The surge in the Green Party vote in the Gorton and Denton by-election is “good news” for Nigel Farage’s hopes of entering No 10 because it will split the left at the general election, Reform UK have claimed.
Senior figures in the party have insisted that their second-place in the by-election behind the Greens was a “very good result” and that anti-Reform tactical voting would not work in a national poll.
Reform had high hopes for the Manchester seat, but their candidate – former academic turned right-wing pundit Matt Goodwin – received 10,578 votes to the 14,980 achieved by Hannah Spencer of the Greens, with Labour third on 9,364.
This was still a 28.7 per cent votes share, a rise of almost 15 percentage points on the general election, in a traditional Labour stronghold.
Reform argued that the party had performed strongly in a seat that was always going to be a challenge because of the significant Muslim population in the Gorton half of the constituency.
A senior party source told The i Paper they were “very happy” with the result. “It’s 440th on our target seat list. It was never something that we expected to count as an easy seat for us,” they said. “To get nearly 30 per cent and beat Labour into second is a very good night for us.”
Independent experts such as Professor Sir John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde have also emphasised the difficult nature of the seat for Reform and cautioned against interpreting the result as a sign that their support is waning.
Resurgent Green Party is good news for us
Party figures did admit that anti-Reform tactical voting had played a part in preventing them from getting over the line, but argued on a national level the rise of the Greens would help them as it would divide the left vote.
“A resurgent Green Party is good news for us. The Greens now are not going to give an inch to the Labour Party in the election, which is good news,” the senior Reform source said.
Gawain Towler, who sits on Reform’s governing party board, told The i Paper that anti-Reform tactical voting was “clearly a thing” in Gorton and Denton. “There was a significant switch in tactical voting against us in the last couple of days,” he said.
Towler said on a national level that right-wing voters will break for Reform, with the Tories losing their deposit in Gorton and Denton after recording their worst-ever parliamentary by-election performance, securing only 706 votes.
“The Tory response to [anti-Reform tactical voting] yesterday was pretty clear – they voted for us,” he said. He claimed this trend would accelerate after a collapse in the Tory vote in the May local elections.
Despite Reform’s optimism, the risk of tactical voting was also highlighted when Reform lost the Caerphilly by-election for the Welsh Senedd in October.
On that occasion, Labour support collapsed, but nationalists Plaid Cymru were able to win comfortably by convincing progressive voters that they were the best option for keeping Reform out.
But Reform argue that left-wing tactical voting will be less effective in a general election.
The senior source said: “When it comes to a general election, all the parties are trying to make a claim to [be the anti-Reform choice]. [Voters] are never going to know who the actual tactical vote is.”
Labour were well beaten by the Green Party and Reform (Source: PA Wire)“In a by-election, you have a month of intense media telling you this party, the other party is the tactical vote.”
Reform were on Friday flagging their showing in the white working class areas of the constituency, which they believe bodes well for them across Red Wall seats in the North and Midlands in the general election.
“In the Denton wards, the white working class wards, they split extremely heavily for us,” the senior source said.
Questions over Reform’s candidate
While Reform are keen to accentuate the positives from Gorton and Denton, some supporters think that Goodwin was the wrong candidate for the seat because of his polarising persona and record of making controversial statements.
Goodwin has previously argued that “young girls and women” should be given a “biological reality” check about having children, and that people from ethnic minorities can be British but not truly English.
After the result, Goodwin blamed a “coalition of Islamists and woke progressives” for his defeat and claimed “a dangerous Muslim sectarianism” emerged.
On Friday, the BBC asked Reform supporter Tim Montgomerie whether the comments showed that Goodwin did not like his constituents. “I think you may be onto something there,” Montgomerie replied.
Montgomerie later questioned “whether we chose the best person in Matt Goodwin”.
“In a way, sometimes you need someone to talk less heatedly about some of these issues when you’re responding to the underlying anger [about immigration],” he said.
However, figures higher up the party hierarchy defended Goodwin and told The i Paper he would be given another shot at a parliamentary seat if he wanted one.
The senior source said: “Matt Goodwin was a great candidate… he spent four sessions a day for four weeks out on the door.
“He had national name recognition. All the focus groups said as well he was the only one who people actually knew. You needed a bit of that name recognition straight away, especially in such a hard seat.”
On Goodwin standing again, they said: “It’s been a feature of Nigel’s career that he’s always looked after by-election candidates whether they’ve won or lost.”
On Friday, Farage echoed Goodwin by complaining about “sectarian voting and cheating” in the by-election.
The Reform leader wrote to the police to urge them to investigate alleged cases of “family voting” – an illegal practice where two voters use one polling booth and potentially direct each other on voting.
Greens’ campaigning criticised
Reform attacked the Green’s use of an Urdu language campaign video which featured a shot of Sir Keir Starmer meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – something which critics argue was aimed at tapping into sectarian hostility in the Pakistani community.
Towler said the video was “f*cking disgraceful… and then they say other people are divisive”.
He said that Reform had used the by-election to train “thousands of activists on how to campaign” and that the party’s base would be fired up by the Green’s victory and an incident in which the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was defaced with graffiti.
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He said: “The Green result… it will not depress our activists, it will do the opposite. It will basically say to them, ‘we cannot fail’.
“Results like what happened last night and things like the attack on Churchill, that will play to those people of all ethnicities and backgrounds who are worried about the future of our country.
“And if you’re concerned about the future of our country in that sort of way, then you will look at the Tories, particularly after May, and just say ‘these people no longer have the capacity to represent us. They may want to, but they can’t do it’.”
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