{"id":6377,"date":"2026-02-27T10:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T10:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=6377"},"modified":"2026-02-27T10:16:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T10:16:00","slug":"we-are-in-a-new-era-of-multi-party-politics-politics-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/?p=6377","title":{"rendered":"We are in a new era of multi-party politics | Politics News"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

This is a parliamentary by-election result for the ages, one that sets the tone for its time.<\/p>\n

It is the first by-election gain by the Greens<\/strong><\/a> at the 87th time of asking.<\/p>\n

Only once before has the party polled above a tenth of the vote let alone gained a seat.<\/p>\n

Follow live – politics latest<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n \n <\/div>
\n Image:<\/span>
\n The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer celebrates winning the Gorton and Denton by-election with party leader Zack Polanski. Pic: PA
\n <\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Hannah Spencer’s 40.7% share of the vote is 27.5 percentage points higher than the party polled at the last general election.<\/p>\n

She becomes only the 18th candidate over the last 100 years to take her party from third at the general election to first place at a parliamentary by-election.<\/p>\n

\n
\"visualization\"\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Under its new leader Zack Polanski, the party has moved further to the left of British politics, the clearest competitor to Labour in large parts of the country.<\/p>\n

For the second successive by-election, following Reform UK’s gain in Runcorn and Helsby in May 2025, a party outside the three parties of Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrats has gained a seat.<\/p>\n

We are in a new era of multi-party politics.<\/p>\n

\n
\"visualization\"\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Crucially, the decision of Workers Party leader George Galloway not to add his party to the eleven-strong ballot, made an impact. At the 2024 contest the Workers Party candidate finished fourth with 10.3%.<\/p>\n

Galloway, himself a winner of two by-elections in Bradford West (2012) and Rochdale (2024), instead gave free passage to the Greens to fight a campaign that directly addressed the conflict in the Middle East.<\/p>\n

There is no disguising the fact that the result in Gorton and Denton is dreadful for the Labour government as the party fell from first to third place.<\/p>\n

In what was Labour’s 38th safest seat – its 36.7% general election majority evaporated.<\/p>\n

It becomes the seventh largest Labour majority to be overturned.<\/p>\n

\n
\"visualization\"\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The party’s vote share suffered a drop of 25.3 percentage points – becoming the 17th worst result on this measure.<\/p>\n

The swing from Labour to the Greens, a massive 26.4%, has only been higher in 10 other Labour defeats.<\/p>\n

\n
\"visualization\"\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It becomes only the second time that a party elected with a landslide Commons majority has then proceeded to lose its first two by-election defences.<\/p>\n

It was Harold Wilson’s ill-fated administration following its 1966 election victory that previously held that distinction.<\/p>\n

Much of Labour’s campaign was targeted at the threat posed by Matt Goodwin, Reform UK’s candidate.<\/p>\n

He finished second with 28.7% of the vote, a 14.7 percentage point increase on the general election.<\/p>\n

Nick Buckley became the first candidate to stand in a parliamentary by-election for Advance UK, a party seen as a potential rival to Reform, attracting just 154 votes.<\/p>\n

\n
\"visualization\"\/<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In what was always seen as a three-way fight between the Greens, Labour and Reform, it was inevitable that the Conservatives would be squeezed. The party polled only 1.9%, lower than the 2.3% it polled in Monklands West in 1994.<\/p>\n

The turnout was 47.5%, just 0.3% below the 47.8% recorded at the general election.<\/p>\n

It is rare for a by-election to be this close to the previous level; the last time that a greater proportion of the electorate voted than had done so before was in 1987 when Rosie Barnes took the Labour seat of Greenwich for David Owen’s SDP.<\/p>\n

But the large turnout probably reflects the intense interest surrounding this contest, from Labour’s choice of candidate to defend a safe seat, Reform’s previous success in Runcorn and Helsby, and the Green’s political movement to the left.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a parliamentary by-election result for the ages, one that sets the tone for its time. It is the first by-election gain by the Greens…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignnewstoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}