W
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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UK Politics
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- Hannah Spencer (Green Party): 14,980 votes
- Matt Goodwin (Reform UK): 10,578 votes
- Angeliki Stogia (Labour Party): 9,364 vote
Some blairite think tank is probably right now pitching some previously unheard of form of fascism to Kier Starmer in an attempt to claw some of those Reform voters over next time.
Let's see if the Greens start to get the airtime on tv and radio that Farage and Reform have always been given... I wouldn't count on it though. Instead they'll start screaming hysterically about the Greens' more progressive policies.
They already have 🫠. Straight after the defeat.
"Family voting"
This is huge! Some of us have been watching it from Canada as a sign on the viability of Polanski's politics, as we're trying to get our own demsoc alternative going. Again congratulations!
I wonder what the Tories will learn from these results? That progressive policies actually hit home and to move back to centre right? Or that, "Ooo Reform won second place maybe we should ape their policies?"
The tories lost their deposit which is quite funny
The Tories are now Reform. They haven't learned anything because they don't need to. They jumped ship.
Very encouraging to see that Reform can be handily beaten in England as well as Wales (Caerphilly).
Disaster for Labour, questions will be asked about Andy Burnham and Starmer will be considering his position. Can't see him budging until after the May elections though.
Well done to Hannah and the Greens.
Whatever you think of the Greens, we can all be happy that Matt Goodwin is having a bad day. He deserves it, after all.
It'd be nice if this made him re-evaluate some of his choices, but I don't hold out much hope.
Reform, the gracious losers, has been calling the vote fraudulent even before the results were out.
Goodwin has taken to ranting about a coalition of 'Islamists and woke progressives'. So no, I don't think he's going to take any lessons from this.
At least I can safely say I haven't misjudged him!
Labour will write it off as a regular by-election tizzy against the party of government and stay the course.
They'll try and if reform had won, maybe it would've worked.
Nowhere near as close as most of the polls were saying!
The two biggest influences on this election IMO were
- Andy Burnham being blocked from standing for election by Keir Starmer, because Keir was scared that Andy could challenge his leadership of Labour. Pretty much anyone you talk to in Gorton / Denton agrees that if Andy had been standing he would have won.
- Tactical voting against Reform UK. It turns out that fascist ultranationalism is quite unpopular with some people, who will vote tactically in order to keep them out. Labour and Green were both polling pretty much neck and neck, but the tactical voting websites went with Green, for two major reasons - among voters most likely to vote, Green had a small majority, and also because Labour voters were much more willing to tactically vote for Green, than Green voters would be willing to tactically vote Labour. The Gaza Genocide has made Labour completely unelectable among a good chunk of the voter base.
May is going to be a very bad time for Starmer. Cannot see him surviving this. Headlines of 'Bleeding red across the land' and 'Green shoots of revolutions' to become common. A strong possibility of 5th in Holyrood.
Sarwar was on BBC Radio Scotland this morning chatting shite about how ScotLab will smash the SNP, in response to this election result.
Mans only has one thing to say, Swinney lives rent free in his heid at all times.
The whole point of the interview was analysis of this Green victory and what that could mean for the Labour party going forward, and instead he couldn't stop blethering about the SNP.
Labour have so little positive to say you can see why he is saying this crap. Will they even publish a manifesto for Holyrood? Pretty sure nobody else has yet, and the Tory one is likely to be a pamphlet, with Reform's being a sheet of single ply loo roll
~~Scottish Labour's~~ Sarwar's Manifesto:
'am no' the fucking SNP, 'am no' the racist Reform, 'am amazing, vote for me! I mean, us. Aye, us, Labour. Sorry, Scottish Labour. 👀
Gi'e me the joab already! Wahhhhhh
I've had some Scot Lab adverts show up and they all had ANAS SARWAR in massive writing at the end instead of Scottish Labour
Rare UK W
American here, can you tell me if this is a good thing or not?
Its very good. Polanski is an old school leftist who openly talks about the need to tax wealth inequality and the UKs role in the genocide in Gaza. He's a working class, anti Zionist Jew, with a Muslim Deputy.
Hes given those on the left hope for the first time in years.
This is excellent news. Labour, the party of government, have had their strategy of going right on social issues blow up in their face. Reform are a far-right Trumpian party, and Goodwin in particular is a nasty, nasty person. The Greens are an unapologetically progressive party and trounced them both.
WOOT! Fantastic! I love to see this is happening!
Although it's kind of scary that they only beat Reform by 4,000 votes. A less left wing city might swing far right. The seat has been Labour since 1931, you'd expect the right wing populists would get blown out by a wider margin.
It's only a small victory, but I have some mild hope that it might kick Labour's arse into doing something more.
It's somewhat analogous to how many hoped that Mamdani's victory might shock the Democrats into actually listening to the strong demand for something other than the shit they've been peddling (though, much like the Democrats, the power structures within the Labour party are so entrenched that I wouldn't be surprised if they'd sooner let the entire party die than move the party even slightly left)
Something important to highlight is that because the UK uses First-Past-The-Post voting, both the Greens and Reform are severely underrepresented relative to their vote share. In the 2024 general election: Labour got 63% of seats, with 34% of the total vote Reform got 1% of seats with 14% of the vote Greens got 1% of seats with 6.4% of the vote.
Voters on both the left and right of Labour are pissed off at their refusal to do basically anything meaningful with their huge parliamentary majority. They've been making it easy for Reform's racist, reactionary rhetoric to gain even more footing — some have been saying that if Labour keeps this up, it'll become likely that the Prime Minister Keir Starmer will lose his job to Reform's Nigel Farage.
And then Labour make it worse by trying to copy the racist rhetoric, which validates Reform's claims of "the immigrants are why [jobs are shit/food prices are high/housing is fucked]", whilst also transparently being wet farts everything they do — so anyone who wants a scapegoat to blame are just going to be pushed further to Reform.
Most Reform politicians are disgusting bigots, but at this point, I probably respect them more than I do the top brass of Labour — at least Reform stands for something.
The best thing Labour could do to bolster their chances against Reform is to invest in progressive policies, because even if we could wave a magic wand and every immigrant in the UK was magically vanished, there would still be a severe housing crisis. Immigration isn't the problem — chronic underinvestment and privatisation of the country is.
I apologise — That got a bit longer than I expected. It was pretty cathartic to write though
I don't think Mamdani and such has been about moving the existing Democrats to the left. I think it's about proving leftist policies elect people and so it opens the door for new people to replace centrists both running within the party and independents. Existing Democrat cadres would emulate that only as last resort. Leftist policies are both populat and they work in taking money from the owner class and distributing it to people who work for a living. If the owner class lets too much of it getting traction within one of their parties, they risk the policies sticking and people demanding implementation. Which means loss of profit and wealth, which woud diminish their power in society, which could trigger more wealth loss, and so on - in a feedback loop. This is why they can't let their representatives flirt with leftist politics too much. Which is why I don't think the Mamdanis and Polanskis of the world are going for moving existing parties left. Rather they'd be replacing (some of) them. Not saying a move to the left in existing parties can't or won't happen but it'd be difficult and it'd happen after they've lost enough to force it.
I apologise — That got a bit longer than I expected.
Please don't apologize, the insight is much appreciated.
I try to keep up a bit with you guys because I'ma huge panelshow fan, and so I learn a bit from the fringes that way, but it's definitely hard for me to get nuance and detail, so things like this are nice. :)
Middle class politics enjoyers seem to have this detached take that Green are going to push Labour to the left. You don't get it. Labour are fucking dead. Green are the new Labour.
Good analysis
Imagine a Senate election in a state that's always elected Democrats. All the media is saying how the MAGA candidate is going to win by a landslide and then a plucky little environmentalist who was late to an interview on NBC because she was at a plumbing course just smashed everyone.
That sounds like a wonderful dream! So amazing that it actually came true over there!
By-elections (one that's not part of the regular national elections for whatever reason) are always less predictable but it's a good sign! That's the second one in a row that Reform were confident they'd run away with it and got defeated by voters coming together to oppose them.
It's a good thing if you: don't want the Reform party to be elected (increasingly racist rhetoric party).
It's a bad thing if you: support the government (Labour party) who have no message to sell at elections and increasingly nobody trusts them.
Could've been worse.
Huge W for fabianism