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. While only a handful of backbenchers called openly for Starmer to depart, even loyal ministers said the surge in the Greens’ fortunes under Zack Polanski meant the prime minister had to address an exodus of Labour voters from its left flank. Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, called the result “a wake-up call”.
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 currently expected to fare badly. One poll suggested Labour could be pushed into fourth place in Scotland.
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. I don’t think anything can save him.” A minister added: “The result is cataclysmically bad for us. The worst possible. It will obviously intensify calls for Keir to make moves to the progressive wing, but the calls will be to do it 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 she offered voters an alternative to “working to line the pockets of billionaires”.
There will be intense pressure on Starmer to stem expected losses to the Greens in council elections, particularly in London, and to Plaid Cymru in Wales, with a shift leftwards. But one MP described the prime minister as being in “factory reset” mode, while another said: “He isn’t even close to getting it, unfortunately.”
