Dispatch From South Africa: While I Ate Koeksisters, Britain Voted Green

Sunburnt and 11,000km away, I watched a Green shockwave hit Manchester - and Matt Goodwin discover that studio politics has limits.

I have woken up reasonably happy today.

There are several reasons for this - not the least of which being that I’ve spent the past 24 hours or so engorging myself in the sun with prodigious amounts biltong, melktert and koeksisters.

Beyond the high-sugar, high-protein driven bliss I’ve been eating myself into though, the news has just broken in the UK that Hannah Spencer, a plumber and local resident of the constituency, has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with a spectacular 14,980 overturning a massive previous Labour majority of 13,413.

Photo by Alex Bayev on Unsplash

This is, it goes without saying, a spectacular win for the Greens - to turn around Labour’s 39th safest seat is nothing more than a stunning coup d’tat, with Labour only managing 9,364 votes, down from 18,555 votes in the 2024 GE.

The Greens have been on a massive ascendancy over the past half a year or so under the leadership of Zack Polanski, and I feel like this is really where his punchy, overtly progressive rhetoric and appeal to traditional left-wing Labour voters is showing some serious dividends.

Labour has, as many of you will know, disappointed me severely since coming to power. While there have obviously been some excellent policies aimed at alleviating childhood poverty and focusing on education, their increasingly right-wing stance towards immigration and their open alienation and hostility toward the left-wing of not only the PLP but voters have left them deeply, deeply unpopular.

It has felt, especially in the last year, that they have been trying their level best to out-Reform Reform, with Shabana Mahmood herself at times sounding so hardline on migration that I’ve had to double check she wasn’t a doppelgänger of 2024 Suella Braverman.

The Gorton and Denton by-election feels like this is truly where the chickens have come home to roost - and roost angrily they have at the constant vilification of people not privileged enough to be born in the UK.

I am not the only person to notice this rightward drift, and I am, on a personal level, very pleased that Polanski’s outfit saw this canyon wide divide of Labour’s own creation and capitalised on it by sending a message of unity to counter one which has become so explicitly divisive.

Leading me to another even bigger reason to slap a big old, much needed smile on my face - the very public embarrassment of Matt Goodwin on the national stage. Again. Truly, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a man like Goodwin walking onto stage with the look of a man chewing a wasp.

Goodwin was always a baffling choice of candidate for Reform: a former academic with no meaningful connection to the area beyond, perhaps, having once delivered a pizza there as a student, and a man who has argued that people of non-white ethnic backgrounds cannot truly call themselves British in one of the most demographically diverse constituencies in the country. It was never a natural fit.

Neither Reform UK nor Matt Goodwin Speak for the Working Class

Now I’ll be the first to say that Gorton and Denton is a race to which I’ve given the least attention to in years (having had rather a lot going on my side over the past few weeks), but the man just didn’t feel present in the race for this seat. Like at all. It felt like all he was doing was pontificating at people from studios in London. Which, to be honest, is pretty much his only known skill.

This choice also shows us in the most clear terms yet who Reform stands for - not the communities they claim to champion, but the grievance-industrial complex that feeds off them. Reform is not a party of rooted local representation in any way or form, it is purely a franchise operation for professional outrage.

Goodwin’s defeat is therefore not just personal, it is symbolic. Reform tried to drop a culture-war pundit into one of the most diverse constituencies in the country and assumed that anger, amplified loudly enough, would do the rest. Instead, voters looked at the offering and quietly said:

No, thank you, go away, fuck off.

Turns out you cannot build a durable coalition by questioning the Britishness of your own electorate and expecting them to clap along.

And this is where the Greens deserve genuine credit. This was not a protest flicker. This was organisation. Message discipline. A coherent progressive alternative aimed squarely at disillusioned Labour voters who still want investment, still want compassion, still want politics that feels like it is for them rather than about them.

Zack Polanski’s strategy has now translated into a small flashpoint of hope for those of us who still believe in unapologetically progressive politics.

But - and it is an important but - this is still a by-election. By-elections tend more toward political laboratories than they do towards prediction.

They magnify frustration and condense anger, allowing voters to send a message without immediately rewriting the national map. General elections are slower, broader beasts. Turnout shifts. Tactical voting recalibrates. Tribal loyalties, however bruised, often snap back into place when Downing Street is actually on the line.

This result, in isolation, is not proof that the Greens are about to sweep Westminster, nor that Reform has imploded beyond repair. It is a data point, but it is a powerful one.

It’s what should be a deafening warning shot to Labour that alienating your left flank while flirting with right-wing framing has consequences, and it’s a much needed reminder to Reform UK that shouting “Britain” at people at the top of your voice is not the same as representing them.

Today, though, it is entirely permissible to enjoy the symbolism. A diverse seat rejected a candidate who questioned its identity. A progressive campaign outmanoeuvred a grievance machine. And Reform - so often theatrically certain of its own momentum - has been handed a very public, very humbling reminder that studio politics does not always survive contact with actual voters.

Sun, sugar, and schadenfreude - truly not a bad way to wake up.