Gorton and Denton was a disaster for Labour - can Starmer find a way back?

The first ever Green by-election win, their first ever MP in the north of England, all in the first electoral test for the relatively new Green leader Zack Polanski. This is his moment - and reasonably so. 

Not wanting to punch a bruise, but ironically there's something of the Andy Burnham about the new Green MP Hannah Spencer - her lilt, her approach, the way she talks about her plumbing job, her roots in the community - all a style Labour would be jealous of.

And Labour could have had it too, had Burnham not been blocked by Keir Starmer.

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She will enter Parliament a perpetual reminder of a choice Labour could have had but Keir Starmer blocked.

Make no mistake about it, this is a disaster for Labour.

The party held the Gorton and Denton seat at the last general election by over 50%, and it was Labour's 38th safest seat.

Less than a week ago, one of Labour's campaign team was swearing they would win, a message being repeated confidently amongst Labour MPs in the last 24 hours.

Yet this morning the party is in third place - one of the top ten by-election losses of all time.

Starmer's by-election loss record now two out of two, after losing to Reform UK in Runcorn less than a year ago.

But it's not the raw results alone that will cause the difficulty for Starmer - it's the nature of the loss to another progressive party, and therefore a defeat which hits every Labour neurosis.

The Labour campaign made little sense. The party was fighting against Reform UK - opposing the extremist entrant, as they saw it, in the campaign and wanting to present themselves as the mainstream opponent.

Yet Reform UK were not, in practice, the opponent. Their defeat was at the hands of the Greens, the failure was votes bleeding not to the right and Reform UK, but to the left and into the arms of Zack Polanski.

Read more:
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Who is new Green MP Hannah Spencer?
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So why couldn't Labour fight against enemy? Was it because this would be too complex?

The Green campaign against Labour relied on some of the most tricky issues for the party of government - Gaza, immigration and the cost of living.

Keir Starmer has pursued a middle road on Gaza, which inflames his base, is pushing through hardline policies to curb migration - remember the "island of strangers" speech - and campaigns on cost of living while prices are still going up.

Through 2024 and 2025, Labour MPs were worried that Starmer's closeness with Donald Trump and suspending MPs for voting for the two-child benefit cap and tight constraints on the economy were harming the left flank of their electoral coalition.

Now, they have proof that this could be the case, and even very senior allies of the prime minister are demanding a course correction.

So-called "Blue Labour" ideas, which Starmer followed, seemingly at the behest of his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, are now under fire.

"This has got to be the end of the 'punch left' strategy," one Cabinet source told me.

Will Starmer be pushed therefore, into a course correction to save his own skin - and is this wise?

If he is bounced into being more true to "Labour value", what does that mean in practice?

Could it mean a path of higher borrowing, looser immigration and a more accommodating stance with the EU?

Or - as some Labour folk suggest - this would mean a higher political price paid for a switch, alienating middle England unnecessarily to deal with an internal party problem.

So where might the PM land? In truth - it's hard to tell.

I interviewed Keir Starmer to find out, and beyond the flash of irritation and weariness, there were few clues.

While the PM repeated the mantra that he would not stand down, there was no acknowledgement that policy or personnel needed to change.

In an extraordinary move, he simply repeated the lines to take - that Labour were the party that stood against extremists, an approach that had been shown to fail in the early hours of Thursday morning.

He had nothing else to say.

The Keirobot 2000 had nothing to move on the conversation.

And that's where the fear lies - not that Keir Starmer picks the wrong course next, but that he himself does not know where to go.

Having subcontracted politics to aides, and shown he can be buffeted round by the figures around him, just where will someone who embraced the socially conservative blue Labour approach and is now being told to drop it go - and is it wherever will give him an easy life?

To survive the coming weeks, Keir Starmer must show he can lead, and knows why he's going to his destination.

Interviews with empty slogans and a promise of equidistance from Green and Reform may not cut it for much longer.

(c) Sky News 2026: Gorton and Denton was a disaster for Labour - can Starmer find a way back?