The result of the Denton and Gorton by-election will be giving the Labour Party a sobering reality check.
What should have been a routine defence of a safe seat instead exposed deeper fractures within Labour’s electoral base. For a government early in its term and a PM trying to save his premiership, the loss will undoubtedly hit hard.
In the 2024 general election, Labour secured more than 18,000 votes in the constituency. Yet in the by-election, that figure was slashed roughly in half.
On the flip side, it was a sweet victory for the Greens, with Zack Polanski re-asserting his message of being the party to hold the mirror up to Labour.
This result will leave many looking to No.10 for answers. Much of Labour’s recent strategy has focused on countering the rise of Reform UK by hardening its position on issues such as immigration and cultural politics. Yet Reform was not the decisive factor in this race. Instead, Labour lost ground to a party positioned firmly to its left.
This will – and has already – provoked further unease within the Parliamentary Labour Party. A significant group of more than 100 Labour MPs have been pushing for the party to move back towards a softer left position – and this result will only amplify those calls.
At the same time, Labour faces a deeper problem that is far harder to resolve. The party has recently relied on a broad and diverse coalition of voters. On one side sit liberal middle class urban voters. On the other, are more traditional and often socially conservative working-class communities. Keeping these groups aligned has been central to Labour’s recent success, yet the Denton and Gorton result shows how fragile that balance can be.
The government will undoubtedly attempt to soften the political impact of the defeat and has already begun doing so by shifting attention towards the emerging story around the so-called “family voting” phenomenon. This refers to situations where multiple members of the same household participate together or influence each other’s voting choices. The chair of the party, Anna Turley, is already doing the media rounds to sell this line in an attempt to redirect the narrative.
However, this explanation does little to address the underlying issue. Labour still lost the seat and did so to a party occupying political ground that Labour once dominated.
The result has also revived discussion around a particularly persistent headache for the prime minister: Andy Burnham. Some MPs and commentators have suggested that the Manchester mayor would have been the man to win the seat. The argument has an obvious appeal. Burnham enjoys strong name recognition in the region and is often seen as representing a more traditional social democratic approach that resonates with much of Labour’s base. Yet hindsight is always generous.
The cold reality is that Labour’s vote fell dramatically. Even a high-profile candidate might have struggled against that backdrop. Burnham’s popularity could perhaps have narrowed the gap or even delivered a narrow victory, but it is far from certain.
There is also a strategic dimension to that question. Had Burnham won the seat, it might have created a different problem for Starmer. Bringing such a prominent and independent figure into Parliament could have elevated a potential internal rival at a time when the PM’s leadership is already looking extremely vulnerable in the wake of the Mandelson affair.
What matters now is how the government responds. By-elections are often viewed as mid-term protest votes, but they can also serve as early warnings. The Denton and Gorton result suggests Labour’s attempt to triangulate between left and right may have reached its limit.
Looking abroad may offer some clues. With a general election recently called in Denmark, attention is again turning to the Danish centre-left model. The governing Social Democrats, led by Mette Frederiksen, have combined strong welfare policies with stricter immigration controls, and there is no doubt that Labour strategists will be keeping at least one eye on how they fare amid the rising right/left split.
Ultimately, the deeper challenge for Labour is one of identity. Winning power in 2024 was due, among other things, to the Tory party’s demise rather than the strength and appeal of Labour’s campaign. Governing has been a hard pill to swallow for the party as it battles fire after fire, and voters on the doorstep repeatedly say little has changed – the very platform Labour ran on nearly two years ago.
The coming days will see many pundits and politicos scrutinise every detail of the by-election in an effort to understand precisely what went wrong. But there are serious concerns about whether Labour can keep its voter ranks aligned, and the ultimate question then becomes, in which direction does it go?
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