Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour suffered an embarrassing election defeat to the left-wing Green Party on Friday in an area of Manchester it had dominated for almost a century, a result that underscored the breakdown of Britain’s two-party politics.
The loss of one of Labour’s safest seats, in the biggest electoral test in almost a year, piles further pressure on Starmer to prove that he should keep his job following weeks of political turmoil and calls for him to resign.The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer won the contest for the vacant parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton, with Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party coming second, and Labour pushed into third place. The result was “clearly disappointing”, said Labour Party chair Anna Turley.