05.02.2026

Sir Keir’s rivals are looking for their kill

While the vultures circle

Even before the election has taken place, Gorton and Denton is being touted as another humiliating blow for Labour and yet another triumph for Reform. Eddie Ford is not convinced. True, Sir Keir is on the ropes in parliament, but expect tactical voting

Nobody knows who will win the Gorton and Denton by-election on February 26, and that is exactly the point, when it comes to political calculations. Andy Burnham had to throw his hat into the ring if he wanted to retain any credibility as a potential alternative to Keir Starmer, otherwise he would be branded as a coward. He is the ‘king of the north’, after all, with Gorton and Denton at the heart of his Manchester empire, where he rules as mayor.

But equally Starmer had to block Burnham, and was always going to, with deputy leader Lucy Powell, also from Manchester, the only one on the 10-strong NEC panel supporting him - Shabana Mahmood, home secretary and NEC chair, abstained. Whatever we were told, the decision had nothing to do with the expense of running an election campaign for a new mayor in Manchester, or nonsense like that - it was down to politics, to state the obvious.

Yes, Starmer could have called Burnham’s bluff. But precisely as we do not know what the election result will be, we could have had a situation where Andy Burnham enters the Gorton and Denton race, has to stand down as mayor of Manchester - and loses the by-election and finds himself out in the cold. That would be bad news for the Labour Party collectively too.

Now, Starmer might have thought - oh well, if that happens then one less bastard to think of. There is no way to know how seriously he takes the press talk of Burnham being a rival to his throne, if not an heir apparent. And with the Peter Mandelson scandal the vultures are circling: Not only Andy Burnham, but Wes Streeting, Angela Raynor, Lucy Powell … and others besides.

Taking a hit

But when it comes to the king of the north, Starmer seems to have calculated that it is worthwhile taking a hit by putting a spoke in the wheel of Burnham’s ambitions (for the moment). His action caused some 50 Labour MPs to sign a letter objecting to the decision to block Burnham, saying the move was a “real gift” to Reform - though you could say the same about him standing down as mayor of Manchester. But, of course, Sir Keir runs the risk of actually taking a double hit, as it was obviously him who blocked Burnham and, if Labour still loses Gorton and Denton, that would generate the inevitable recrimination: if only he had selected the high-profile mayor of Manchester as candidate, then the result would have been different.

Burnham, naturally enough, said he was “disappointed” that his bid to become MP was blocked and curtly remarked that the fact that the media was informed of the NEC decision before he was “tells you everything you need to know about the way the Labour Party is being run these days”. Things getting nasty: a cabinet member anonymously briefed The Times that Burnham has “been handed everything on a plate for his whole career” and is now angry because people “won’t make way for his second coming” - adding that “it’s typical Andy”.

The selected Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia, is a “local girl” who has been a Manchester councillor representing Whalley Range since 2012. Yes, Burnham would have been more high-profile, but perhaps Stogia could be just as popular. For his part, Starmer is saying the by-election will be a referendum on “true patriotism” and arguing that only Labour can defeat the “poisonous division” of Reform UK. Indeed, he has presented the by-election as a straightforward two-horse race between Labour and Reform - exactly the strategy favoured by Morgan McSweeney, his embattled chief of staff. Scare the horses into voting Labour by brandishing the threat of Reform and Nigel Farage - him or us.

Never looking a gift horse in the mouth, the Labour leader has taken advantage of the fact that Tommy Robinson has endorsed Matt Goodwin as the Reform candidate, despite Farage declaring the anti-Islam agitator persona non grata (even though he has received Elon Musk’s seal of approval, reinstating his X account¹).

An academic who is now a GB News presenter, Goodwin recently caused uproar by making the explicitly ethno-nationalist statement that people born in the UK from minority backgrounds are not necessarily British, as it “takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’”.² Robinson’s intervention prompted a Labour spokesperson to say that “the stakes couldn’t be higher” for the February 26 contest, as we have just been shown who Goodwin “really is and what he stands for”.

Jeremy Corbyn and others are saying the most important thing is defeating “fascism”. The SWP and its latest popular front, Together, is saying essentially the same thing. Of course, Reform is not fascist. So how to defeat Reform in Gorton and Denton? No unambiguous answer is forthcoming from either quarter. Others, though, say vote Green.

But on current polling they are not in the running … and Labour will be urging tactical voting - well, yes: defeat Reform. At the last general election, Labour’s Andrew Gwynne - whose resignation due to “significant ill-health” triggered the by-election - got 50.8% of the vote on 18,555 votes, with Reform getting 14.1% on 5,142, and the Greens 13.2% on 4,810.³

While Reform has a consistent lead over Labour in the national polls, the picture is a bit different in Gorton and Denton with a poll last week putting Reform on 30%, Labour 27% and the Greens in a poor third with 17% (with the Tories way down on 6%).⁴

Hollie Ridley, Labour’s general secretary, went further last week by declaring that the suggestion the Greens could win in Gorton and Denton was “bollocks”, and various party figures have repeatedly emphasised that the Greens have no presence in the constituency - no councillors and no data. Obviously, we are in the midst of a huge propaganda war and it is difficult to discern the facts on the ground, but clearly Starmer has made an entirely conscious political decision: to throw all Labour has got at Gorton and Denton, reminiscent of the 2021 Batley and Spen by-election - another time when Starmer felt engaged in a high stakes game, maybe even had his leadership at risk, and threw everything at getting Kim Leadbetter over the line.⁵

As for the Greens, they have selected Hannah Spencer as their candidate - for all of the stupid talk from some about the Manchester-born Zack Polanski standing. That was never going to happen! Being the great leader of the Greens, dreaming of greater things, he wants a shoo-in of a constituency - not run the risk of losing to Labour or Reform and coming third. He is going to bide his time.

Critical

OK, what is the position of the CPGB? Nominations are now closed and there are 11 candidates. George Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain stated that it had taken the “difficult decision” not to contest the by-election despite coming fourth in the general election with 10.3% of the vote, declaring that if Labour loses, Starmer must resign!⁶ Your Party, having no structure or proper branches, is not standing either. Logic and electoral arithmetic would therefore suggest a Labour vote … though the Communist League is standing Hugo Wilis. The CL split from the shadowy Socialist Action in 1988 and has historically tailed the US Socialist Workers Party (today it is pro-Israel, condemns the BDS campaign as anti-Semitic and defends Ukraine from Russian ‘imperialism’).

We would certainly argue against backing the Greens on class terms, as it is a thoroughly petty-bourgeois party which could sharply swing back to the right - its origins lying in a small group of businessmen inspired by Malthusian overpopulation theorist Paul R Ehrlich.⁷ It is quite legitimate to call for a critical vote for Labour - that would obviously have nothing to do with Starmer and the leadership, but rather the nature of Labour as a bourgeois workers’ party - that is still the case despite Blair’s counter reformation and the ditching of the old clause four.

Apparently, Angela Rayner, former deputy leader, has accumulated a million-pound “war chest” in so-called “firm pledges” to mount a leadership contest, and is “ready to go”.⁸ This is not just tittle-tattle, as there is definitely a Labour left in formation, even if it is a rightwing one (!), but there you are. Andy Burnham. Angela Rayner, Lucy Powell, and you can bolt on the Socialist Campaign Group to that - this is what constitutes the left at the current period, in parliamentary terms.

Yet, despite Mandelson, there is no contest at the moment, of course. Burnham is not an MP and Rayner is not even in the cabinet - rather, she had to resign because she was found guilty of violating the ministerial code by underpaying stamp duty.⁹ Then there was all the stuff about petty corruption, involving dresses, power suits, personal shoppers, a holiday flat in New York and so on. If she did challenge the leadership, the press would have a field day. So the idea that Angela Rayner or even Andy Burnham are saviours for a Labour Party mired in the polling doldrums is nonsense.

We have to ask - why are people going to Reform? No, it is not a trick question: it is because they are dissatisfied. Yet SWP comrades at the Palestine demonstration at the weekend handing out “Together - love, not hate” flyers for March 28 with backing provided by the likes of Sir Lenny Henry, Paloma Faith, Paul Weller, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Greenpeace and Amnesty International - pass the sick bucket, please.

That is not the way to stop Reform. We must raise our horizons, chart a new course and organise, organise and organise - on the basis of independent working class politics.