Keir Starmer is facing an ultimatum from his own party to change direction or risk a leadership challenge within months after the Greens humiliated Labour with a historic byelection victory in Gorton and Denton.
Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party’s fifth MP on Friday. Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin was second, just ahead of the Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia.
The scale of defeat in an area that had returned Labour MPs for nearly a century plunged ministers and MPs into renewed despair. Even loyal ministers said the surge in the Greens’ fortunes under the leadership of Zack Polanski meant the prime minister had to address an exodus of Labour voters from its left flank. In a pointed comment, Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, called the result “a wake-up call”.
But Starmer appeared minded to ignore the pressure, using a TV clip and letter to his MPs to attack the Greens as an “extreme” leftwing equivalent of Reform UK. Without a significant turnaround, he could face a leadership challenge after elections in May to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and English councils, with Labour expected to fare badly.
One MP on the soft left said: “I think it hastens everything. I thought we could maybe keep going for another year after May but definitely not now.” Another loyal minister described the result as “cataclysmically bad” and said it would intensify calls for Starmer to move to the progressive wing “now – not in a few months or even a few weeks”.
The sense of humiliation is heightened by the fact that Downing Street blocked Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, from standing in the byelection. Burnham is understood not to have ruled out returning to parliament. For the Greens, the result was a historic triumph, with Spencer saying in her victory speech that she had offered voters an alternative to “working to line the pockets of billionaires”.
