Keir Starmer is facing a pivotal by-election test in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton after blocking Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing, a decision Labour figures believe has left the party exposed to threats from both the Greens and Reform UK.
The vote will take place on 26 February in a constituency Labour has held continuously since before the Second World War and where the party’s majority at the last election was about 13,000. Labour MPs have privately raised fears that a third-place finish could spark an internal challenge to the prime minister’s leadership, with the outcome now widely seen inside the party as being closely tied to Starmer’s judgement over the candidate selection.
Voters spoken to in the constituency described Burnham as Labour’s strongest potential candidate, and local reporting suggested the mayor would have made Labour the clear favourite. Joshi Herrmann, founder of the community-focused news site the Manchester Mill, said: “If Andy Burnham had been the Labour candidate, they would have been strong favourites to win here.”
Instead, the contest is shaping up as an unusually complex battle in which Labour faces a “squeeze” from the left in some neighbourhoods and from the right in others, with campaigners expected to focus on sharply different issues across the seat.
Professor Rob Ford, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, said the constituency is shaped “like a hammer”, with starkly contrasting political terrain between its southern and northern parts. He said the “handle” of the hammer, in the south, contains wards that are highly ethnically diverse, with large Muslim communities and significant populations of students and young graduates.
“That looks like exactly the kind of territory where Labour has been losing support to the Greens in national polling recently,” Ford said.
Ford said the “head” of the hammer, including Gorton and wards in Tameside, is much whiter and more working class, with fewer graduates. “That looks like the kind of terrain where Labour has been losing ground to Reform recently,” he said.
The constituency has long been associated with Labour’s traditional base, once regarded as a poor post-industrial area with historic links to railway workers. While some neighbourhoods remain deprived, other parts have benefited from the wider economic improvement of Greater Manchester, alongside redevelopment near the adjacent Manchester City stadium, an area linked to Emirati investment. The result is a seat containing multiple communities that were previously more consistently aligned under Labour politics but now appear increasingly fractured.
Labour’s previous ability to bridge those divides has been credited to the party’s local presence and to the outgoing MP, Andrew Gwynne, who stepped down on Thursday. With national politics more volatile and the party being challenged in different ways across the constituency, Labour strategists are now weighing how heavily to commit resources to holding the seat.
The by-election is also emerging as an early test of the new Green leadership. Zack Polanski has described the contest as the “blockbuster” by-election of the parliament as he begins his first electoral challenge as party leader, although he is not standing as a candidate himself.
At a rally in the constituency on Tuesday night, Polanski drew a larger crowd than Reform’s candidate event earlier in the day, with supporters outnumbering Reform attendees by about three to one, according to the account from the campaign events. The party’s central question, however, is whether it can convert enthusiastic activism and national polling into votes in a North of England seat that is not typically associated with Green electoral strength.
Polanski is pitching the Greens as a home for voters on Labour’s left, seeking to win support from those aligned with a more Corbyn-style politics. But Labour figures argue the contest will be decided ward by ward, with different messages resonating among students and graduates in the south and among more traditional working-class communities in the north.
Ford said foreign policy is expected to play a prominent role in parts of the seat, especially in areas with large Muslim populations, with Gaza likely to feature heavily in campaigning. He also said the Workers Party has selected a high-profile candidate and could add pressure on Labour in the Manchester part of the constituency, intensifying the contest for left-leaning and protest votes.
In parallel, Reform UK is seeking to capitalise on discontent in the seat’s whiter, more working-class areas. The party has unveiled academic and television pundit Matt Goodwin as its candidate, positioning itself as the vehicle for voters who believe the country is “broken” and that only a more radical approach can fix it.
Nigel Farage, Reform’s most prominent figure, has been publicly welcoming Conservative defectors this month, adding to the party’s sense of momentum as it looks for a significant by-election breakthrough.
While Reform figures referenced contentious themes sometimes associated with populist campaigning, including grooming gangs, they did not dwell on them at the launch event, focusing instead on broader arguments about national decline. Ford suggested, however, that Reform could pursue polarising identity-focused messages during the campaign, potentially on issues such as crime, grooming gangs and immigration.
The split-screen nature of the contest presents Labour with strategic difficulties, with messages that might shore up support in one part of the constituency risking alienating voters in another. Labour’s campaign must contend with pressures linked to Gaza and identity politics in the more diverse southern wards, while also facing Reform-style law-and-order and immigration messaging in the more homogenous northern areas.
Against that backdrop, Labour figures are assessing whether to run a full-scale by-election operation. Senior Labour politicians with local ties could be deployed, including deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, as well as Lisa Nandy and chief whip Jonathan Reynolds. Starmer could also choose to campaign in person.
The approach has prompted comparisons with the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election, when Labour’s leadership mounted a high-intensity effort amid questions about the then-leader’s position. Party strategists are now weighing whether a similar approach in Gorton and Denton would be decisive, or whether it would risk amplifying the political cost if Labour still performs poorly.
For Starmer, the contest has become entwined with a decision that many in Labour regard as avoidable. Labour MPs argue that by preventing Burnham from standing, the prime minister has increased the risk of a damaging result in a seat that had long been considered safe.
With a month to polling day, the outcome remains uncertain, and local observers say the battle could ultimately hinge less on the constituency’s past loyalties and more on turnout, the strength of protest voting, and how effectively each party targets its messages across very different wards.
The vote on 26 February will therefore be watched not only as a test of Labour’s hold on a historic stronghold, but also as an early measure of whether the Greens can translate rising support into a northern parliamentary gain, and whether Reform can broaden its appeal further in working-class communities. For Labour, and for Starmer personally, party figures say the stakes include not just the seat but the authority of the prime minister’s leadership.