Green victory in Gorton and Denton

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

Politics, Daily News, News

4.4 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

The Greens have taken Gorton and Denton, defeating both Labour and Reform in the early hours of this morning. Hannah Spencer’s victory marks the first ever Green by-election gain – but the real shock is Labour’s collapse into third place in one of its safest seats. For Sir Keir Starmer, it’s hard to imagine a worse result. Labour MPs are up bright and early briefing against the Prime Minister, whose odds of a leadership challenge just soared.

Tim Shipman and James Heale join Megan McElroy to discuss.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:08.8	My name is Megan McElroy and I'm joined today by Tim Shipland and James Heel.
0:12.8	We're going to cut to the chase this morning. Hannah Spencer and the Greens have won in Gorton and Denton.
0:18.2	James, you've been at the count. Talk us through the evening.
0:58.4	It was a long evening and it did prompt the inevitable jokes because the green candidate hadn't turned up. There were a few quips from the labour people who were there suggesting, you know, all these delays. It's not the first time if Plummer has been late. A reference to Hannah Spencer, the new MP's profession and she certainly was, took her time. We didn't get her turning up until around 4.30. But really, I mean, there were two sort of moments of drama, one of which was when the polls closed at 10 o'clock. We then had this report from the democracy organisers, suggesting that family voting, the process whereby two people going to the same booth when you're only meant to cast one vote, was a factor in this result. And then second of all was after a long period where it became clear that Labour had come third.
1:01.0	It was established that the Greens had won.
1:02.7	And it wasn't even particularly close.
1:04.3	More than 4,000 votes.
1:10.0	Reform finished a reasonable-ish second and Labour were a poor third on 26%. So the Greens winning 41%, an extraordinary performance by them.
1:13.9	Their first ever parliamentary by-election triumph at Westminster.
1:18.1	And you've got to remember, of course,
1:19.4	that their best by-election performance prior to this was 2023
1:22.7	when they won 10.2% in Somerton and Frumes.
1:25.3	So a very impressive result for the Greens,
1:29.2	and I think there'll be a lot of awkward and difficult questions for Keir Stama this morning. As James says, a very extraordinary evening.
1:34.8	Tim, what's your reaction? Well, look, I think a lot of the commentary prior to the event was that this was a sort of
1:41.0	tight three-way race. And had it been a sort of tight result,
1:46.0	I think you could have sort of put this down to tactical voting, to people thinking, you know,
1:52.5	how do we stop reform? We want back the Greens rather than Labor to stop reform.
1:57.3	I think the first takeaway is that this wasn't about stopping reform. This was about
2:01.0	giving the government a bloody nose, which is actually rather traditional event at a by-election.
2:07.0	And in essence, I think, what has happened here is not that people back the Greens to stop
	...

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