As Reform target northern towns Gorton and Denton in a by-election takeover bid from Labour, we meet the locals to see what the town really think – and how some are fighting back
A tall man in an Adidas tracksuit is crossing Market Square in Denton, pulled along by an English bulldog. “I feel a bit sorry for Starmer, if I’m honest,” Mike Mathews, who rescued five-year-old Frankie as a puppy, confides. “We had 14 years of corrupt PPE contracts, Partygate, Michelle Mone, and somebody bought him some glasses. Hardly the same, is it?” Mike hasn’t decided who he will vote for in the upcoming by-election in the Greater Manchester constituency, now less than two weeks away. “I’m waiting to see who can best keep Reform out,” the 58-year-old public sector worker says. “I don’t know why people can’t see what they are.”
A string of Labour big-hitters have flooded the seat determined to convince Mike and others the answer to that question is them, and that Labour’s roots run deep under the city region. “I’m sympathetic,” Mike says. “A campaigner from Labour knocked on my door the other day and I told him, ‘keep going, brother’.”
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It’s rare that Denton, a town in Tameside once famous for hat-making, makes national headlines. Back in 2006, there was Les and Beryl Lailey who ate a tin of Buxted chicken given to them in a wedding hamper in 1956. And last year Denton held the title of ‘least-used railway station in Britain’ – but it has been pushed to fourth in 2026. So, now the cameras of the world are trained on the constituency for a by-election that could determine Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s future, some residents are making the most of it.
“I don’t like my country anymore,” shouts Catherine Gates, 50, who is head-to-toe in Man Utd kit, with dyed red hair to match. “It’s not British anymore. There are homeless veterans all over our streets and migrants in hotels. It’s disgusting.” Labour’s new election pledge to hook Denton’s tumbleweed station up to the tram network, may breathe new life into a town used to hard times. But Catherine waves away our camera. “I’ve lived all my life in Denton. They promise you this, they promise you that – and it never, ever happens.”
Less than two weeks until the critical by-election, if Denton was the only part of the constituency, you wouldn’t need esteemed pollster John Curtice to tell you Labour were in trouble. But other parts of the constituency like Longsight, Gorton, Levenshulme and Burnage still have long-established Irish communities, and are now in parts very diverse – with third-generation Asian populations as well as students from all over the world. Here, Labour’s hopes are vulnerable to an insurgent Green Party, and its candidate Hannah Spencer, a local councillor, plumber and trainee plasterer.
When I meet Labour’s bright and energetic candidate Angeliki Stogia in Cha Cha Chai in Longsight, on a street selling elaborate desserts and salwar kameez, she says the by-election is a perilous moment. “This by-election is a very dangerous moment, and could have consequences across the country,” she says. “Reform don’t care about the people of Gorton and Denton – they just want to use them to spread hatred.”
Reform’s candidate Matt Goodwin – endorsed by Tommy Robinson – is extreme even by the hard right party’s standards. He frequently echoes ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theories around “white people” being “replaced by 2063” and has even argued that UK-born people from diverse backgrounds are not necessarily British. “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’,” he has said.
Born in Arta in north-west Greece, the daughter of a nursery teacher and a trade unionist, 47-year-old Stogia has one of Goodwin’s “pieces of paper” that make her British. She is also staunchly Mancunian. Having come to the city in 1995 to study at Manchester Metropolitan University, the young football fan worked as a steward at “the best football team in the world” – she won’t say if it’s red or blue – to support herself as a student. Over 30 years later, she is passionate about the city that welcomed her.
“I take Reform very personally and very seriously,” Stogia says. “The idea that some UK-born people from diverse background can’t be British is insulting a lot of constituents. Many, many people are very worried. I had a mum on the doorstep, who had come from Bangladesh when she was four years old, crying her eyes out. She said she was building an extension on her house. She said, ‘why am I building it, if I have to go back to Bangladesh? I don’t know anyone there’. I don’t think they will ever realise how diverse this constituency is, because they don’t care. What they care about is the politics of division. They don’t care about a mum who needs repairs on her home.”
In Denton, where Reform’s message is targeted – Goodwin once researched Far Right activity in Tameside as an academic – local residents have been made vulnerable to division by events outside Stogia’s control. Some are angry about the ‘Trigger Me Timbers’ Whatsapp group scandal involving former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, and the fact Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham was barred from standing in the constituency. Political scars over winter fuel and disability cuts cut deep, and Peter Mandelson’s lies are long beyond the final straw.
At the big ALDI in Denton’s shiny Crownpoint North shopping centre, over the dizzying flyover, veteran Tom Sanderson, 69, who served in the Kings Regiment, and his wife Irene, 66 who went from machinist to McDonalds, put down their bags for life. “At least Boris looked you in the face and lied,” Tom says. Matt Goodwin likes to tell audiences that “Manchester made me”. He says his grandfather worked at a steel factory in the city while his mother worked for the University of Salford, which he later attended.
But the question is whether he and Reform’s backers can break a community that has come together against division not just once, and not only in the worst possible of circumstances, but again, and again, and again. In contrast, Stogia describes the city as a tapestry. “I think Reform don’t understand the place or the people,” she says. “What makes Manchester work. When tragedy strikes, Manchester pulls together – every community, however many months or years they have lived in the city. Whether it was the IRA bomb in 1996, the Heaton Park tragedy last year, or the Manchester Arena Attack in 2017, people come together and support each other.”
At the Hide Out Youth Zone on Hyde Road where Stogia meets Labour Secretary of State Lisa Nandy for a tour, there is a wall of flags drawn in bright felt tip that hint at the roots of the young people who use it – Ivory coast, Ireland, Angola, Jamaica, Burundi, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Barbados, Nigeria, Bahamas, Romania and Trinidad and Tobago.
Stogia looks up at the wall, and the diverse bunch of kids playing pool and five-a-side, and doing their homework. “Should these kids not be here?” she asks.
Alongside the hand-drawn flags is a black and yellow drawing of the Manchester bee – a 150-year-old emblem that symbolises the city’s industry, work ethic, and became a powerful symbol of unity, resilience, and community strength following the arena attack. A week on Thursday, Greater Manchester’s unity will be tested once again. Labour’s candidate believes it will rise to the challenge. “This city knows Labour has got its back,” Stogia says. “We need to go faster and harder, and I hope people give me the chance to do that.”
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