Unlock Editor’s Digest for free
FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newspaper.
British parliamentary by-elections are generally poor indicators of national competitions, but are very good at indicating the positions of parties today.
That measure is worrying Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s Labor government following the Green Party’s victory in a parliamentary by-election in Manchester, a Labor stronghold. The Gorton and Denton contest gave a landslide victory to the smaller party and points to the further fragmentation of British politics. Under a new party leader pursuing arguments influenced by Zoharan Mamdani’s New York mayoral campaign, the Greens have moved closer to establishing a viable populist left force in British politics.
Labor fell to third place behind both the Greens and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The result points to disastrous results for Labor in May’s Scottish and Welsh parliamentary and English council elections. This will create fresh pressure for change of leadership. There is also a warning for result correction. Although the seat would not normally be a major target, Nigel Farage, who leads the party, should be concerned that voters are facing his continuing right-wing leanings and increasingly searching for the best way to stop him winning.
While much of Labour’s strategic focus has been on the threat of reform, it is losing far more voters to left-wing parties. Labor MPs are now calling for a new approach, not least because the Greens’ victory also undermines the party’s most powerful political argument – ​​that it alone can stop reform.
By chasing left-wing and Muslim voters dissatisfied with the Labor government’s line on Gaza, the Greens are hollowing out Labour’s base of support. They pose a particular threat in inner-city areas because of their additional appeal to young people. New Green MP Hannah Spencer, a young female plumber, also appealed directly to white working-class voters.
This defeat is all the more damaging for Starmer because he blocked the candidacy of Labour’s charismatic Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, in order to prevent him from challenging him for the Labor leadership. May’s election is likely to only increase their dysfunctional position and fuel demands for change. Starmer expects next week’s spring financial statement to highlight more encouraging economic news. But voters have still not realized the change he promised and a series of political retreats does not inspire confidence that he can bring about change.
Starmer now faces demands from Labor to spend more, borrow and raise property taxes. The danger here is that this weakens the pace of growth, which is already hampered by high business taxes and regulation. No labor recovery is possible without economic recovery.
For the Greens, success will entail greater scrutiny, not least of their ill-conceived economic policies and sectarian politics that served to attract Muslim voters. But the message is that the populist left is firmly in Britain. British electoral politics will now become a mix of even more local contests, with parties requiring much smaller vote shares to win and elections decided by tactical voting. Labor and the Conservatives find themselves caught between the Greens and Reform (as well as nationalists in Scotland and Wales) at a time when both are unpopular.
This is perhaps the biggest concern after the success of the Greens. The worry for those fearful of reform is that while the populist left may win local or regional elections, these are not sufficient safeguards against the populist right at the national level. Those who want liberal, inclusive, economically healthy politics need at least one of the two major parties to act together, and quickly.
