Labour’s defeat in Gorton and Denton is masking another seismic moment in British politics – the Conservatives’ worst byelection result yet.
Kemi Badenoch’s party had not expected to perform well. It effectively sat the race out – the vote coincided with an away day in Buckinghamshire to chat strategy and boost morale. However, the scale of the defeat may have come as a shock: Charlotte Cadden, a retired detective for Greater Manchester police, won 1.9% of the share of votes to Reform’s 28.7%, marking the second time the party has lost its deposit since 1962.
Polling guru Sir John Curtice told GB News it was a “disaster” for the official opposition, noting that the Tories could command around a third of the vote “20, 30 years ago”.
The result points to a wider trend in British politics, which Curtice said had been “staring us in the face”: the question of whether the traditional two-party system can survive.
“The Conservatives can no longer assume there is no significant enemy to their right – there is. Labour can no longer assume there is no significant enemy to their left – there is,” he said. “The conventional strategy of British politics – that elections are won or lost in the middle – that conventional wisdom is being challenged to an unprecedented degree.”
Badenoch has been enjoying a revival in recent months. Her speech to her party conference last autumn was well received and with Robert Jenrick’s departure to Reform an imminent threat to her leadership has gone. Donors are said to be “all fired up” after successful fundraising at the recent annual Winter Party. The party raised more than £13m last year.
One Tory fundraiser was resolute, telling The Observer after the byelection defeat: “Kemi’s methodical rebuilding of the party is paying off. Organisationally, we are way ahead of where we were in 1999 – two years after Labour’s last landslide victory. We are back in the early Cameron years in terms of comeback. A lot to do, but the right team in place. Donors can see this, which is why they are enthusiastic, attending events and, most importantly, giving big sums. The Winter Party was a sell out, and the auction raised a record sum.”
Yet Reform’s impact on the previously dominant “‘party of government”’ appears to be lasting. Tories – some current MPs, many former – are contemplating the Reform tide rising further and there is talk of the Conservatives having fewer than 100 representatives in the Commons after the next election. The demographics of Gorton and Denton were never in their favour and the party knows it has a mountain to climb to be taken seriously in seats that it used to take for granted, let alone in seats it has never won.
But if the two-party system breaks down further, there is a chance the Tories could become the sixth most powerful party in parliament – a junior party in a Reform-Tory opposition coalition.
The result in Gorton and Denton, a seat that Labour has held (in various guises) since 1935, speaks to this fundamental change in British politics: the splintering of votes, the rise of insurgent parties and a parliament moving closer to a European-style multiparty system.
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This is the Greens’ first byelection win, building on huge momentum the party has enjoyed since Zack Polanski became leader. The party’s winning candidate, Hannah Spencer, called it “the beginning of something massive” and she may be right. The results point to a 27.5% swing from Labour to the Greens. Polanski claims this would result in “a tidal wave of new Green MPs” if replicated on a national basis.
May’s local and devolved elections could be “apocalyptic” for Labour if the Greens surge in the wake of this victory, the University of Manchester’s Prof Robert Ford says.
“Labour risks being wiped out by Reform in the ‘red wall‘ type metros… and being wiped out by the Greens in what we may now need to start calling the ‘green wall‘ – diverse, student and grad-heavy Labour areas where Reform are no threat.”
Photograph by Ryan Jenkinson / Getty Images