP's social engineering wheezes.

I remember telling a TD how much I enjoyed ranking candidates in order of preference, compared to wasting my vote for decades in England. But he was less enthusiastic about PR , complaining that he could never be sure of reelection. Poor diddums. Twice they have held referendums to try and bring in the barmy FPTP system. And twice they were rejected. PR is no magic bullet. A necessary but not a sufficient condition for a modern democracy.

Polls closed. Zack polanski at the count with Beth Rigby on sky

Looks like labour have been saturation campaigning on a Stop Reform banner

https://nitter.net/susanp80/status/2027123751263842560#m

Is this the greens actually stopping drivers or labour as well?

https://nitter.net/jonnyross05/status/2027087658401296624#m

I remember the Runcorn one some Labour MP going on about people ‘looking under the bonnet’ or some such nonsense. Six votes did it in the end.

That's a brilliant example @fromorbit.

When did Zeus and Hera last put their heads round the door in these parts? The Bronze Age! That's when. Where have they been for the past 3000+ years?😱

They've been gallivanting around, chasing fantastical animals and "checking in" on all their other creations on all their other planets, in all their other universes.🙄

Gods don't really get human elections and I'm not saying that its their fault. But even with their best intentions, they're busy /easily distracted.🤷‍♀️

I'm just saying that Gods are a stupid basis for humans to determine their vote.