The Greens won unexpectedly comfortably with 40.8 percent.
Gorton and Denton is an English parliamentary constituency located in Greater Manchester. According to the 2021 census, 29.6 percent of the population was Muslim, up from 19.9 percent a decade before. In the 2024 general election, the seat was won as usual by the Labour Party, on that occasion with 50.8 percent of the vote. The populist-right Reform UK came second on 14.8 percent, just ahead of the Greens, who were some way ahead of George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, a party that has made a strong pitch to Muslim voters. The Tories and Liberal Democrats brought up the rear.
In 2025 Zack Polanski was elected leader of the Green Party. Speaking to the Financial Times shortly before his victory, he explained that:
“My key message to Jeremy Corbyn is ‘join the Green party.’ . . . The people we’re fighting against are the 1 per cent, and it’s about unifying the 99 per cent in recognising that it’s corporations and the super-rich who are destroying our environment, our communities, and our democracy.” Under his leadership, the party would focus on “socialism . . . redistributing wealth from the super-rich to fund public services, and calling out the genocide in Gaza.” . . .
Gaza, eh? Very Thunberg.
The FT:
Polanski, 42, went to a private school near Manchester on a scholarship, and then studied at a state sixth form college. He went on to study drama at Aberystwyth University in Wales before moving to the US and then eventually to London to work in community theatre, often participating in shows with a strong political message, on topics such as homelessness and migrant rights.
Earlier this year, the MP for Gorton and Denton stood down. The by-election (special election) to replace him was held yesterday. The result was a disaster for Labour, which came third with 25.4 percent and may be even worse news for Britain. The significant chance that Keir Starmer, the country’s embattled prime minister, will face a leadership challenge from his left — and that that challenge will prevail — has now increased dramatically. If Starmer remains in power, he will shift even further to the left, regardless of any fight over the leadership. Oh yes, any prospect that Britain’s catastrophic net-zero policies will see any worthwhile scaling back has vanished.
All this is because the Greens won unexpectedly comfortably with 40.8 percent. Reform advanced to 28.7 percent, a decent performance, but a disappointing result in a seat some had thought they might win, although not as disappointing as the Tories’ 1.9 (!) percent. The size of the Green victory owed something at least toward their sectarian appeal to the constituency’s Muslim voters, the second of the bleak implications of this by-election for the rest of the country.
On Monday, Sir Keir had visited the constituency to warn that only a vote for Labour could stop Reform. The key campaign message was designed to stop Labour haemorrhaging “progressive” votes to the Greens in an election battle where Left-leaning and Muslim voters were encouraged to “punish Labour for Gaza.” . . .
This week, the [Greens] sent out campaign leaflets featuring [its candidate] wearing a keffiyeh scarf – associated with support for Palestine – in front of a mosque. The leaflets, written in Urdu, urged Gorton’s substantial Muslim population to “punish Labour for Gaza.” . . .
The Muslim Vote, a pressure group set up to support election candidates “who oppose the Conservative and Labour leadership stances on the Gaza war,” endorsed the Greens to win the Greater Manchester seat.
In a piece in The Spectator that is well worth reading in full (it is also on his substack), Ed West, writing before the vote, provides a slightly longer extract from that Green leaflet:
“Push the falling walls one more time. Labour must be punished for Gaza. Reform must be defeated and Green must be voted for. Vote for the Green party for a strong Muslim voice.”
And:
There was also an Urdu-language video linking Reform party candidate Matt Goodwin and leader Nigel Farage with Donald Trump and ICE deportation raids. The video then cuts to Gaza, before showing Keir Starmer beside India’s Narendra Modi. Subtle stuff.
Modi, a Hindu, ah yes.
West explains how the Greens, once (wrongly, in my view) seen as harmless eccentrics:
came to fill the space inhabited by high-education, low-income graduates, the group who most favour redistributive economics and highly progressive social policies. Yet political parties have no souls, as such, being merely vote-seeking businesses, and they go where the market is — and now they find the lowest hanging fruit in appealing to sectarian interests.
At least such a thing could never happen in New York City. . . .