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5:53 pm, February 28th, 2026 - 29 comments
Categories: election 2026, greens, Keir Starmer, labour, Left, uk politics -
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Hannah Spencer’s stunning win for the Greens in the the UK’s Gorton and Denton by-election has some lessons for political strategists here as well.
The by-election was called because the Labour MP resigned his safe seat after making unwise posts on social media. The Labour Party view was that it would be a fight between Labour and Reform so ran a scare campaign. Caucus politics intervened because the Labour Party’s ruling Council refused to accept a nomination from Andy Burnham, the popular Mayor of Greater Manchester, as he was seen as a potential threat to Starmer’s wobbly leadership.
General opinion before the result was announced was that the only thing that was certain was uncertainty. Ground organisations were strong but not determinative.
Polls showed a three-way contest with the results within the margin of error. The bookies changed their minds a few times and every detail that might influence the outcome has been debated for weeks.
The famously strong Labour ground operation swung into action with reports that a thousand volunteers were out and about knocking on doors. Labour were also traditionally very strong in the postal vote. According to a number of observers the Green ground operation was also large and well organised.
The result was a smashing win for the Green candidate in a low-turnout election. Hannah Spencer is an experienced local body politician, but she came across as authentic. Her “I’m a plumber” stood in clear contrast to Starmer’s pilloried “my father was a toolmaker.” She was also clear about her objectives:
“I really want to focus on the cost of living,” she said. “I think we need more Green MPs to challenge the government to move in a better direction on bringing the cost of living down for people.
“So that’s renationalising the energy companies, united utilities should be in public hands. But I want to have a conversation about rent controls.
“We have a huge number of people here that live in rented, insecure accommodation and we need to start looking at models that have worked in other countries and where it’s not worked.
“Try and replicate something here that is going to mean people pay less of their wages on paying off someone else’s mortgage.”
Ms Spencer also reflected on her victory, saying she thought the traditional ideas of ‘left and right’ were changing. “I was elected because people in this constituency want change,” she said. “We’re sick of being told that we should shut up and accept it – that things which used to be possible and normal are now too much to ask.
Other have commented on a seismic shift in politics on the left around the world. I do think that Labour here has not fully understood this, even among its own membership. As far as one can tell its strategy for this election seems to be minimalist, with a small group of policy deliverables announced relatively late in the piece. As we are being told to wait till after the Budget, there may not be much left over with which to implement them.
A lot of reliance is also being placed on the traditional step-by-step ground game which must rely on a well-signalled, positive and most importantly relevant message to voters. In our voluntary-voting system, faced as we are with a deliberate gerrymander in the removal of registration on voting day, some inspiration is also required. Priority generalities and placard-waving in a policy vacuum doesn’t cut it.
I’m not sure that Labour is reading the room right. The Greens may well be the beneficiaries here too. It could be worse, but one thing we definitely do not need is a low-turnout election.
“I really want to focus on the cost of living,” Hannah Spencer.
But wait…
"But I am promising this: a government that puts the cost of living first." Chris Hipkins 4 days ago.
NZLabour are on 33%. Greens averaging 10%.
Suck it up pal NZ Labour are on the right track with the right message.
Polls predict the past not the future. They also say nothing about turnout.
"Hannah Spencer was victorious in a by-election that was expected to go down to the wire.
Instead, she won nearly 41% of the vote compared to 29% for Reform UK and 25% for Labour.
Going into the election on Thursday, things were looking neck-and-neck between the three main contenders. The Green Party and Labour were tied on 28% each, with Reform just behind on 27%."
What was the turnout? Compared to the previous election?
48%, same as the 2024 general election (low turnout everyone knew the result Tories gone).
So the Green candidate got support from 41% of 48% of the electors – 52% did not vote at all.
That is about (48 x .41) or just under 20% of the electors. Only under First past the post can 41% of votes or 20% of all electors be called a crushing defeat.
Certainly 79% of electors did not (59% of votes cast) – or did not bother to (52% of electors) – vote for her …
The problem with Hipkins is his actions are yet to match his rhetoric. Labour's wider issue is it appears to have looked at the (until recently) Morgan McSweeny led Labour party in the UK and UK Labour's election victory and drawn all the wrong conclusions.
Neoliberal, technocratic centrism has completely run out of road. But Hipkins it seems still has no serious response to the rising tide of authoritarian populism – one that both grasps its appeal and knows how to defeat it. His solution is a small target technocratic centrism that offers, astonishingly, an even more precautionary version of technocratic centrism.
A Labour victory later this year on the back of a small target, tightly focussed electoral strategy based on a do nothing, precautionary trechnocratic centrism (i.e. government largely for the benefit of the lanyard class) will inevitably lead to the failure of his Labour government, and will only accelerate the authoritarian populist revolution.
Peters and Seymour understand this. it is far from clear that Labour does.
Oh, please. The seismic shift there is that by becoming an explicitly anti-Israel party, the UK Greens have made themselves more appealing than Labour to Muslim voters. Given the absence of large parallel societies of Muslims in NZ, the lessons for local politicians from this are nonexistent.
More like the same thing happening in the USA, support from the young and the left for Netanyahu/Smotich/Ben-Gvir Israel is in decline.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/28/green-party-policies-on-israel-are-appealing-to-young-british-jews
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/27/us-citizens-support-for-israel-at-historic-low-over-gaza-genocide-poll
There's a big difference between support for Israel being in decline among left voters (it wasn't strong to start with) and there being a significant minority of voters for whom it's a major issue. Very few Brits are going to vote for the Greens because they're explicitly anti-Israel, but it's hugely attractive to Muslim voters.
54-31 to 36-41 is a huge swing in a not very left wing USA, largely based on the younger demographic.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/27/us-citizens-support-for-israel-at-historic-low-over-gaza-genocide-poll
ie, the more ignorant people are of the region and its history, the more subject they are to propaganda. But this is irrelevant in any case – very few non-Muslims would base their vote on it.
The Gaza genocide is a huge issue in the UK amongst all sections of the population, because Britain has been complicit in arming Israel. It is an issue people will base their votes on, because many British voters don't want to be supporters of genocide. The strength of the opposition to the UK's support for the Gaza genocide can be gauged from the monstrous proscribing of Palestinian Action – the sort of authoritarian action usually seen in a panicked dictatorship, not a liberal democracy.
Few British voters (outside of the increasingly loathed radical centre establishment that for now still dominates the media-political clique in Westminster and that has been assiduously cultivated by Israel for decades) now have much love for Israel.
Look at it this way – if Gaza is such a big issue that Muslims will vote for a woman candidate from a party led by a gay Jew, How much easier will it be for huge sections of Britain to switch to the Greens on this and other issues?
Kier Starmer's Labour opened the door and invited people to leave. It appears many might just be taking up the offer.
It's such a big issue to Muslims, not to the UK population in general. The carving out of a Jewish state within Dar al Islam, the failure to remove that state and the continual crushing defeats of Muslim armies by Jews is seen as a scorching shame on Muslims everywhere because they've fallen short of their obligations to God and shown Islam to be weak. To Muslims in the UK, there is no local issue that can come close to that.
Among British voters, as you say it's the shit-show Labour's offering in government that's driving them to look elsewhere and the Greens are the current lucky recipient. Those voters should consider what it says about the integrity of a supposedly "progressive" party that it would align itself with a movement that makes Brian Tamaki look liberal.
The G and D electorate is 30% Moslem.
The Green vote was 40% vs 28% Reform and 25% Labour (50% in 2024).
The UK polls
Reform 24% Tories 18% Labour 18% Green 17% LD 14%
2024 Election
Reform 14% Tories 8% Labour 50% Green 13% LD 4% Workers Party 10%
Labour and left, not just Moslem Labour voters, went to Green.
https://www.markpack.org.uk/155623/voting-intention-opinion-poll-scorecard/
Well, yes, the UK Labour Party isn't exactly appealing at the moment, is it? However, Muslim voters sure as hell haven't switched from Labour to the Greens because they don't find Labour "progressive" enough.
The difference to here is
1.the Israel-Palestine issue is not as important as in the UK/USA.
2.it is not the Labour vote that has fallen, it is National, from 38% to just above 30%.
This is particularly relevant in that Electorate which is about 40% Muslim. Voters chose the Party that was most likely to defeat the Reform candidate. Because of Labour's antics over the selection process and its lackluster performance in Government – voters chose the Green Party.
Also, in the UK, voting seems to be about "voting against" rather than "voting for". In the last General Election voters chose the Party that was most likely to get the Tories out. Now they chose the Party that will defeat Reform.
Key point. Brits are tired of just "voting this lot out". Under Polanski the UK Greens have, for now, sidelined the hyper-identity politcs which cripple the Greens here with it's attendant dogmatic asphyxiation political cpntestation within it's ranks. He's hidden their rather thin solutions to real problems behind a message of change built on hope.
It's potent lesson of the role optimism plays in politics.
Really? Doesn't look like that to me. It looks like they amplified the cost of living and socio economic class issues and started presenting ideas on how to change the BAU hegemony.
The place the Greens in the UK and here are most vulnerable is on gender/sex. Terf Island is very well organised, and winning most of the fights on this issue in the courts especially. While there are still many left wing gender critical feminists, there are larger numbers of women and men from the centre left, centre and right who are tracking right. They will give the Greens hell on women's sex based rights and overmedicalisaton of children.
Polanski is good, his media interviews has been what the left is waiting for and to most people he comes across as nonsensical on gender, which MSM are asking him about. I don't think most people will vote on that issue, but it will affect perceptions of competency. I really hope they do sideline that, but we will see.
I'm with you in the hope the Greens can be disciplined, stick to some basics in alignment with the cost of living relief and look at meaningful reforms. The recent reaction to the English as an Official Langauge Carry on looks like they will still bite at the rankest bait Peters or Seymour puts in the water
They are going to need the Labour Party and they need to get their act together to win over blue collar, working class males. I don't think the chances of that are too high. Which I went into here:
https://thestandard.nz/open-mike-25-02-2026/#comment-2056714
thanks, that was an interesting read.
I think one needs to be very careful about comparing the UK Greens with our local lot.
Their current position in Britain seems to be totally at odds with the reason they were founded to begin with. Far from caring for the environment and sustainability, as I'd supposed them to be, they apparently now want open borders with thousands more immigrants being imported on to an island that was already becoming overpopulated (at about 40 million) by 1900, never mind 2020. "Does not compute", as the IT folk like to put it. They should either rebrand and rename to something less deceitful, or drop the identity politics and get back to their basics. (Yes, and so should ours, although they're not nearly so far down that perilous path as yet.)
I simply don't understand the left/liberal idea that immigration is inherently Good.
People who argue for open borders I understand better. I disagree with with them utterly, and it strikes me as an abstract ideal about freedom, but at least it can be understood.
The immigration is inherently good thing seems to stem from several places:
I agree with the first three, the last one will be the death of us.
The first three are solid left/liberal values. We should hold onto those, and design policy intelligently rather than reactionary.
For instance, the UK and NZ have finite landbases. If we want to take the climate and ecology crises seriously (and we should if we want to prevent large scale terrible suffering), then the idea that immigration settings can be set by neoliberal economic need is a nonsense. Those things are in direct contradiction of each other.
The Greens (in both countries) have core values around sustainability (true, not the greenwashed versions) and regenerative culture. So it's beyond me too to see Greens policy on this. This isn't an argument for closed borders, and definitely not for an anti-immigrant rhetoric, but it looks like we boxed ourselves into a corner and can't find a non-racist way of talking about immigration settings in the context of climate and ecology. The broader left is a big part of that.
Don’t worry that’s still more votes for criminalising peaceful protest.
You’d almost wonder why it’s necessary.
I mean Kneecap are Irish…so it’s the Muslims and the Irish, and the far left, and people who are worried about genoicide and these newo-cons in their backyard.
Watch last week’s John Oliver on how Elon Musk resuscitated the far right in Britain with a misinformation campaign.
and it might surprise the pollsters two things can be important. Caring about the cost of living doesn’t mean we can’t have some international law and rule based order. When the cost of living through petrol and gas is determined by what wars are happening that seems pertinent…
Yeah na. Same as the 2024 General Election.
More votes 36,903 vs 36,735, slightly lower % (47.62 vs 48.01).
Good Post!
There will be a good 5 months between Budget Day and Election Day. The CoC proclaims to improve the government books and return to surplus and if they succeed even somewhat, which is debatable under the circumstances, then there should be room to play with new & different policy portfolios. In the end, it’s always about choices.
Labour and the Opposition will have to convince enough voters that their package offers better conditions in the short- and medium-term (i.e., positive, optimism, hope) and the CoC parties will counter the narrative with ‘spend, tax & borrow’ (i.e., negative, pessimism, fear & despair), as they still have no realistic plan to grow the economy.
Labour will try (and need) to regain voters’ trust, which will be no mean feat after one term of CoC-ing.
This is good for the left, so long as Labour and the Greens get enough votes to form government. More votes for the Greens will help Labour move left over time. I hope the Greens' controversies of the past 5 years are behind them.
Interesting figures in this article on the relative membership shifts as between UK Labour and Greens post the by-election
UK Labour also ejected almost the entire of their left wing to remake the party post Corbyn leadership. It shouldn't be much of a surprise those politically active party members went somewhere else. I have no idea what so ever of why a mass movement party like UK Labour thought this would be a successful political strategy.