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.

Mothin Ali will be wheeled out

I think Labour won't win the vote, nor Conservative. I don't know who might though.

I feel like the labour party have made a huge mistake in not letting Andy Burnham run, because I suspect his popularity would have won out.

It sounds like it’s a race between Reform and Greens. Not sure which will win though.

Honestly even if Burnham ran it would have been one hell of a scalp to claim if he lost.

And if he won, who would replace him as mayor? They'd need to run a new election. At a time when several dozen local elections have been postponed on cost value grounds

One of my best friends lives 20 or so metres outside the constituency in literally the next street from the boundary. I know her very very well and we talk politics - we have pretty different views that I don't always agree with. She's uni educated and is the primary breadwinner. She's married to a Muslim who moved to the uk. She's white. If they were able to vote I can honestly see him voting Reform. Her I'm not so sure. I think she'd be reluctant to.

The reason is they invested in property because he doesn't have a pension because of when he moved to the UK in his 30s and he's self employed. I think this is a factor a few forget - there's a lot of Muslim Landlords or small business owners in the area. They have very much old fashioned blue collar workers and thinking but are not white. They are a lot more economically and socially conservative than many give credit for. He certainly has much more of a dog eat dog mentality to looking after yourself and your family as he grew up somewhere where there is no social security. It's fascinating to see tbh. I can't get my head around it sometimes.

Neither my friend or her husband would vote anything to do with Gaza though even though he's VERY anti-western media and not a fan of the conflict at all. He thinks the British media is anti-Muslim and doesn't trust it.

The problem with this by-election is the desire to over simplify voters into neat boxes. My experience of the area is it's very very complex and diverse and people have very different political priorities than you might think.

Make generalisations at your peril.

I would be surprised if Reform didn't win. I think the Greens and Labour will do less well than perhaps anticipated. Particularly the Greens.

There will be a healthy vote for Mr Oink but he won't get his deposit back.

I want to say Reform won't win- I hope that's not premature!

The typo in Gorton is unforgivable though from the Greens 🤣🙈

Every time I think John Harris may finally get it, he always ends up saying what he's always ended up saying.
He was writing these "I go to XYZ area to try and understand why they're voting UKIP/Leave/Brexit Party/Reform" back when I was a wee nipper in shorts.

Make generalisations at your peril.

Very good point, RedToothBrush. I'm thinking of the number of commentators who confidently predicted that Trump couldn't possibly win in 2016 because Hispanic electors wouldn't vote for him. And look how that turned out.

It's probably true that a lot of Muslims see Gaza as an important issue. But as you say, there will be others who want to vote for someone who promises to support small businesses, and has small c conservative views on identity politics. And I think quite a lot of people who came here as immigrants, or whose parents were immigrants, don't necessarily want to see more immigrants coming into the country.

It's going to be interesting, for sure. My instinct is that a lot of the left vote will go to the Greens, because people, including traditional Labour voters, dislike Starmer so much. And the right vote will go to Reform because Matthew Goodwin is such a well-known and forceful figure who doesn't shy away from speaking his mind. I think much depends on whether the Conservative candidate is strong enough to take some of the centrist voters nervous about both the Greens and Reform. At this stage I'm not going to put money on the outcome.

Gender critical has become my red line in politics, as close to single issue voting as I'm likely to get. But even bearing that in mind, with the Tory candidate being strict GC herself, I'd still pass on her to vote Reform.
If Muslim voters really do vote en masse as a bloc, acting as sheep directed from above, and get the Green over the line, this will really be a sad day for British politics.
We have enough issues in the UK without political religious sectarianism rearing it's ugly head.

If Muslim bloc vote gets the Greens over the line, Labour will be reaping what they sowed.

Why @1984Now? (Genuinely asking)

Why what?
Vote Reform, not vote GC Tory despite GC being almost single issue for me, why Muslim bloc vote for one party is bad, why political religious sectarianism is a disaster for the UK?

Sorry @1984Now Vote Reform, not vote GC Tory despite GC being almost single issue for you

I'm sure the Conservatives won't for a minute expect to win in Denton and Gorton, but I think selecting Charlotte Cadden is a really interesting choice strategically. My guess is they're hoping she can help expose the utter vacuousness of the Labour Party and the batshittery of the Greens when it comes to women's sex based rights. No I don't expect it to affect this particular result but I very much hope she manages to land a few punches, and I say that as someone who voted Labour solidly until 2024.

Because Goodwin is reliably GC, and despite Farage being a bit lukewarm on gender issues (typical male politician), he's been reminded of its salience for his cohort of motivated voters, and the fact that a big majority of Brits are at the very least moderately GC, thus Reform can be relied on I believe to run a GC programme in govt.
As I say, if the polls suggest Goodwin and Spencer are anywhere near to neck and neck, I'd be sad not to support the GC Tory candidate, but duty calls...stopping the Greens, and sending a message to Starmer.
Even more critical if the Green becomes the equivalent of Plaid in the Caerphilly by-election, the lightning rod #AnyoneButReform left "unity" candidate.

Let's hope so. It's just a little sad she may become nothing but cannon fodder in this contest.

I'm sure she must know this this and, if she does have political ambitions (although she sounds pretty busy already!) , it'll be a good training exercise for her.

At the very her vote/vote share will indicate what hardcore of right leaning but anti Reform voters exist in that area.
Millions of likely Tory voters stayed home in 2024 allowing Starmer's "loveless landslide" majority.
Will.the same happen again if Reform prove to Marmite in 2028?
Will the Tory vote, and overall turnout, at this by-election indicate the direction of travel for the right as well as the left (Greens embarrassing Labour, maybe)?

I actually hope the Greens win.
In the short term it’ll be seen as an endorsement of the Titwizard and the party’s increasing popularity, but in the medium to long term it’ll be another step towards opening up the massive rifts that are inevitable when you try and court very different demographics and it’ll all go Judean People's Front.
I want them to win because it’ll be very bad for them.

Just listened to Spenser on Novara Media. She's very authentic in many ways, I can see her appealing in ways Goodwin might struggle, she "appears" more normal than the cultured slickness of Goodwin.
For the electorate, many of which aren't overly involved in politics, hating the state of things, but also the hyper aggressiveness escalating in politics, she could cut thru to them, whereas Goodwin will have to cut thru to the cohort who are more animated by politics, more cynical, more minded to be bloody minded and throw a hand grenade into the system.
Spencer's "we're all in it together to not be shit" versus Goodwin's "we're all together in the shit".

You like someone so racist he openly says that Rishi Sunak cannot be English?

That's quite the take...

It is pretty clear from the demographics and existing patterns that it is going to be close. Spencer looks to be the most approachable candidate that will help her for sure.

It seems very possible that the Labour vote will hold up way better here than Caerphilly. If they win it will be a huge moment for them. As others have said it is not certain at all the Muslim vote will all flow one way. Lets hope it doesn't full on sectarianism will be a disaster.

Agreed for the Greens yes a win might lay up long term trouble. If Muslim vote goes mainly in one direction for them they then have to continue wrestling with the internal contradictions even more.

The irony is that a Green win is not bad for Reform in a bigger picture either. Because if they are doing well because Starmer is the main bad guy, they will do even better vs the Greens if they get more successful. Especially if the Greens win because of a Muslim block vote.

I'm born in England to Polish and Estonian parents.
I consider myself British or even Polish/Estonian-British.
I don't consider myself English, for any number of reasons.
Just like I had I been born in Japan to non-Japanese parents, I wouldn't consider myself Japanese.
Even Sunak considers himself Indian-British.
To all intents and purposes, there's no legal distinction (ie children born in England to non-English parents can play sort for England etc), it's absolutely fine to have differences here.
Why shouldn't English/ness be as specific an ethnicity as Chinese or Japanese etc?

What makes you think Goodwin would consider you British? He's been quite clear that it 'takes more than a piece of paper' to be British (when it was pointed out to him that the Cambridgeshire train stabbing perpetrator was born in the UK).

On last week's Question Time, Douglas Alexander seemed to think that this was some kind of a gotcha, when replying to Konstantin Kisin.
It really isn't.
Perhaps you can find something rather more substantial to base your criticism because, tbf, it made DA look a bit of a twit.