2 hours ago
6
Gorton is the place where my great-grandmother was born into a railway family in 1875. At that time, it was world-famous for making locomotives, and was one of the most industrialised and polluted places in the country. When I first knew it in the 1960s, the great engineering works were closing, putting thousands of skilled men on the dole. The close-knit terraced streets were being torn down, leaving just abandoned pubs on the street corners for a while. It was one of many northern towns that seemed to have died.
To me, it is inspiring that the locals have not, in the main, voted to elect someone who would blame the area’s misfortunes on migrants (Report, 27 February). I am still a supporter of Keir Starmer’s government, but Labour needs to learn from this result and reclaim some of the fire and enthusiasm for a better world that have given momentum to the Greens and their highly motivated candidate, Hannah Spencer.
Robert Hartley
Elston, Nottinghamshire
Hannah Spencer’s victory speech talked up her working-class credentials and deplores “the litter, the fly-tipping, the dirty air” that blights Gorton and Denton, an area she once lived in before relocating to a more affluent part of town. Everyone in Gorton and Denton, she says, deserves a “nice life”.
Beyond a sideswipe at billionaires, her speech said nothing about how the Green party would lower bills, revitalise our high streets and make our air cleaner – all things that Labour in national and local government is already doing, but for which it gets little credit.
Once the hype about Gorton and Denton dies down, let’s hope the Greens are put under pressure to explain how they would run our economy in the light of low growth, high national debt and global instability. We all want the good life, but making it happen involves more than empty phrases.
Sheila McGregor
Sheffield
I don’t think it’s true that “left‑leaning voters are choosing to vote against rather than for parties” (Green win shows progressive voters are now voting against Labour as well as Reform, 27 January). I think Labour lost the Gorton and Denton byelection precisely because the Green party gives left-leaning voters someone who represents their views to vote for, rather than a bogeyman to vote against.
It doesn’t say anything good about the ideology governing Labour that it may have feared a Green party victory more than a Reform one. I could not be more thrilled that progressive voters in England finally have a viable alternative to the party that abandoned them decades ago.
Holly Trochet
Edinburgh
In painting the Green party as being “extreme left”, Keir Starmer reinforced once again how far removed he is from the socialist principles and values on which many people based their support for Labour. Those values, which Labour has ejected in its rapid shift to the right under Starmer, are now represented by the Green party – as demonstrated by Hannah Spencer’s decisive (and heartening) victory.
Derek Worthing
Sheffield
I am rather exasperated by the comments from a variety of political standpoints that the Green party victory confirms that two-party politics is tired and outdated (Five key takeaways from the Gorton and Denton byelection, 27 February). This overlooks that this system gave the country strong political and civic stability for a very long while. The fracturing of it may well lead to a Balkanisation of politics, in which a minority central government may not have the authority to cope with the challenges that the country faces.
Andy Cooper
Worcester
If there is one lesson that Keir Starmer could take from the byelection defeat, it is that timidity and incrementalism do not engage or motivate voters. Labour has done many good things, but its appalling communications strategy, if ever there was one, leaves many with the feeling that nothing has changed. Labour only has itself to blame.
Bill Dhadli
London
Before everybody gets too excited about the sudden Green surge, I suggest they recall the consequences of David Steel’s “return to your constituencies and prepare for government” speech at the Liberal party conference in 1981.
Brian Clark
Everdon, Northamptonshire
Richard Bryant (Letters, 27 February) may be correct that voters woke up on Friday to a sense of optimism, excitement and hope after the result in Gorton and Denton, but millions of us also woke up on Friday just relieved that Reform had not won.
Rachel Walker
Bath
