Labour’s Gorton And Denton Shame

And so it came to pass that one of those inconvenient Parliamentary by-elections came along, but this should not have proved an insurmountable task for Labour: the constituency, Gorton and Denton, had been held back in 2024 with a vote share of over 50%. Moreover, Labour had the services of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham on offer as a candidate.

When incumbent Andrew Gwynne stepped down on health grounds, there was little thought that Labour would not only lose the seat, but lose half of that vote share. But that would have been to underestimate the Labour Together cabal now in charge of the party: there is no task that this bunch of clowns cannot royally foul up, and foul it up they did. Royally.

The die was cast early on: Burnham’s offer to run as the Labour candidate was vetoed by a paranoid leadership: if someone genuinely popular were to become leader, what might follow? Being of independent thought, listening to the voters, making a centre-left party a genuinely centre-left party, doing away with the authoritarian control freakery. This could not be tolerated.

So it was that an ideologically acceptable candidate, Angeliki Stogia, was selected. The public were told that only Labour could beat the Reform UK hopeful, professional bigot Matthew Goodwin, representing the limited company of self-appointed Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. And it was with representing those opinion polls that Labour began to unravel.

At that point, it was a three-way fight, the third party involved being the Greens, whose candidate, Hannah Spencer, was a plasterer and plumber. In other words, she was a working class woman who worked among the working class. Once upon a time, Labour would have been happy to have folks like her representing them. Not any more. Her presence was ignored.

This, though, was only the start of what developed as a series of smears and other dirty tricks, most of which were eagerly lapped up by the larger part of our free and fearless press, who in turn showed their appetite for low-grade client journalism and guaranteed that the wider electorate will trust them even less, if such a thing were possible, when future contests come around.

It got worse: Labour then leafletted the constituency with a bogus tactical voting claim, going against the genuine tactical voting analysis that indicated voting Green was the best choice. And on election day, a van toured the constituency, and was allegedly parked rather adjacent to at least one polling station, with a smear so blatant as to smack of desperation.

“To all voters … do not listen to these people. Do not vote for the Greens. They want to legalise all drugs and teach our children to use drugs including crack and heroin and let our daughters be used for legal prostitution … No Green madness in our community” it told. Bridget Phillipson later claimed that Labour had fought a “positive campaign”. I’d hate to see a negative one.

So Labour lost. Worse, they came third behind Reform. In turn, there were claims of “sectarianism”, which is code for Scary Muslims. Yes, those followers of The Prophet were so sectarian that they supported a white woman whose party leader is a gay Jewish man. The press was its usual disgusting self, seeing the establishment rejected and whining accordingly.

Keir Starmer was as bad, if not worse. Labour claimed George Galloway was somehow responsible for the Greens’ success. This was tosh. Starmer called Ms Spencer, more or less, a divisive extremist. He claimed - leading a party whose membership is in significant decline - that the Greens could not replicate their success country-wide. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

So much whinging, so many hostages to fortune, and even from the Labour leadership, so much racist dog whistling. They lost, and lost badly. Voters now have “somewhere to go”, to borrow Peter Mandelson’s happy phrase. And all that leadership can do is to claim they’re listening. When they’re not.

Once again: the Labour Together cancer has to be cut out, before it kills a once great party stone dead. Otherwise they will keep losing. That is all.

Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton