Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast. My name's

Megan McAul and I'm joined today by James Heel and James, one of the office today. We've come to

Gorton and Denton. And you're going to be writing about this this week in the magazine.

There's a by-election here, not sure if you noticed. So tell us a bit about what's been going on today. Well, today we've been speaking to members of the three parties in contention here in this by-election, which is going to be held on February 26th. And they are, of course, the Labour Party, which has held the seat for 100 years. The Reform Party, which is hoping to make a similar gain to Runcorn last year when they won that Sarah Pochin seat,

and the Greens who are hoping that off the back of the success, Zach Polanski, they can sweep up a lot of the disaffected vote here and try and get their fifth MP in Parliament.

So this morning, James, we saw Matt Goodwin, who's the candidate reform have put up here.

He's the academic who most people know from his G news show. When we were walking around the streets with him, people actually pointed him out and said, I recognise you from your show. I watch it every night. What were Matt's main observations of the race? His point he was stressing to me was how much the party's grown in the past year since Runcorn. Rancourt was a much longer campaign where the one was close to 40% of the vote. In this seat, frankly, they need to get 30, 33%, because it does look like much more of a three-way split. He was making the point about how hard the activists are working. And trying to sort of push back on some of the narrative about this seat, it's an interesting constituency, Gorton and Denton. I mean, some have suggested it's like two different constituencies altogether. I'd rather look at it on a map, like a sort of pair of trousers. You've got one leg, which is Denton, which is the white working class vote, very heavily there. That would be seen as sort of prime reform territory. It was his own seat. Then you've also got Gorton. But about a third of the seat has a large mission population. There's also a large number of graduates here. And I think it's worth stressing the point he was getting across was that this is a really tough seat for reform. His argument is that it was the sixth safest labour seat. It suddenly is less promising than Runcorn, which had a large history of voting conservative. Here, the Conservatives never particularly polled strongly. There isn't that kind of big right block which they can eat into. And so it all

depends on the battle on the left, really, I think, in terms of how much the Greens and Labor can

split the vote from each other as they both try to be the sort of called on sanitaire to stop

reform. And when we talk about the left, tell us a bit about the candidates, because

it's Andy Berman that was famously blocked from running here. I've certainly been speaking to people

this morning, but they love him here. He just has such a great reception. He's not the candidate this

time. Tell us more about the Greens and Labour. Yep. So Labour has grown for Angeliki

Stodger, who was selected last week, a bit of a flurry. And the criticism I've heard from some quarters in Labour was that that gave crucial time to reform. As I say, it is a very much a sprint here rather than a marathon. They're going to be done and dusted in only three weeks time. And therefore, given that postal votes close next week, and some people think this race could be wrapped up, in theory, by next Wednesday or so. So she has been selected. She has lived in Manchester for 30 years, and she's a local councillor, but of course she is not, Andy Burnham, who is very much the specter looming over this whole contest. The Greens have gone for the plumber, Hannah Spencer, who they think is the perfect person to kind of rip up the old boys club. They're running on a sort of traditional green left wing message, which they hope will resonate with the students here. And last week, none of the sense ofads were told by Holly Ridley, who's the general secretary of the Labour Party, that briefings about the Greens having the best chance here were, quote, bollocks. It's all about trying to establish it as a straight anti-reform fight. But the question is, will there be enough votes to rally around to stop reform winning, say, 30, 33% of the vote? I think the other thing that we've heard this morning is this theme that just comes up time and time again and will come up until the next general election. And that's the general malaise of British politics.

It's just people that are so unhappy with the Tories and with Labour and the system we have,

and they just feel that something's got to give.

Yes, I think that was very much the message.

So, of course, everyone is hoping here to become to the Palace of Westminster designed by Augustin Pugin's son created the fantastic monastery here. And I was chatting to a lady there who said that they were all as bad as each other. And really, this is the interesting thing, is the sense of cynicism and despair. And that's been attested to not just the conversations we've had here, but also in things like focus groups for more in common. And really it's about trying to get on probably about something

like maybe a 45% turnout. How much can you sort of motivate people to turn out and vote? Reform, I think have worked out that, yes, of course, you know, migration is very much at the center of their manifesto, but it's about sort of expanding that and take it into things like antisocial behaviour. So when we interviewed Matt Goodwin this morning, he was talking about, He was talking Jubilee Square, where recently there was a very tragic case of a woman being abused there. And so that is very much the thing they want to get home. They talk about things like local businesses, that very much sits into the reform voter coalition. And so it's about sort of getting the point about decline, which is visibly here. So very much those themes of last summer, the decline of the high streets, things like barbershops that Farage has been talking about. And the challenge for Labour for it is to try and sort of get this message across, of stopping reform while also offering a degree of hope that they will be the things to get better. Because right now, people are looking for a way out. And I think that actually, interestingly, talking to some reform voters,

they were more favourable than you might think about Andy Burnham. I think this is the whole point about having a charismatic leader who is seen to get things done and people are not particularly

fussy. For a decent number of Farage curious voters, he has just seen as the best vessel or the least

worst option. Definitely. So we've got about 23 days left until the by-election.

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