How is Reform’s charmless candidate still a contender in Gorton and Denton? Ask Labour | George Monbiot

2026-02-25 - 12:13

This byelection should have been a stroll for Keir Starmer’s party. Instead, all hope of defeating Matt Goodwin now seems to lie with the Greens Every barb Labour has directed at the Greens can now be returned with interest. “It’s a wasted vote.” “Do you want to see Reform in power?” New polling ahead of the crucial Gorton and Denton byelection this week, while by no means decisive, puts the Greens first on 22%, followed by Reform UK (20%), then Labour (18%), with 31% undecided. But still Keir Starmer falsely claims that “only Labour can beat Reform”. Does he want to see Reform in power? I’m not a party person. I subscribe to the old-fashioned belief that journalists should have no political loyalties. But I see the Greens stepping into the howling void Labour has vacated and becoming everything you might have wanted Labour to be. In their byelection contender, Hannah Spencer, they have a brilliant candidate: a working plumber and plasterer with first-hand experience of the cracks and leaks in our social fabric and bright ideas for fixing them. Here and in many other constituencies, the Greens now appear to be the most plausible opposition to take on the extreme right. George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...