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.

But there are very few places where those candidates have the chance of getting into power (unless large numbers of non Muslims voted for the Muslim vote candidate as well.) Because even if we assume all Muslims are "Islamist" (they arent) they don't have the numbers. Birmingham or Bradford could elect a Muslim independent in the right circs. But that's not a new thing. Galloway had success there till he didnt. In theory they could get there, and a few other places but would still have a tiny number of MPs (maximum 2 or 3) so wouldn't be a significant power unless they cooperated with larger parties which means compromise.

Or, Muslims vote instead for larger parties who also draw votes from other demographic groups in order to have an impact in the issues they care about most. Which will also mean compromising on other issues.

I said Muslims but this applies to pretty much every other minority demographic and every other special interest group. And every individual voter. It's how politics works.

Anyone who thinks this is a vote for left wing progressive ideology is delusional. Is anyone in the Labour party that out of touch to believe going left is the answer?

What this elections shows is that some voters are so committed to one issue, that they willing to ignore other policies. Partly, i think, because they know they arent voting for the government, but for a single MP. If Hannah Spencer doesn't say the correct things in parliament or vote the correct way, shes losing a lot of votes next time around. It doesnt matter what the green policy is on drugs, landlords or the military because they are far from government.

Similarly for the traditional labour voters voting green this time. They arent voting for their trans or drug policies, they are voting as a warning to labour. Its the only way they can make the party listen.

But almost 50% of the people who voted Green weren't Muslim at a bare minimum. The majority of white voters and non Muslim voters didn't vote for Reform. I know this because maths- even if every single Muslim voter voted Green (unlikely) then a lot of the Green votes still had to have come from somewhere else. And you can tell that the Greens know this and aren't pandering to Muslim voters alone by looking at their policies.
I live in a very ethnically diverse area that is not currently dominated by any one particular ethnic group. Probably drawn by the economic opportunities. People sharing in an aspiration to live and work and be educated in peace. It is/was heartening that the UK is/was a place where this could happen. However, inevitably it seems that ‘Vote Race’ is occurring now.
Why inevitably. Is that based on observations in your area? Or because people are saying it in this thread? Because the Gorton and Denton election itself very categorically isn't like the (sad) situation you described in the country you lived in.

Agree it wouldn’t matter if it was centre left or centre right as long as it was centre but there does not seem to any politician currently visible with the gravitas and personality to lead a centre ground party.

It’s also highly problematic that the social media age drives journalists to give airtime to the person most likely to create clicks ie was Johnson, now Farage or Polanski. So even if there was someone with potential, we’d never hear from them. I fear our politics are destined to move further from the centre and become more fragmented and divided.

More smaller, more identity based political parties.

That would be because the Overton Window has shifted so dramatically, and worryingly, to the right of politics.

And anyone with the merest knowledge of the cyclical nature of human stupidity can see where this is going to end up.

Talking to DH about this.

Is this a vote for the Greens or a vote against Labour?

This matters.

Why? Well the trend in voting pattern in recent years has been about disaffection politics rather than voting for something actively.

That doesn't mean there is a sudden shift to either the left or right by voters. It means they just want change.

When you look closely at this I suspect you will see voters in Gorton and Denton with a long term pattern of voting Labour for Corbyn, voting Conservative for Johnson, voting Labour for Starmer and then voting Green in this by-election as a result of this.

That's not consistent with them massively shifting their opinion.

If the Greens did get into power, they'd face the same issues that have plagued every government since 2010. The ideology wish list doesn't hold up when you are faced with the realities of running a country.

The point that remains throughout is that people on the ground want solutions to long term problems that aren't being dealt with and have been kicked into touch by numerous governments in succession. That how the country has been run for years. But those problems have been getting worse and no one will even acknowledge their existence in many cases because that involves identifying politically toxic components.

We are now gripped into a cycle of this and honestly part of me thinks that until we've gone through both the greens and reform in power we are not going going to correctly identify this. We are at a stage where the country is going to be a patchwork of different parties / interests which will make a government working together very difficult. We are likely to end up like Italy with a period of a succession of governments not serving full terms as they collapse mid parliament.

That's not good for the country in a lot of ways.

If we get someone who manages to start finding solutions it will reverse and which ever party achieves that, will get a huge amount of public support and that's the direct the country will eventually head in.

I don't see any of the parties doing that for quite some time yet because there isn't the leadership and team to do that. You need both.

Why was Bee’s post deleted?

But agree that many of Polanski’s policies are extreme and it’s not a shift of the Overton window. Abolishing the Home Office? No limit on immigration? Along with the others like legalising heroin - these are all batshit crazy.

My conservative MP is actually intelligent and decent and I think I’ll be voting for him in the next election for a number of reasons. Never did I think I’d find myself here but having a party that is intelligent enough to recognise the importance of sex-based rights is close to being a single issue for me.

I might have come around to voting Labour when I thought for a moment that its leadership was rethinking its position on how some women could have penises but I suspect it’s going backwards on that one now.

Don't forget it's a by-election and in by-elections weird things happen. The turn out was 47% of the electorate. A GE is usually around the 70% mark. So the biggest factor in a by-election isn't so much where peoples politics lie, it's who can get the vote out. You need to take vote swings in by-elections with a pinch of salt for this reason.

By-elections bring out the disaffected most. The indifferent or apathetic stay home because they don't see the point in voting. This group still have the power to drastically effect the outcome in a GE.

If there has been a concerted effort to get the vote out in certain groups, then that might be as strong as their influence is.

For sure. It's a vote against labour and the mainstream parties as much as it's a win for the Greens! Plus if you tried to create the perfect Green candidate (for somewhere like GandD in 2026) in a lab it wouldn't be better than Hannah Denton. I don't think that means we will definitely see a Green landslide next elections or anything. But trying to see the dissatisfaction as purely split along racial or religious lines or as some harbinger of racial identity politics to come is a mistake IMO.

Well said. For ages I couldn't understand why the Muslim community was not more vocal about the insanity of mixed-sex by stealth spaces. Then I realised this.

Women's rights are being threatened on several fronts it seems.

But the ex Labour voters such as Owen Jones, and lots of committed leftists where i live, for example etc are wanting to warn the Labour party that it needs to be more radically left wing ( as they see it)...and that includes on issues such as 'trans rights', open borders etc-

The new MP has also said things like we are working to line the pockets of billionaires. Pity Labour wouldn’t say it. They ought to be.

Hannah did well at the hustings and said she'd represent the people and not necessarily follow GP policy. Let's hope she sticks to that for the sake of the residents if nothing else.

To me, the Overton Window is acting like schrodingers’ cat. It seems to have shifted both further right and further left when we look at Reform and Greens. But agree with the concerns of where this is leading.

@persephonia Is that based on observations in your area? Yes. Perhaps G&D itself is more diverse and reflects diverse thoughts, but I use the word ‘inevitable’ in relation to observations of my area and local politics. Not applying it to the whole of the UK.

I meant a centrist from within either the Labour or Conservative party. I think the Tories may have a better chance of that now that certain others have left for Reform. The Labour party will now be under presssure from within its own ranks to move further to the Left.

The overton window has got left and right to extreme levels.

If you are looking me in the eye and telling me that men can become women and saying this isn't an extreme shift you are taking the fucking piss.

That is becaused it is student style politics to say such things.....Prime Ministers need to unite people of different persuasions, not alienate them with rigid ideology.

Labaour would never have been elected if they stood on that sort of platform.

Why do you think so many Muslims were prepared to vote Green? Do you think it was because they like the radical Left economic and social proposals the Greens now seem to stand for?

We are seeing fragmentation. We are likely to see more locally driven and regional politics.

The red / blue wall issue is only growing. As is metropolitan versus rural issues.

This latter one is massive in terms of food security and environmental concerns too.

I live in a place that means I cross a lot of these boundaries and political fault lines in various ways. I can see issues that lots of people are blind to.

It absolutely terrifies me because it leaves us so vulnerable.

Yes, I'm in the same boat. I'm wondering whether some Labour MPs will defect to the Greens if they don't now succeed in dragging the party over toward the Left on cultural issues.

We've been told that women's rights and protections etc are just "unimportant" cultural issues, not the bread and butter of politics, and whilst this is true ( not about everyday issues such as cost of living etc).....such issues are now far more defining than once they were and should not be dismissed at all.

Agreed, but I'd go further and suggest that what we're witnessing, in real-time, is a revolution.

A rather slow revolution, to be sure, but a revolution nonetheless; the turning away from the stability of previous establishment and a rising appetite to dismantle that establishment and try something new.

The danger, as always, is that we allow ourselves to be led down the path of extremism in our desire for change.

What I'd dislike to see is a movement towards messy, compromised, coalition governments such as are typical in countries with proportional representation.

Rather than a revolution I think what we are seeing is increasing fragmentation coming from all sides and spectrums. With each distinct grouping or faction becoming ever more intense and focused on certain types of cultural issue.

Left wing parties have always been about deep, revolutionary, fundamental re-structuring along idealistic principles - which simply don't play out in the real world.

I dont want to type cast. Pressure groups like Muslim vote seem to steer left on economic issues but I suspect upset over Gaza was more than a bit of a factor, and maybe also Reform rhetoric around Islam and Starmers Island of Strangers style rhetoric. Again though, Reform has Muslim members so you can't put everyone in one box.

I suspect that many voters (Muslim and otherwise) for whom Gaza/left wing economic issues were the biggest consideration in their vote were prepared to put disagreement with the Greens social policies to one side in their vote. Likewise there were probably people who liked the Greens social or environmental policies but disagreed with Gaza or their economics.

I don't think that's sinister though. That is sort of how people are supposed to "do" politics.

I think it is a revolution in the purest sense of the term, but I absolutely agree with you about that rise of fragmentation and - more worryingly - the tribal factionalism that comes with it.

I'm relatively comfortable with a political future where the centralised government is a messy, coalition that is regularly hamstrung by its own ideological jockeying whilst the rest of the country just continues to get by with greater-empowered local authorities who actually understand the area they're responsible for.

This.

I think it's possibly going to be a fairly long term problem for the UK which will ensure long-term issues meaning we aren't a stable partner or somewhere to invest. That has massive implications.

Shouting Gaza lots simply doesn't address or consider diplomatic fallout and trade issues.

In a world where China and the US increasingly dominate that doesn't bode well for us.

Nor does it actually offer any practical solutions or meaningful help for those in Gaza or indeed Israel (which includes contested areas of settlement).

It's 1 dimensional thinking at a time when we really really need 3 dimensional political understanding.