EVEN for the blood sport that is modern politics, the Gorton and Denton by-election is proving a vicious, poisonous affair.
The south-east Manchester seat has already witnessed the strangulation at birth of Andy Burnham’s potential Labour leadership challenge at the hands of the Prime Minister.
Labour are yet to announce their candidate for Gorton and Denton but Reform UK’s rookie candidate Matt Goodwin already has a pack of snarling and merciless political attack dogs on his trail.
The GB News presenter’s campaign is barely five days old and he has been labelled an “anti-Muslim bigot”, “rent-an-extremist” and “snowflake”.
When I caught up with the academic and author yesterday, he said of his furious critics: “They’re panicking, they’re running scared.
“This is a referendum on Starmer, he’ll have to go if he loses this — it’s one of Labour’s safer seats.”
Down-to-earth and diverse, Gorton and Denton has become a weathervane on which way the wind is blowing in British politics.
Voters here will help answer whether Reform’s poll-topping insurgency is spluttering and stalling.
It may prove the breakthrough moment when the Green Party challenges Labour as the default party of the Left.
It could determine whether Sir Keir Starmer’s beleaguered premiership is terminated by assassins in his own party.
With local elections in May — including for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly — a disastrous showing in Gorton and Denton would make calls for Starmer’s head deafening.
‘Local issues’
Little wonder, then, that things have already turned nasty, with police even called in to intervene.
Visiting the seat this week, I found the south Manchester suburbs with patches of deprivation and gentrification — including the old Burnage stomping ground of Oasis’s Gallagher brothers — on a political knife edge.
The bookies see Gorton as a three-horse race.
Ladbrokes has Reform at 6/5 followed by the Greens on 6/4 then Labour on 7/2, and the Tories rank outsiders on 100/1.
As favourite, Goodwin has been given both barrels by his rivals.
The PM accused him of bringing “toxic division” to the constituency and “tearing people apart”.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded him “Nigel Farage’s problem” and insisted she wouldn’t let him join her party.
‘Nigel Farage’s problem’
Leftie bible The Guardian’s columnist Owen Jones pooh-poohed Goodwin’s credentials for standing in a Manchester seat, tweeting: “He grew up in Hertfordshire.”
Green Party leader Zack Polanski described Goodwin as a “rent-an- extremist” with a “track record of anti-Muslim bigotry”.
And Labour’s propaganda machine called him a “snowflake” after Reform reported Starmer’s party to the police over accusations of a misleading video clip featuring Goodwin.
Police say they are taking no action.
Goodwin took to X to rebuff Owen Jones, pointing out that he had spent much of his childhood in Manchester before going to Salford University, close to where his grandfather worked in a steel factory.
Campaigning in Denton, the dad of one, 44, told me: “Labour are trying to attack me all the time but not saying anything about the local issues and how we get this place back on the map.
This is a referendum on Starmer, he’ll have to go if he loses this — it’s one of Labour’s safer seats
Matt Goodwin
“They’ve taken this seat for granted for decades, everybody here is done with being ignored and left behind. And the Greens are more interested in talking about Gaza than Gorton and Denton.”
Goodwin’s critics have honed in on comments that he made after the Huntingdon stabbings last year, which he blamed on “mass uncontrolled immigration”.
When it was pointed out to him that the suspect was British, Goodwin said: “So were the 7/7 bombers. It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”
The Liberal Democrats described Goodwin’s comments as “racist”.
But he told me: “I stand by every word. I said: ‘If you’re the 7/7 bombers or the guy who blew up kids at the Manchester Evening News Arena then I’m sorry, I don’t believe you’re as British as the kids and families who they murdered’.
“Citizenship is not the same as belonging, and belonging requires more than a piece of paper. What makes a country is that strong emotional bond that we feel about the nation and one another.
“And it’s clear, as we’ve seen over the last 20 years, we now have people in our country who don’t feel that emotional bond to our community.”
I ask how he thinks his message will go down in diverse Gorton and Denton, where 44 per cent are from an ethnic minority and more than one in four voters are Muslim.
“This isn’t about race,” he insists.
“It’s not about black, white, Asian, Muslim, non-Muslim, it’s, ‘Do you feel as though you belong in Britain? Do you feel that you love and respect your fellow citizens?’
“We’ve got a major problem now in that we’ve let so many people in over the last 20 to 30 years, and they include people who hate who we are. The Left have tried to bully me but I’m not going to change my views on that.”
Strolling through Gorton, a mix of terraced streets and housing estates, airport worker Martin Ward insisted: “I will certainly be voting for Reform and Matt Goodwin.
It’s not about black, white, Asian, Muslim, non-Muslim, it’s, ‘Do you feel as though you belong in Britain? Do you feel that you love and respect your fellow citizens?’
Matt Goodwin
“There is nothing wrong with nationalism as long as it is not taken to the extreme.
“You see Turkish flags everywhere in Turkey so why shouldn’t we have our flags here?”
Martin, 55, added: “I have no problem with migrants as long as they are here legally. But there are too many illegal migrants here now and Reform seem to be the only people who want to do something about it.
“Now Andy Burnham isn’t standing, I think Reform will win here.”
The first opinion poll from the seat has Reform on 30 per cent, Labour on 27, undecided voters on 18, the Greens, 17, and the Tories on just six.
The Find Out Now survey, of 143 voters, also found Burnham would have won by more than 20 percentage points if his candidacy had not been kiboshed.
Labour’s final two shortlisted candidates for the election are now Bury Council leader Eamonn O’Brien and Manchester City Council member Angeliki Stogia.
Walking her dog Marvel near Gorton Market, Dee Durkin told us she is not a fan of Goodwin’s rhetoric, but added: “He will get in, now that Burnham has been banned.
“The way people are talking, a lot are going to vote for Reform. There are too many migrants here now.”
Unemployed Dee, 50, said of the election: “We don’t want someone who is going to cause division and have extreme views like Goodwin. But people have tunnel vision so I don’t think Goodwin’s views will stop people voting for him.”
Hospital worker Mateena Hans, 32, who holds down two full-time jobs and works up to 80 hours a week, said of Goodwin: “He seems too extreme. Mind you. I’m not sure about Labour either, especially now Burnham isn’t standing.
“I’m a single working person and Labour haven’t done anything for working people. It seems soon there’ll be no one with a job and everyone will be on benefits.”
I’m a single working person and Labour haven’t done anything for working people. It seems soon there’ll be no one with a job and everyone will be on benefits
Mateena Hans
Just 18 months ago, at the last General Election, Gorton and Denton was won by Labour with more than 50 per cent of the vote.
They were followed by Reform on 14 per cent, the Greens with 13 and the Tories managing just under eight per cent.
But when the constituency’s sitting MP, Andrew Gwynne, stood down on health grounds last week, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham threw his hat into the ring.
The so-called King of the North pledged he would not undermine Starmer or the Government if elected as MP.
Others believed he was jockeying to be in pole position for a Labour Party leadership challenge should May’s elections prove the expected disaster for Starmer.
But the PM wasn’t about to give a leg-up to a man who wants his job. Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) swiftly blocked the Mayor’s candidature.
This plunged the party into open civil war, with around 50 Labour MPs signing a letter to the NEC objecting to the “stitch-up”.
If Starmer’s power play fails and Reform wins in Gorton and Denton, many in his party will struggle to forgive him.
The choice is clear: Greens versus Reform, hope versus hate. Reform have chosen a candidate who will divide our community — he doesn’t even think many of the people who live and work here are even British
Hannah Spencer
Yesterday the Greens confirmed plumber Hannah Spencer, 34, as their candidate — as one reporter swiftly joked that the media should not expect any leaks from her campaign.
The Greens’ leader on Trafford Council, in Greater Manchester, she wasted no time in sticking the knife into Goodwin.
She said: “This is a crucial by-election. The choice is clear: Greens versus Reform, hope versus hate. Reform have chosen a candidate who will divide our community — he doesn’t even think many of the people who live and work here are even British.
“I will bring the people of Gorton and Denton together.”
And as if this political cauldron was not already toxic enough, in waded ex- English Defence League goon and convicted football hooligan Tommy Robinson yesterday to endorse Goodwin.
Labour insisted it was proof of who the Reform candidate “really is” and “what he stands for”.
But Reform said they have been “consistently clear” that Robinson “isn’t welcome in the party”.
There are still almost four weeks to go until the February 26 polling day in Gorton and Denton.
It means the mud-slinging, back-stabbing and dirty tricks of the bitterest by-election in recent memory have plenty of time to get a whole lot worse.
