Green delight sparks nightmare for Labour

Keir Starmer is facing an ultimatum from his own party to change direction or face a leadership challenge within months after the Greens humiliated Labour with a historic byelection victory in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton.

- Peter Walker Josh Halliday Kiran Stacey

Overturning a 13,000 Labour majority from the general election, • Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green councillor, became the party's fifth MP yesterday. Reform UK's Matthew Goodwin came second, just ahead of the Labour candidate, Angeliki Stogia.

The scale of defeat in an area that had returned Labour MPs for nearly a century, and where Starmer's party still believed it could win even on polling day, plunged his ministers and MPs into renewed despair just weeks after he saw off a challenge to his position.

While only a handful of backbenchers called openly for Starmer to depart in the wake of the result, even loyal ministers said the surge in Green fortunes under the leadership of Zack Polanski meant the prime minister had to address an exodus of Labour voters from its left flank.

In a pointed comment, Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister and a key figure on Labour's left, called the result "a wake-up call". But Starmer appeared minded to ignore the pressure, using a TV clip and letter to his MPs to attack the Greens as an "extreme" leftwing equivalent of Reform UK, saying they could not replicate the success in a general election.

Without a significant turnaround in his fortunes, Starmer could see a leadership challenge after elections in May to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments and English councils, with Labour currently expected to fare badly in all of them.

One new poll yesterday suggested that Labour could be pushed into fourth place in Scotland for the first time, behind not just the SNP and Reform, but also the Scottish Greens.