A gory night for Labour

So, let’s start with the good news – Reform UK does not have a new MP. Matt Goodwin suffered a bad loss.

At the start of this campaign it was very much felt that Reform could easily take this seat.  Perhaps we’re now seeing that the ‘teal wave’, which had been seemingly unstoppable for so long, may have in fact crested.

However, that’s about all the electoral good news for Labour today (though we do have our usual round up of how Labour is delivering in government). Coming third in a seat that we’d previously held by over 13,000 votes is going to raise inevitable questions for Labour’s leadership and strategy. In particular, their relentless focus on Labour to Reform switchers – which has opened up space to Labour’s left which the Green Party capitalised on to devastating effect last night to win their fifth MP and first in the north of England.

READ MORE: Labour place third in Gorton and Denton by-election as Greens gain seat

Some realism will be needed when asking these questions.

First of all, midterm by-elections do tend to produce results that are unfavourable to the sitting government – especially one that is unpopular. Secondly, it will be reasonable to argue that there has not yet been time for the things Labour has done right to bear fruit.

None of which is to argue that last night’s result was inevitable.

The most obvious question this morning is would Labour have done better if Andy Burnham had been the candidate?

That is to take nothing away from Labour’s Angeliki Stogia who fought a very positive, very energetic campaign. But the Greater Manchester Mayor’s popularity, especially when contrasted with the UK Labour Government overall, is significant. Could running this popular figurehead have made Labour the more obvious ‘stop Reform’ choice? Obviously nobody can prove a counterfactual, but some reports from the doorstep show that people were saying that they would have voted for Burnham but could not vote for Labour more broadly.

Even this inevitably leads to even tougher questions. If Burnham had won, that would have created an expensive and difficult by-election for that Greater Manchester mayoralty. Is the calculation, therefore, that it was better to risk this mid-term by-election loss in order to prevent putting that mayoralty at risk of being run by populists of the left or the right?

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That is the case that Keir Starmer will have to make. He made it known that he led from the front in blocking Andy Burnham’s candidacy. Therefore, he will need to make the argument that this was the right thing to do for the party overall in a long-term strategic approach even if it might have been the wrong tactic in Gorton and Denton.

Let’s be blunt – the circumstances of this by-election could not have been worse for Labour. Not only had the whole campaign started with a high profile internal row over Burnham’s candidacy but throughout the short campaign one news story has dominated  – that of the relationship of Peter Mandelson with Jeffrey Epstein and Mandelson’s influence with senior figures in Keir Starmer’s government.

This row has already resulted in the loss of a number of staff from Number 10 including Starmer’s right hand man Morgan McSweeney. Many of these were also figures who were largely involved in trying to bring the Party to particularly focus on those Labour to Reform switchers at the expense of leaving our left flank exposed. With them leaving, that may already be changing, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t lessons still to be learned.

When I was speaking to our reporter James Tibbitts before the result came in last night, he said that one thing that had clearly struck him was the internal unity that had been displayed in Gorton and Denton. People working from across the factions of the party to get behind the candidate and to pull positively in the same direction.

Now, obviously, this result is not what any of those people wanted. But that energy, that working together rather than fighting each other may well be a key part of turning around Labour’s fortunes going forward.

If we simply make this a chance to attack the leadership and revive internal fights, we might lose something very precious and very fragile that Labour members started to rebuild on those doorsteps. However, if we also mistake the need for unity for a need for blind loyalty, we will fail to have the difficult conversations about where, how and why Labour is getting things wrong.

Both unquestioning loyalty and factional infighting are blind alleys. Instead, Labour must continue to work in the spirit of unity but to do so with honesty and transparency and encourage a discussion between all of the parts of the party; a discussion where all feel as valued and energised as they did on those doorsteps yesterday. All find a way to feel part of what is being built enabling them to pull in the same direction and to work to make this Labour government a success in policy, political, electoral and cultural terms.

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