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.

She's one MP in a minority party, who benefitted from a mid-parliament protest vote. She will make not a scrap of difference to me and most other women.

Yes I hadn't noticed the slight change in user name and wondered if the other had been hacked!

Was it MissScarlettintheBallroom?

Every woman in Parliament is a positive step for all women.

I imagined it as MissScarletinTheBathroom.😉

Every woman in parliament is a positive step for all women.

Margaret Thatcher?
Liz Truss?
Suella Braverman?
Priti Patel?

Are you having a laugh?

You beat me to it, though I’d add a few more 😉

Of course women are. It’s a shame people can’t cope with women having a range of political beliefs as men do.

It's a shame people feel like they must always attack those who don't share their beliefs.

So now you express support for the advancement of women - as long as they include the male kind, I presume. 🙄 Women have had the vote for over a century in the UK and we will be celebrating total equality of suffrage in 2028. In that time the proportion of MPs who are women has risen from 1% to 40% and we have had 3 female Prime Ministers, one of whom won 3 elections and was in office for nearly 12 years. Of course none of them were Labour, who haven't yet managed to elect a female leader.

Canada's sole female Prime Minister managed only 132 days in power before her party lost the general election, and the highest percentage of women MPs there is only just over 30%. The US has never had a female President and the highest proportion of women in Congress is 29% and in the Senate 25%. The benighted and bigoted (in your view) UK puts them both to shame.

Isn't that what you are doing, though?

Most people here do not beieve in the concept of 'gender identity' outside of its formulations within post modernistic, queer theory. This must be well known as this board has been around for quite a long time now.

Yes, @MissScarletInTheBallroom was a sensible poster. This poster has a very similar name but doesn't seem to be the same person.

Which belief are you referring to?

I think it’s great if women can have a range of political careers from left to right, as men do.

Excellent article from Janice Turner.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/a1c26cd3-b768-43e4-b894-2aab921a0f75?shareToken=3851e9b3d01891f5dde74e9882ce0822
That party (the Greens) is dead. Like a parasite moving from one body to another, the entryists who took over Labour under Jeremy Corbyn now have full control of the Greens. They won in Gorton & Denton by fighting the most irresponsible, divisive and sectarian campaign ever conducted by a party with claims on the mainstream. As one Labour MP put it: “They’re just like Respect — it’s like fighting a by-election against George Galloway.”

On Thursday, the old mainstream parties stood impotent and irrelevant while basic tenets of secular democracy were kicked aside. We now have a polity made of two populist blocks, Reform and the Greens, prepared to say anything, however incendiary, in order to win. We are entering perilous times.

Yes, this is the gender critical hive mind.

I don't have to say a word against sex realist beliefs. My body and life are experienced as attacks on sex realist beliefs.

I agree 100%.

😂

A thread from her last year
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5318804-i-did-it?

All women are women, yes.

Labour ended up being pretty blue these days. They're just the sad extension of the previous Conservative government.

Canada's sole female Prime Minister was appointed after the incumbent Thatcher & Reagan bestie quit having decimated his party pre-election (to the point they were unable to constitute party status following the election).

Women who are elected to leadership should be supported.

All women are women, yes.

On that we will always profoundly disagree. Whatever you have done to your body, you cannot be a woman as I am a woman, since you were born male.

"She said the Manchester Arena bombing was not caused by Islamist terrorism but “divisiveness”."

Really? She really said that?? Jaysus.

Yes that century 21 article was all about reminding their elected representatives that they are owed

It is not

I do not think it was exactly that. From memory She was making a point about how incendiary Matt Goodwins views are, and possibly trying to express the complexity of reasons why terrorism occurs- however the conversation moved on and this was not examined in any detail.
I'm not green supporter but I doubt the above statement is a complete characterisation of her views.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2026/02/19/why-the-greens-are-so-scared-of-saying-the-word-islamist/