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.

Report about "family voting"

https://nitter.net/SamCoatesSky/status/2027142542685311359#m

Being reported on GBN now. Apparently the election officials have questionied that assertion.

68% of observed polling stations? Yikes. That is Not Good & nobody can pretend that Democracy Volunteers are some kind of Trumpian force hellbent on fiddling elections for their own golden boy.

My spidey sense starts to tingle when Labour activists sound much more confident than the evidence merits.

In Britain as in Ireland, you can trust the counting of the votes, but there's plenty of dodgy stuff happens before anyone gets counting.

The GBN journo on the ground doesn't seem to be taking the fraud allegations seriously. Patrick Christie is now covering his arse when mentioning it, despite him making it his headline at the top of the hour.🙄

I've started & abandoned a couple of deep dives into the constituency - I lived there before it was re-drawn. Suffice to say, though it's changed somewhat since I was there, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Labour did hold it on a "better the devil you know" principle. IM very personal O, it all depends on how many of their habitual, rather than loyal, voters were pissed off enough with HMG to stay away from the polls.

I always assume, in a strongly Labour area, no matter how unpopular they are nationally there's enough inertia to ensure they won't collapse completely. Maybe more so in Manchester if the Burnham brand makes the Labour vote a bit more robust locally.

I currently live in east London, and all I'll say about elections here is that there are some funky things that happen with postal votes in areas with particular demographic makeups. I'm not saying Lutfur Rahman wasn't guilty of electoral fraud, I'd just say he was guilty of electoral fraud while not being a Labour candidate.

What is the suggestion re the “family voting”? I’m currently abroad and following online as the results come in (I’m 7 hours ahead of uk)

It's being widely reported.
Gorton and Denton by-election hit by claims of 'extremely high' illegal family voting - Manchester Evening News https://share.google/P2JG3JyCkNSOWjbvB

In a statement, John Ault, Director of Democracy Volunteers said: "Today we have seen concerningly high levels of family voting in Gorton and Denton. Based on our assessment of today’s observations, we have seen the highest levels of family voting at any election in our 10 year history of observing elections in the UK.’

Apparently Democracy Volunteers can only observe and can't intervene directly.

Allegations are being widely reported.

It doesn't mean they're true, as Patrick Christie is now bending over backwards to stress.😆😆😆

If this is as close as it seems like being, it could easily be heading for election court.

It doesn't mean they are not true. This is a reputable organisation which is delivering its report. Patrick Christie is reporting that's all.

Democracy Volunteers Major Concerns over Family Voting in Gorton and Denton Poll share.google/QLGBhVgEvoLwD2rz9

@SionnachRuadh Burnham's far more popular with London-based journalists than with Mancunians - they didn't even want a Mayor but had one imposed anyway. Sure, his % of the vote looks good but the turnout's abysmal (He got a small swing to Lab last time but his actual vote fell by 3.something%).

This by-election would have been his best chance to get back to the Westminster he so roundly condemned when he left it. Bringing down bus fares is very popular, though who knows how long the £2 flat fare will last AFAIK, it was only guaranteed to the end of 2025, & the latest GMP Chief Constable has made a priority of firing & prosecuting bent cops & police support workers which has made GMP suddenly look like a beacon of probity when seen in the context of other Forces. Maud Muller springs to mind; "For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'" 😂

Also, postal vote, grrr. How to make that necessary evil a tad more robust?

@HildegardP That makes sense. It reminds me of that time when London-based journalists were proclaiming that Jim Murphy was really popular in Scotland. I have a sense that people like the idea of Burnham until the point when they actually have to vote for Burnham.

I'd be quite happy to go back to the old days when you needed a reason to request a postal vote. I had a real eye opener years ago when I heard a breakdown of how the postal voting system worked in mostly Muslim areas of Birmingham.

The person I heard it from was not some Faragist agitator, it was Salma Yaqoob, then a Respect councillor. Her point was that she was trying to appeal to women and young people in the community to vote for her, but a household would get nine postal votes and the patriarch would make sure all nine went to Labour.

Everyone knows it happens, but the only people who want it cleaned up are outsider candidates. Or if the outsiders get elected (hello Tower Hamlets) maybe the system works for them and there's no longer a need to clean it up.

Agree. We need to face up to the problems and dangers we're facing.

If there is a scandal at this by-election maybe something is more likely to be done to resolve the problem, I guess.

There was legislation introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002 that on paper was fairly modest - it replaced household registration with individual registration - but the funny thing was that, when the new register was published, it was 10% smaller, amounting to 120,000 voters.

There was lots of learned commentary about how students and people with learning disabilities had trouble with the new system, but realistically, that would only have accounted for a fraction of the drop. Everybody knew, but nobody wanted to admit, that there was rampant electoral fraud.

The Starmer government has just introduced a Representation of the People Bill that promises to do some very interesting things about the franchise. I would be pleasantly surprised if there are any measures to deal with fraud.

The left wing commentator on GBnews made the point that anyone involved in family voting wouldn't naturally vote reform.

Which is telling, but i think true. Its more likely that greens and labour would be the parties losing and/or gaining from it, and the parties least likely to complain.

Oooo very interesting.

DH has been at an election count before now. He said there were numerous things that happened that shouldn't because procedures were so bloody lax and various officials doing questionable/negligent things. He challenged it. He didn't get very far. However there were batches of counted votes which were significantly out when looked at again...

The whole system needs a good look at.

So just to be clear - given this is the feminist section of the site - 'family voting' is really a man getting to decide how the rest of his family members vote? So it's men controlling other people's votes?

So, if true, seems to support one of the arguments that those opposed to female suffrage used to make - that it'd be unfair to give women the vote because it would essentially be giving votes to men with wives and daughters. Because, you know, women not being fully human and all that.

How lovely that we're allegedly going backwards.

It's one of those things where you have to set aside partisan advantage and look at the integrity of the system. If democracy is going to work, you need to have elections where voters of all persuasions can trust the outcome.

There's a lot of shoddy stuff happens in election administration. Sorting that out would be a bigger priority for me than whatever measures Labour are trying to enact to juice the electorate in their favour.

Yes, democracy is fragile, the system needs to be seen to be fair and accountable. So if there are allegations of illegal activity, it needs to be investigated.

Aye aye. Sky have seen that it's looking like where it's green v Labour, the greens are "significantly ahead" and also where it's Labour v reform, reform are ahead, "but the greens are doing equally as well".

They're hinting it's a green win

I'd have thought there'd be a number of Muslim women who wouldn't want to vote Green - regardless of their policy on Gaza - because of the more immediately relevant issue of their policy of allowing men who wear women's clothes into women's spaces. Thereby excluding Muslim (and other) women from being able to participate in public life / employment by rendering all supposedly single sex spaces in fact mixed sex etc.