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.

The more I think about it the more I think Greens are just too ripe for being preyed upon by more calculating actors. Its a sad thing, that focussing on positives leaves one open to abuse. We see that over and over - raising safeguarding is seen as being 'unkind'. Its not nice or kind to talk about Islamist terrorism, or Putin's intentions, or male predators.

Greens end up with a simplistic Panglossian view which is superficially positive, and so long as they dont get much power can exert a light influence that may do some good. The risk is when pressure groups get too much power - just as when Stonewall managed to achieve in large part its founding aims.

The problem for the Greens is that Labour and Conservatives have introduced environmental policies,

Exactly.

Excellent, thanks.

'BIG WINNER: Multi-party politics
The traditional two big parties secured just 27.3 per cent of the vote in the by-election, continuing a trend which has been developing nationally for some time. This is the first by-election in modern history where neither Labour nor the Tories finished in the top two. Chuck in the two nationalist parties, the SNP and Plaid Cymru, and there are now seven meaningful parties in British politics.
...
BIG WINNER: Sectarian politics
It wasn’t the only reason the Greens won but they did in part by mobilising Muslim votes with a campaign video in Urdu showing Keir Starmer with the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi. Democracy Volunteers, a group of election observers, claimed its team had witnessed ‘concerningly high levels’ of family voting at polling stations yesterday, where men and women go into the booth together.'

Interesting times.

It's a by-election.

No swing in a by-election is ever replicated in a GE.

This has been the case forever despite the efforts of those who use it as good propaganda for their ambitions.

Over privileged twenty somethings who went to uni and know very little of life but think they do and haven't been cynics yet.

Yep there's an Implosion at some point.

If it's in government it will be almighty. As I say student loans, the LDs and the concept of compromise.

Rather Gives himself away though when he concludes Nigel Farage is a winner. Hard to see how one can draw that from Gorton and Denton. Haven't people soundly rejected all that ?
Also Matt Goodwin turning ' some' voters off. He started out with the highest profile of all the candidates. He was the gift that that keeps giving. He'd have got further if he'd have said and done nothing at all.
Can't read the Spectator without thinking of Cummings wife's delicate article about 'emerging' into lockdown in London. From 200 miles away.

I agree! But the clamour from with the disgruntled Labour ranks have seized upon this an opportunity to drag the party back to where they envision it as being.

I imagine they'll target either London, Bristol or Brighton? Manchester already hosts the Tory party conference and Liverpool the Labour party conference.

The Tories holding their conference in Manchester harks back to George Osborne's time. 'Northern Powerhouse' and all that......I suspect they'll be looking to re-locate it somewhere else pretty soon.

Pretty soon there might not be any Tory MPs north of Watford...

Reform seem to be settling on Birmingham. Greens have a very London heavy membership, but so do Labour and it's good practice to get out of town for a few days.

Last year's Green Party Conference was in Bournemouth, the year before was Manchester and the year before that was Brighton. I suppose political parties can hold their conferences in the same cities as other parties because they're over different weekends.

Ar least, for now, they aren't full Jill Stein and having dinner with Vlad.

I don't think the greens would, say, in their wrath to punish Labour over Gaza, urge people to vote Trump like the US greens did

https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1rfe3ox/jill_steins_campaign_manager_is_learning_in_real/

That article says its the PLP that have decided this necessitates a shift left.

Janice Turner was way ahead of the curve there,
The problem is, I can remember trying to discuss some of the worst aspects of child gender transition and the response was "oh I guess chemicals in the water is turning the frogs gay too". The very crazy level of debate on Fox News/Alex Jones (and the other way ón the left) basically poisoned the well. It's hard for sane people to make themselves heard over the crazy people shouting and even if you do, people will assume you are crazy too. The real issues disappear in the noise.
I am sure there are lots of things to criticise the Greens and the Left in general for. But the tone of that article was very much breathless panic that some people voted differently. If you think that will lead to bad outcomes then fine. But the actual outcomes she alludes to are vague or very hard to believe. If 40% had voted for Reform I wouldn't be saying 40% were racist/stupid/parasitical. Likewise if 40% vote Green those people aren't evil sectarians/useful idiots. In both cases you could frame ít as a symptom of politics failing in general and a loss of faith in the establishment. And discuss why that's bad. But framing a big chunk of voters as somehow the enemy is untrue and creating the division she complains about. And noone is going to pay attention to real concerns about policies if you run around callíng then parasites.

Even if you like her overal that doesn't make the article any less silly.

No doubt we'll get more of Starmer blustering that "I've won every fight I've been in", when it's pathetically obvious that he's lost every fight he's been in with the PLP.

The PLP looking at a Green surge and saying "let's be more like the Greens" worries me. Labour folks often say that they try to attack the Greens by bringing up specific Green policies, and those policies are so loony that voters just don't believe them (we know the same thing happens with trans stuff, where normies find it impossible to believe this stuff is happening)

Zack specifically shows worrying signs of being a believer in Modern Monetary Theory, which is literally voodoo economics.

I think it's a mistake to shift left because of the Green win, as is shifting right because of Reform.

The ruling party will always have a mixture of priorities and policies, some at odds with disgruntled back-benchers.

People I know just want Labour to get a grip and stick to their policies instead of this endless U-turning - it's made them and Starmer look weak and indecisive.

He didn’t win the fight just gone that’s for sure.

This is quite good Welcome to the new politics | Sebastian Milbank | The Critic Magazine

Shot:
Much more of Britain looks like Denton than it does Gorton. Labour, having made slight, gestural moves in the direction of Reform, have certainly failed to out-Reform Reform, and find themselves sliding into irrelevance. The space that many Labour MPs and members would feel most comfortable with is that described by Steve Davies in The Great Realignment — as a cosmopolitan party of mobile elites and immigrants. But the ceiling for such a party remains low, with most voters outside of urban centres valuing a politics of belonging, place and national identity.

Chaser:
Yet in what has been spun as an exciting, “multi-lingual” campaign, the Greens released a video in Urdu which showed images of Keir Starmer shaking hands with Netanyahu and Narendra Modi. Perhaps one could generously stretch the Israel factor to be about genuine humanitarian concern — but what on earth was the Modi image about if not a naked appeal to sectarian, anti-Hindu, sentiment?

There is a divide between what progressives say about Muslim communities, and what their electoral tactics and targeted rhetoric reveals about how they really see them. On the strength of that video, there seems little difference between what the populist Right accuses European Muslims of being — clannish, sectarian, Islamist — and what progressives appeal to when they’re trying to win the Muslim vote.

I guess atomisation and hyperfocus on very specific targeting and appeals to very specific demographics is also part of the story. Silos are being used to tell stories that sometimes conflict with each other. This makes for fractured and frankly weird discourse.

'Salad bowl' v 'mixing pot' used to be the terms - maybe this is where all the word salads keep coming from....

My DC is early 30s and still detests the LDs because of the student loans issue.

I haven't read it yet. I was just commenting on her influence as a Times editorial writer.

"You need to take them seriously but not literally".😉

I dont think it's bad if someone was voting for the Greens because they like their stance on (eg) Gaza but not their stance on drugs but decided it was worth compromising on that issue. Or voting Reform because they agree on immigration even though they don't like their stance on workers rights. Everyone always does that.

It becomes a problem if people are ignoring the policies they don't like to the extent of pretending they don't exist "don't take them literally". So insisting that the Greens don't really want to legalise drugs and you are doom mongering when you say they are. Or Farage didn't mean it when he said he would get rid of the ECHR.

That’s really corrosive and means people can vote for extreme policies they wouldn't otherwise. Politicians lie, but when they are promising something you disagree with you should assume they are telling the truth. I don't think there's much evidence of that happening in GandD though. If anything there seemed to be high awareness of the Greens drug policies and their Gaza stance and the conversation was around compromising for a more important issue. It's also a by-election of course so the judgements people will be making will be different to those in a general election when you are choosing what party to put on power.

Speccie podcast doing a deep dive

Just read it. I do think she is catastrophisng somewhat. She's very much a Labour party person and most likely feels the threat posed to it very keenly.

Whilst the German Greens were the ones pushing really heavily for the German government to rearm itself and be more proactive against Russia in the last German elections. Crazy times.

Parties can't be single issue on the national stage for long so if your starting point is the environment** then theres loads of other policy positions to take up. The only thing the American/German/UK greens automatically have in common is the environment as a starting position. Everything else evolved/was developed separately. So it's not surprising that there's so much variation over countries.

Same name. Different parties.

**Even with the environment there's conflicting positions on eh nuclear.