Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to “keep on fighting” despite a devastating by-election loss to the Greens, reported BBC. Labour slumped to third place in its longstanding stronghold of Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester, with Reform UK finishing second.
It marks the first win for the Greens in a by-election, with 34-year-old plumber Hannah Spencer becoming the party’s first ever MP in the north of England.
The result has led to renewed criticism of Starmer leadership from Labour MPs ahead of May elections in Scotland, Wales and some English councils that are now widely seen as a crucial test of his premiership. Speaking after the result, he pledged to “keep on fighting”, insisting he was “getting on with the hard yards” of turning Labour’s fortunes around.
His former deputy Angela Rayner said Labour’s defeat must come as a “wake up call” and called on the Government to be “braver”. The by-election had been billed as a key strategic test for Labour, in a largely working-class suburb of Manchester that also contains a large number of students and a big Muslim population.
In a letter to his MPs after the defeat, Starmer accused the Greens of embracing a “divisive, sectarian” form of politics, adding they had demonstrated they were “not the harmless environmentalists they pretend to be”. Branding the Greens’ policies “extreme,” he insisted the party lacked the “resources, the activist base or the local knowledge to replicate this victory” during a general election campaign. His reaction was met with an angry response from Green leader Zack Polanski, who accused the Prime Minister of trying to “smear voters as extremists”.
Spencer, who becomes the fifth Green MP in the Commons, also dismissed accusations of sectarian politics during the campaign, insisting her party had united voters with commons concerns about the costof-living, public services and the war in Gaza.
