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.

I agree with you about being happier with a fuzzier definition. There's nothing more English than fudging the issue anyway.
I also agree that Kissin also has that distinction in his mind. But you could just as easily say English can have two meanings. The English as a cultural area that's different to Wales and Scotland. And English as an (incredibly hard to define) ethnicity which matters of you are an English heritage American. Instead he's fixated on the idea that the equivalent to the Russian definitions is British (citizen) and English(race). Despite lots of English people telling him that isn't how they personally see it. It is fantastically pigheaded
And I think the Soviet way of doing things and those rigid classifications caused a lot of issues. Not just in Russia but across the USSR. I guess it's frustrating that Kissin who is a very vocal critic of the USSR and communism is seemingly unaware he's bringing the same rigidity of thinking with him.

Didn't the head of some useless far right awareness body recently say that white ethno-nat activists are a bigger threat than Islamists?
Even here we're gaslit.
Remind me again who carried out 7/7, London Bridge, Manchester Arena & synagogue, Lee Rigby, David Amess etc, and number 10,000+ active maniacs on intelligence agencies watch.

But that's true of pretty much everybody. Including English people. He doesn't have the right to look in from the outside and make very simplistic statements about what other people are/are not.

Exactly!

Take for instance Dame Esther Rantzen and Vanessa Feltz - both English-born Jewish women - are they not to be considered English? Presumably they are of European Jewish stock going back generations but at some point they surely became English, not just nationally British!

Just as say Ian Wright the footballer - as English as fish & chips - or is he forever 'British of Jamaican heritage'?

Not just a useful far right awareness body - some here on MN would have you believe that Islamists aren't the biggest threat to national security in the UK.

I agree, despite in latter life realizing even as English born, of foreign parents means I'm still not in the English ethnicity club.
Maybe we should have cis English for those English with English ancestors all the way back, and trans English for those knocking at the door.
Truly believe none of these discussions would be happening if we hadn't gone to 15m migrants moving here in 30 years, decades of English self expression tone policed by the political correctness Stasi, the acceptance of Pride and Stonewall flags everywhere whilst the Union Jack and St. George's flags not allowed out of the house, and wholescale changes in alien practices like anti white Mirpuri clan based grooming gangs. FGM, whole communities not learning English, the explosion in Islamist violence.
And the simple stat that indigenous Brits form 83%, down from 95% just 30 years ago.

The immigrant population of the UK is about 16%. I don't know where you get this 25-30% figure that you keep repeating.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/migrants-in-the-uk-an-overview/

Americans are also very weird about ethnicity, which I suppose comes with their history. The Ancestry DNA subreddits are wild, full of Americans saying things like "my test says I'm 3% Portuguese, can I claim this ethnicity" like they're collecting Pokemon.

Brits importing US racial politics, which was formed by a very different history, is generally a stupid idea.

I'm not a visible minority, but as soon as I open my mouth, any English person will know that I'm not English. I have no problem saying that Ian Wright or Rishi Sunak are culturally English in a way that I'm not, regardless of ethnic heritage.

"British" is a handy inclusive umbrella term, with due respect to my ancestors who spoke no English and didn't want to be part of the UK.

I think it's higher if you count people with one foreign born parent. Which also means our king is an immigrant/foreigner. Dark days indeed. Although I guess that means we can argue Andrew Hyphen isn't really properly English/British. I would like to be able to pass him of onto somewhere else.

Stand corrected re that stat. The argument is still relevant.

I think it's fine if Americans want to talk about being "Scottish" etc based on their great grandparents. It can be harmless enough and is probably good for tourism. Also when Americans use European to mean "white" because African means "black" etc. Thats how they use those words. Fine.
It's when they think they have the right to then define what Scottishness/Englishness etc mean to Scottish/English people. Most don't, but there is definitely a quite vocal minority who think that their ancestry trumps someone born in the country. E.g. part of Musks weirdness about the UK is because he says he is part English and therefore has a stake (and more of a stake in the country than a brown person who was born here and lived here their whole life). Or Trump and his obsession with Scotland despite the fact the Scots don't want him.
And actually, apart from the point you made about Kissin transferring his own experience in the USSR, I think his stance also comes from trying to court an American centric audience for whom "English" means something like heritage.

The argument isn't so convincing when the immigrant population is actually only half what you claimed.

The Sultana faction of Your Party are not backing the green candidates

https://nitter.net/meganekenyon/status/2018662654299037938#m

That'll finish them🙄

Also, most of those immigrants aren't Muslim/Pakistani. Some are. But if you want to argue a particular type of immigration is bad, you shouldn't use overall figures for all types of immigration to do it.

The wild thing is, had the Workers Party stood a candidate, the Sultanate faction wouldn't have backed them either

I love following the wacky doings of Sultana. If you don't view her as a serious political figure but instead as an eccentric/comic figure it's entertaining. It would be different if she was on the brink of leading an electoral landslide or a revolution but she isn't.

The number of people in the UK who were born abroad is only 15% if you exclude those born in Ireland for example.

What it is to be british and english only matters because of government policies.

For generations, English people would refer to themselves as both English and/or British without this much navel gazing. People could say they, or their parents, were Polish, greek or indian and others could say English without it meaning something deeper, or interpreted as meaning something more. British was on our passports, england was where we lived, and our family have always lived here too, or lived in the Caribbean or Scotland. We didnt have to say what out culture was because it was the culture of the majority of the people around us.

But the lanyard class went crazy and decided that the British were oppressors and needed to embrace every other culture, and be embarrassed about our own. Complaining about government immigration policy is wrong because its rejecting other cultures and therefore racist.

They then seem bemused when their efforts are rejected.

When KK tries to distinguish between what it is to be English and British, hes still seeing it from a fairly recent immigrants persepective, and therefore doesn't work.

Also though Scottish and Welsh people got mad if you used English and British interchangeably. It wasn't just the lanyard classes TBF.
Fun way to wind a Scottish person up to this very day.

You've never heard a scotish or Welsh person refer to themselves as british?

I'm a member of a chat group for a town with working class roots near me. The locals are beginning to get quite pissed off that the council keep taking down England flags but don't fix potholes.

I have great sympathy for those that are pissed off. And it's growing.

This sort of thing is what makes people want to vote Reform. I'm also noticing more and more people openly talking about voting Reform.

Both Greens and Reform can be seen as a protest vote so either result in this by-election could be seen as rejection of politics as usual.

🙄

Yes, but if you use the word "English" to refer to all of Britain. Or use the word "British" to mean English. Its the same way that people in the rest of England get annoyed at people (the London Metropolitan Elite if you will) who think all of England is London. Or talk about London issues/as if they are English or national issues.
Or massive amounts spent on "English rail services" that just stop at Birmingham.

I was mostly being light-hearted. But there's (often justified) grievances from the edges that goes in the direction of the centre. And that includes English resentment at London based "elitism". But also Scottish/Welsh resentment at English "superiority".

Only my dad.

Sir Oink.