Gorton and Denton shows the Liberal Democrats one thing above all: expect more squeeze
I want to start by saying a huge thank you to Jackie Pearcey who stepped up to represent the Liberal Democrats in this by-election, and as always brought intellect, drive and real local knowledge to the fight. Attending hustings and representing our values in a parliamentary by-election is hard work. Thank you Jackie! This is also at time when the local team in Manchester face local elections in a few short weeks. I am sure the team are digesting the impact of this result, and ALDC are here to support them in their efforts as they fight their council elections.
Today’s Gorton and Denton by-election result should be a key consideration for Liberal Democrats across the country. The Greens won with 14,980 votes, Reform UK came second on 10,578, and Labour crashed into third on 9,364. The Liberal Democrats polled 653 votes. Based on the official vote totals, that is roughly 40.7% for the Greens, 28.7% for Reform, 25.4% for Labour and 1.8% for the Liberal Democrats.
For Labour, this is a humiliation. For Reform, it is a strong second place but still an underperformance against the scale of hype around them. For the Greens, it is a potential breakthrough that will generate weeks of excited commentary about a new insurgency. But for the Liberal Democrats, the real lesson is colder and more practical: squeeze is king.
There is one positive that Liberal Democrats should not ignore. The Greens won by doing what we have been saying for years works: heavy literature, intense doorstep activity, visible local campaigning, and treating a by-election like a ground war rather than just a social media mood board. In that sense, this result is not a repudiation of Liberal Democrat campaigning. It is a reminder that our basic theory of victory remains right. Elections are still won by organisation, repetition, contact rates, message discipline and turning supporters out. But other parties are gaining ground on us because they are copying our techniques.
A second positive is that Reform did not win. After weeks of media noise, they were beaten by more than 4,400 votes. In a contest where anger, grievance and anti-establishment rhetoric were meant to propel them forward, they still fell short. That matters. It suggests Reform can be resisted when there is a determined and well-organised campaign against them. Even when the Greens and Labour split the anti-Reform vote. Those who do not know the constituency should not believe Reform when they say it was low on their target list, rewind a month and they would have expected to win it easily.
But the negatives are their too.
First, this result further fragments the anti-Conservative, anti-Reform side of politics. A Green win in a seat like this will encourage the idea that they, not the Liberal Democrats, are the natural challenger across a much wider range of places than is actually true. That will not just boost Green morale; it will boost Green expectations. They will now believe they can win far beyond their real base. Just as Labour under Corbyn pushed up vote share in our seats, stopping us beating the Conservatives, while still finishing in a poor third place.
A result like this strengthens the Greens in the national narrative. Even where they are weak on the ground, they will now benefit from momentum, attention and the self-fulfilling mythology of a breakthrough. In politics, that matters. A party that looks newly credible becomes harder to squeeze itself. And that means, again, we must do more squeeze in our areas of strength.
That is the strategic danger. The Greens will read Gorton and Denton as permission to try to become a national challenger. Some on the progressive side of politics will encourage exactly that, and many on the right will too, hoping to fragment opposition to them and lower the winning line. But for the Liberal Democrats, the answer cannot be despair or imitation. The answer is to understand the environment clearly and respond ruthlessly.
We should assume from this morning onward that in every seat we want to win the Liberal Democrats will need to squeeze harder, earlier and more consistently than before. We will need to define the contest fast, taking advantage of the vulnerability in Conservative and Labour seats before others claim that ground. We cannot wait for the next time these seats are up, now is the time to define our targets for this parliament. We will need to tell voters, early and often, who can win and who cannot. We will need to make the tactical case, the local case and the credibility case all at once. And we will need to do it everywhere.
That means more emphasis on bar charts, more emphasis on local record, more emphasis on visible campaigning, more emphasis on doorstep data, and less patience with the fantasy that good politics automatically gets rewarded. In an age of fragmentation, good politics only wins if it is accompanied by ruthless electoral clarity.
Whilst the Greens have learned from us, they have a lot more to learn. There activist base was motivated by the national picture, but they failed to identify real strong local issues to sit alongside national politics, and showed no enthusiasm for taking the hard work of solving them. This focus on local hard work, record and on making sure we demonstrate delivery is still a large point of difference for Liberal Democrats over the Green Party and one we should focus on for these elections and beyond.
So yes, there are one or two encouraging lessons in Gorton and Denton: the old-fashioned, high-volume, on-the-ground campaign still works. But the larger lesson for the Liberal Democrats is harsher. This result will embolden the Greens, complicate tactical voting, leave the door open to Reform UK and intensify the pressure on us in seat after seat.
In other words: loads of squeeze.
That is not a reason to navel gaze. It is a reason to take action.