I was in the room when Keir Starmer’s fate was sealed in crushing by-election defeat

Keir Starmer was dealt the most catastrophic blow of his premiership at 4.30am today when the Green Party snatched a crunch by-election victory.

The death knell of the Prime Minister’s leadership followed a seismic ballot upset in the Gorton and Denton constituency.

I watched Zack Polanski stroll into Manchester Central to declare he was feeling “bold and confident” moments after the clock struck 10pm and the polls closed.

As the night wore on and the piles of ballots grew, that confidence didn’t look misplaced.

By the small hours, Labour officials were already conceding to me that the signs were ominous and that the Greens had managed to “turn out support in a way they wouldn’t be able to replicate at a general election”.

Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell eventually took centre stage before broadcasters to concede the Greens had won the “argument that they were best placed” to keep Reform UK out of the area.

In the end, the vote was nowhere near as narrow as the other parties might have hoped it to be – with the Greens in pole position at 14,980 votes, Reform at 10,578 and Labour in third at 9,364.

A small mercy for us journalists came in the form of no recount.

But Hannah Spencer’s victory in a three-horse race shows just how her party’s green campaign machine is hardening into a fully fledged political force, one that is clearly capable of converting local momentum into real electoral wins.

Sir Keir will be hoping that force dims in the run-up to May’s local elections and, ultimately, the next general election.

But after his nightmare defeat, he will be wary that a surging Green vote could siphon support from Labour in key battlegrounds.
All while Reform eats into the Party from the right.

The Greens were so confident in their candidate that a note had been sent to journalists on Thursday afternoon with accreditation details for the then candidate’s victory rally, including a morning press conference “introducing Hannah Spencer MP”.

Hours before she had been crowned their fifth Parliamentarian on the Commons’ green benches, she was already set for an afternoon of “listening to voters” by hosting her first constituency surgery the day of her triumph.

Gorton and Denton is a story of two halves. In the West, the wards closest to the centre of Manchester have significant Muslim populations, at 40%. It was this sectarian vote that ultimately caused the political earthquake I witnessed on Friday morning in a buzzing counting hall.

But deeper into the suburbs to the east, the picture is dramatically different with a two-way battle between Reform and Labour.
Voters there live in working-class post-industrial towns that have a much older population, who are almost 91% white.
was quick out the blocks to declare the election “a victory for sectarian voting and cheating”.

Now a post-mortem will take place inside Labour’s high command, with senior figures poring over ward-level data, turnout models and messaging missteps to work out how a seat won with a 13,000 majority just 18 months ago slipped from their grasp in the way it has.

The Greens’ victory at Gorton and Denton represents the sixth largest Labour majority to be overturned at a by-election since the Second World War.

It is likely that Sir Keir’s decision to block “King of the North”, Andy Burnham, from running will have a role to play in the Party’s “cause of death” in the constituency.

As part of the inquest, an assessment will be made on the impact of “high levels of family voting”.

An election observer group warned it had witnessed the illegal practice where two voters use one polling booth and potentially direct each other on voting in 68% of polling stations observed – affecting 12% of those voters observed.

But make no mistake, a shift in Britain’s political tilt was also witnessed overnight.