The State of It: Can Labour survive a big Green victory?
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The end of Britain’s political duopoly now looks complete, as Labour suffers a catastrophic by-election defeat to the Greens in Gorton and Denton. Reform comes second, while the Tories lose their deposit with just 2% of the vote. Keir Starmer is now a prisoner of the left, and Britain is undergoing a tectonic realignment of its electoral politics.
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Hosts:
- Steven Swinford, political editor, The Times
- Patrick Maguire, chief political commentator, The Times
- Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall editor, The Sunday Times
Producer: Euan Dawtrey.
Executive Producer: Molly Guinness.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, story listeners. This is Terrence Siegel. I'm a producer on the show. |
| 0:09.2 | So with such a shocking result coming out of the Gordon and Denton by-election last night, |
| 0:14.3 | we thought you'd want to get the insider info on how exactly this happened. |
| 0:19.0 | So we're sharing the latest episode from our sister pod, The State of It. |
| 0:23.4 | Can Starmoor survive this? |
| 0:25.1 | How are they going to face off two battlefronts in the May elections? |
| 0:29.1 | Have a listen. |
| 0:37.2 | Welcome to a bonus episode of The State of This. We're coming to you this morning in the wake of the Gorton and Denton by-election, which I think on any measure is catastrophic for Kier Stama. His leadership was already on the rocks. This result, which has seen Labour finished third in a seat that was one of the safest |
| 0:55.3 | held in the country is devastating. And I think we're going to get loads of questions about |
| 0:59.9 | what happens to start and next. Is this the end? May not be today, maybe in future. Is he now |
| 1:04.7 | a prisoner of the left? And more broadly, this is tectonic. It is a realignment of the kind of electoral state of Britain. The duopoly |
| 1:13.7 | is gone of Labour and the Tories and we now have five parties viring for contention. So look, |
| 1:18.6 | with me this morning, we've got Patrick McGuire, the Chief Political Accommodator at the Times, |
| 1:22.7 | and Gabriel Pogrand of the Sunday Times, both utterly brilliant. Patrick, do you want to kick us off? How bad is it? |
| 1:29.7 | Look, this is, we are staring down the barrel of the end of the Labour Party as a going concern in |
| 1:36.4 | electoral politics. And that is not hyperbole. That is literally what has just happened. A seat they have |
| 1:43.6 | held since 1931 where they have walked it |
| 1:48.1 | at every general election, even under Jeremy Corbyn, they're now in a distant third to the Greens. |
| 1:53.3 | And by the way, this wasn't the sort of Greens winning by 200 votes or it was a split, |
| 1:57.3 | three ways with a thousand votes in it, as some of us expected it to be. The Greens won 40% |
| 2:03.2 | of the vote in one of Labor's 40 safest seats. Even if you factor in midterm blues, by-elections, |
| 2:11.0 | all the cliches that don't actually apply here, that is, as you said, Steve, catastrophic. And |
... |
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