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Three of us drove up from the Midlands to join one of the now daily action days in support of the Green Party candidate in the Gorton and Denton (Manchester) by-election.
We arrived in a park in light drizzle to find maybe a hundred or more volunteers milling around with boxes of leaflets and printed maps.
We took a box ourselves and partnered with a fourth individual who had come from a neighbouring constituency.
It was only much later in the morning when I asked him how long he had been in the Greens that he told me he was not a member and was still in the Labour Party! He had come to help out as he saw the Labour vote collapsing, the party under Starmer offering nothing and a real danger of Reform winning the seat.
Labour’s stop Greens’ tactic
Despite their official position that it is between them and Reform, it is widely recognised within Labour that they cannot win. However, it is how they lose which is at issue – whether they are third behind Reform or third behind the Greens. And the Labour Party seems to be doing all in it power to bring about the latter option – a Reform victory.
They are pouring resources and people into the campaign, and we did see quite a few Labour posters and a couple of canvassing teams out in the constituency pushing the message that the Greens cannot win.
Given that the widespread sentiment amongst voters is to punish Labour, even amongst those not ideologically committed to Reform, this simply boosts Reform’s polling at the expense of both Labour and Greens. The clear intent is to chip enough votes away from the Green Party for Reform to win.
This strategy is of a piece with Labour thinking that they can only win, or not go down to catastrophic defeat, at the next General Election, by posing as the only credible alternative to Reform and thus taking the nowhere-else-to-go anti-Reform vote by default.
The rise of the Green Party has been a massive spanner in the works of this strategy
Green campaigning
The Green campaign is going well on the doorsteps and the party has managed to deliver several different leaflets across the constituency and knock on thousands of doors.
The message is a simple one: rent controls, £15 minimum wage, affordable housing – paid for by a wealth tax. Defend the NHS and end Palantir’s involvement in it.
There is also a specific leaflet, aimed in part at the Muslim community, attacking Labour’s position on Gaza and Reform’s racism whilst carrying endorsements from Salma Yaqoob, associated with Your Party, and from The Muslim Vote campaign.
By contrast the Labour literature appears to carry no policies whatsoever, and certainly no mention of Keir Starmer! Instead all we know of the candidate is that she stands for ‘unity not division’.
Her leaflets then go on to attack Reform racism and Green dishonesty over alleged misleading graphs. This is directly above a Labour graph implying they are second behind Reform on 32% with the Greens way behind. Well, we will see…
Reform
Reform, by contrast, attacks both Labour and the Greens equally on policy. However, we saw little evidence of Reform activity on the ground. I saw only a single one of their poster boards in a window. Of course we do know they will poll – their message is relayed and amplified through the press and mainstream media as well as online. Such has been the capitulation of Labour to Farage’s toxic racist framing that Reform has been brought firmly into the arena of mainstream respectability.
So, the contest is tight and victory over Reform is far from guaranteed, despite Green candidate Hannah Spencer being the bookies’ favourite.
The relentless seven-day-a-week campaign in the full glare of the national media will prove to be a major test of the Green Party’s ability to organise and mobilise its mostly new, young membership.
A call has gone out for as many people as possible to go up to Manchester for a day or more. Not just Green Party members but anyone who wants to check the advance of Reform and deliver a powerful message to Labour.
Gorton and Denton is the frontline right now and whatever the result on 26th February it will have profound implications for Keir Starmer and his ability to cling to the leadership of the Labour Party.