MANCHESTER — Keir Starmer is fighting to stop the toxic overspill of the Epstein files from destroying his premiership — but a by-election in the suburbs of south Manchester could offer up his next nightmare.

The Feb. 26 by-election here in Gorton and Denton — in what should be a rock-solid Labour safe seat — is taking place against the bleakest of backdrops for Starmer.

The contest is a microcosm of British politics in 2026: The deeply unpopular Labour Party is struggling to fend off a challenge by a very online, Nigel Farage-backed right-winger. A split is emerging in the left-wing vote. And there’s some intense Labour melodrama to cap it all off.

The prime minister blocked the locally popular Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from taking on the challenge, stopping a would-be Starmer rival for the Labour leadership from entering the House of Commons.

That angered Labour MPs, whose mood has only darkened this week as the prime minister struggles to contain a scandal over his former ambassador to the U.S. Peter Mandelson’s association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

If Starmer lasts as far as this by-election, a defeat in what has been a Labour stronghold for over a century may deal him a mortal blow.

And Labour’s rivals know it.

The Reform threat

Matt Goodwin is flanked by close protection heavies wearing earpieces as he takes POLITICO on a walk around Debdale Park in freezing conditions. 

Reform UK’s candidate is a former liberal academic who once documented the far-right. He’s now an anti-immigration hardliner flying the flag for Farage’s insurgent populist party. Goodwin is wearing a huge teal rosette, no coat, just a gilet and jeans. An official Reform photographer documents our interview.

For the intense GB News host, traveling around the constituency with a security detail, this is a “four-week by-election campaign to bring down Keir Starmer.” 

“If we win here, Keir Starmer will almost certainly have to resign,” Goodwin claims. “It will be too embarrassing. It will be unbearable for No.10, especially after the Andy Burnham saga, there’s a whole wing of the Labour Party waiting to pounce on Starmer.”

Reform wants to cast this local race as a referendum on Starmer himself — and not the Labour Party that’s held this area with only one exception since 1906.

Beset with problems in Westminster, the prime minister seems only to be gifting Reform’s candidate a way out of what might ordinarily be a bigger controversy. Goodwin has been endorsed by far-right British activist Tommy Robinson, who Farage has long sought to keep far away from the movements he’s built.

Goodwin repeatedly declined to denounce the endorsement, instead saying: “Father Christmas could come out tomorrow and endorse me, and I’d still just shrug my shoulders, because it’s Gorton and Denton that is going to decide the by-election.”

Pressed again, Goodwin has a get out. Labour, he agues, are a “holier-than-holy party” that wants to weaponize the endorsement from Robinson — but isn’t getting its own house in order. The Reform hopeful brings up Mandelson’s links to Epstein, as well as the fresh allegations — now subject of a police investigation — that the former Labour heavyweight shared market-sensitive government information with the disgraced financier.

Goodwin also has retorts at the ready when questioned about his many hard-line comments on immigration. This is a constituency where around 44 percent of people identify as from minority ethnic groups, and around a third of the population are Muslim.

He points to the supportive Turkish owners of a cafe in Denton he’s been frequently visiting, and to Poles, Hong Kongers and Sikhs lending a hand to his campaign. “There is a very misleading media narrative about this by-election, which I think you would do well to challenge,” he says at the edge of the park shortly before our interview wraps up. “The lazy narrative is there are students and minorities versus an old, white working class. That’s not what is happening here.”

Even so, Goodwin acknowledges the other big dynamic at play here. The left-wing Greens are “likely to do quite well among students,” he says, as well as performing “well among local Muslim voters, particularly, who are animated by issues around Gaza.”

The Labour fightback

Angeliki Stogia is eager to stress that it’s the “bread and butter issues” voters care about here.

We meet the city councillor — selected as the Labour Party candidate for this race after Burnham was blocked — at a British-South Asian chai shop on the other side of the constituency.

The city councillor says a string of high-profile Labour frontbenchers have come up to support her campaign. They include Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer, who has been speaking directly to the South Asian community about how the government is supporting Palestinians.

Stogia acknowledges the “stakes are high” in what she’s careful to stress is a “two-horse race” between Labour and Reform. She says she fears a spiral of disaffection with politics will only be entrenched by a Goodwin victory.

 “This is about their future, and this is about who can serve them the best,” she says — as she breaks into tears. “And I think I am that person. I’m getting emotional. I care about this community, I lived in this community. So I care about it and for me this is the fight. The party’s behind me and I want to get the people behind me.

“It’s about listening and leaning in to the problems and offering real solutions, not slogans, because slogans are good and they make good telly, they make good radio but when the show is over on the 26th [of February], people want someone to solve their problems on the doorstep.”

The cost of living, high street degradation and fly-tipping are key issues animating voters here, as they are across Britain.

But the feeling that those longstanding problems aren’t being dealt with quickly enough by the Labour government in the public’s eyes means Stogia has a hard job on the doorstep.

A progressive push

To Labour’s left, the Greens are playing up the local angle too. Candidate Hannah Spencer is not just a borough councillor, but a plumber taking exams to qualify as a plasterer while she hits the campaign trail.

Both Labour and the Greens insist they’re the most plausible party to keep out Reform. And privately, officials from each of the main parties say Reform is only likely to win if the left-wing vote splits significantly.

Labour officials insist they’ve learned from the Caerphilly by-election in Wales in October, when voters eager to keep out Reform departed from 100 years of Labour to opt for Plaid Cymru. Labour’s support plummeted there — and the left-leaning Welsh nationalists delivered both Starmer and Farage an upset. 

Green aides are keen to stress that they’re flooding the constituency with up to 400 volunteers a day — and even managed to leaflet every home in the constituency (more than 40,000 doors) on Wednesday.

“Last week I was plastering away,” Spencer says as she marvels at the Green operation based out of a former estate agents’ in the Gorton side of the constituency. 

Volunteers are surrounded by boxes of leaflets draped in the Palestinian flag and focusing on the Greens’ support for Gaza, while highlighting comments that inflamed tensions between Labour and Muslim supporters that Starmer has long tried to disown. The leaflets are to be handed out to worshippers at the mosque at prayer times.

“The whole Labour strategy sort of seems to be the tactical one again of vote Labour to keep Reform out, but everyone’s used to hearing them saying that about the Tories,” Spencer tells POLITICO — after leaving her four rescue greyhounds, a regular feature on the campaign trail, in the safe hands of party activists.

“And I think now people are thinking: why would we keep just doing that as a threat rather than voting for who we actually want to vote for?”

Questions over authenticity and ties to Manchester are also characterising this race. 

Spencer jokes that Goodwin’s personal link is that he used to deliver pizzas to the constituency as a student. The Reform candidate in turn turns Labour’s own criticisms back on Stogia, pointing out she “grew up in Greece.” 

“I find it ironic that I’m the one that’s facing criticism when my family comes from Salford,” he shoots back.

Spencer is meanwhile bearing the brunt of online disinformation spilling out into the race. She had to deny living in Hale — one of the county’s plusher areas — and she says one person passing the office in recent days shouted “you’re not even a plumber.” Her ex-partner has been the subject of Covid conspiracy theories.

Reform went so far as referring Labour to the police over a “misleading” video edited to look like Goodwin had criticized Manchester. The complaint went nowhere — but it served to highlight just how dirty this race is getting.

If Labour scrapes through here, few are likely to applaud Starmer. 

A loss would only start another round of doom-mongering — and present Burnham’s supporters a fresh case for the so-called “King of the North” to return to Westminster.

Voters in Gorton and Denton were quick to bring up Burnham’s blocking — and speak of him far more affectionately than they do Labour.

A Green victory could be the worst outcome for Starmer in the long run. The party, run by self-styled “eco-populist” Zack Polanski, would then have a stronger case in telling voters they can vote Green and stop Reform.

“That is fucking deadly,” said one Labour MP, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive party matters. “Psychologically, something would have broken, and the Greens know that — that’s why they’re putting everything into this.”