Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics Time with me, Rory Stewart.

And with me, Alastair Campbell. And, Roy, it seems a long, long, long time ago that we were

talking about whether we shouldn't do a special episode on the Gorton and Denton by-election.

Since we've done quite a lot of special episodes, none of them on the Gorton and Denton by-election. But we've done quite a lot of special episodes, none of them on the Gorton

and Denton by-election. But we did nonetheless get a lot of questions. Graham, Tripp Plus member from

Vancouver. Doesn't the Gorton and Denton results suggest that voters haven't shifted much, but the

parties have? In this traditional Labour seat, most voters still favour progressive policies, yet

Labour's move right has left space for the Greens to benefit. Meanwhile, with the Conservatives

diminished traditionally rightly new voters appear to have turned to reform as the party with momentum.

Let's just remind people what happened. So this was very, very recently, as you point out, since the last main podcast, 26th February,

this Labour seat where traditionally Labor had well over 50% of the vote came up.

This was the one that listeners will remember.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, was hoping to stand for that seat as his route back into Parliament and maybe his route to be Prime Minister, he was blocked by the Labour Party from standing,

and the result was that the Green Party won with 40.9% of the vote, somebody called Hannah Spencer,

Reform UK, Matt Goodwin, who my mother thinks is good-looking, 28.7%.

For God's sake, Rory.

Labor dropped.

He's hideous.

From having won over 50% of the vote in 2024, dropped to third place, down to 24.9% of the vote.

And the Tories, for only the second time since 1962, managed to lose their

500-pound deposit. They got so few, they didn't even clear 2% of the vote in this seat.

Yeah, amazing. The combined green and reform vote, I mean, if we go back in the days when,

...