After Gorton & Denton: we need to build a politics that transcends identity
Claire Fox on what the by-election result tells us about British politics – and why Battle of Ideas North next Saturday is a great place to begin the debate.
Congratulations to Hannah ‘The Plumber’ Spencer. The Green Party victory was certainly impressive, beating Labour into third place in electoral territory that has been solidly Labour for a century. Indeed, the Greens won 60 per cent more votes than Labour. And the new kid on the block – for the Green Party, it was a first-ever by-election victory - has also gained kudos for dispatching every progressive’s favourite bête noire, Reform UK, into second place, with a considerable gap between itself and its populist rival.
But credit to Matt Goodwin and team – despite being the focus of a united front of hate and sanctimonious demonisation, Reform’s very creditable performance was in defiance of those who doggedly hope the party’s popularity, especially with Britain’s working class, is a flash in the pan. And in the meantime, the anti-Reform campaigners are happy to deploy dirty tricks to try and stem its steadily growing support throughout the UK.
But while the results of the by-election have been described as seismic, as the new reality sets in, it’s worth taking time to ask: what does it really mean? At the Academy of Ideas, we are all voraciously reading various commentaries and weighing up the pros and cons of the emerging political landscape. (You can read a selection of them below.) And our Battle of Ideas North event in Manchester next Saturday, 7 March, will be a chance to properly discuss it all.
What we do know now: the trend towards the implosion of the two-party system now has momentum, and insurgent parties are the new disruptors.
The stranglehold of the Labour/Tory axis is being bashed from all sides. Former police detective Charlotte Cadden, who stood as the Conservative candidate, is a genuinely impressive (gender-critical) woman. However, as a candidate, she barely made a dent. And Kemi Badenoch’s tone-deaf, breezy response to the by-election result has not helped create an impression of a party changing its ways anytime soon.
The big story, of course, is the humiliation of Labour, who won 50.8 per cent of the vote in this seat just a year and a half ago. The story of why there was a by-election at all tells its own story. The previous Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, resigned on the grounds of ill health having been suspended for writing in a local MPs WhatsApp group: ‘Dear resident, Fuck your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you.’ However nice Angeliki Stogia is, Labour’s candidate this time round inherited Labour’s local reputation for treating the working class with total contempt.
Even Andy Burnham would have struggled to win, looking at the figures. The one universal truth that emerged from commentators visiting the area was just how loathed this Labour government are by voters across the political spectrum, but especially amongst its own traditional voter base. The despised now despise and express their venom at the ballot box.
Like Badenoch, Keir Starmer’s post by-election statement had rubbed salt in the open wound. The prime minister’s capacity to both blame anyone but himself and to gaslight voters with his blatantly ironic bad takes have made matters worse. Targeting George Galloway as a specific target of his ire just sounds unhinged – but it is also full of irony. Listening to the Labour leader accusing the Greens of ‘sectarian politics’ is a gross example of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’. Labour has cynically used clan-kinship networks and ethno-religious blocs for its own political purposes for decades, all under the guise of ‘multiculturalism’. Labour figures continue to shout DIVISIVE and RACIST at any criticisms of its courting of the most regressive aspects of identity politics.
It’s hard to call out the likes of the family-voting scandal when such ‘cultural practices’ have been indulged for years. And now that the toxic tactics used by Labour in terms of Asian bloc votes are now being deployed by another party against Labour, it’s difficult to have sympathy with high-handed finger pointing.
Regardless of Starmer’s hypocrisy, I also feel queasy about the Green’s opportunist and dangerous courtship of religious and ethnic sectarianism. The Gazan and Pakistani flags, that Urdu leaflet stirring up anti-Hindu and vicious anti-Israel hate, just exacerbate the Balkanisation of British politics. And it’s hard to see this as a positive new political movement when it is based on the most unstable political foundations. Will Hannah Spencer retain her new voter base once the Green’s identitarian, wacky policies – the embrace of LGBTQ+ ideology, legalising drugs and prostitution, and so on – come into real-world conflict with the social conservatism that has propelled them to win this time? Chanting genocide and hating Israel hardly seems enough to build a new, positive, sustainable political movement in Gorton and Denton, or anywhere.
At Battle North next Saturday, we will be exploring such themes. For example, one panel will be debating our increasingly fractured communities. Yes, the Gorton and Denton constituency might well be a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’, as Professor Rob Ford has described it, based on vastly different demographic bases (the Gorton wards are close to majority Muslim; the Denton wards are over 80 per cent white). But the Greens and Labour’s stoking of difference makes solidarity more difficult; the task of creating a politics capable of transcending competing identities is made even harder. Does that mean we are stuck with this depressing status quo?
Working out the shape of British politics is one task; a more challenging task is to shape the future in a period of febrile flux. We hope to make a contribution to that task at Battle North – come and join us for a day of vibrant, no-holds-barred public conversations. Full details and tickets here.
Around the web
Battle North speaker Graham Stringer MP commenting on the Greens encouragement of sectarian voting.
Battle North speaker Richard Johnson for UnHerd: Gorton and Denton will break Labour’s fragile coalition
Battle North speaker Charlie Winstanley for UnHerd: The revenge of Gorton’s chavs
The politics of the ‘Muslim vote’, Paul Stott, Spectator
Gorton and Denton: welcome to Balkanised Britain, Tom Slater, spiked
Hannah Spencer’s extremist victory pushes Britain one step closer to the abyss, Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph
Quick thoughts on the result, Luke Tryl, X
All in the family?, Chris Bayliss, The Critic