The decision by Sir Keir Starmer to make an appearance in a by-election earlier this week, just days before the voters of Gorton and Denton go to the polls, underlines just how desperate the situation is for Labour.
It is almost unprecedented for a serving prime minister to visit a by-election constituency before the votes have been counted. So unusual is it that nobody could actually remember when, or even if it last happened.
Prime ministers normally reserve such appearances for the day after, if they have the opportunity to go and congratulate a successful candidate who has somehow vindicated them.
But these are desperate times for Labour and Starmer’s government, still less than 20 months on from a historic general election victory.
Labour is currently the third favourite in the seat between a surge in support for Zack Polanski’s Green Party on the left and the march of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right.
The prime minister has already survived one attempted coup, when Scottish leader Anas Sarwar called for him to go over the fallout from Peter Mandelson’s links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But a third-place finish in this seat – one of Labour’s safest – could be the end of a premiership that has been deeply unpopular from day one, littered with U-turns and constant struggles to get anything going.
Historical buffs may liken the situation to the Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942, when British and Commonwealth forces made a last stand and turned back Hitler’s panzer divisions in north Africa, and with it the fortunes of the war.
Given the language that Labour has been using about Reform, describing its politics as “far right” and “racist”, you can well imagine that this is exactly what they have in mind.
For those with an interest in much more recent history, though, the deployment of former prime minister Gordon Brown at the last minute to save the day is very familiar. In 2014, his late intervention was credited with saving the No campaign against Scottish independence after Alex Salmond had taken the UK to the brink of splitting up.
But Starmer’s appearance and Mr Brown’s deployment are examples of a by-election campaign in which Labour has not only thrown the kitchen sink but every possible utensil it could lay its hands on.
A torrent of MPs, ministers and cabinet ministers have been pitching up in the constituency in a bid to persuade voters not to give up on Labour.
We have to remember, though, that on 4 July 2024, Labour won more than 50 per cent of the vote in this seat. It is the party’s seventh safest seat, so the fact that it is having to throw unprecedented levels of campaign resources at it just to stay in the conversation of being possible winners illustrates how far the party has fallen in public estimation; below 20 per cent in the polls, to be exact.
It took the Tories 12 years before they started losing seats like this in government.
Ironically, if Labour does pull off the miracle of Gorton and Denton, the two people Starmer will have to thank are two he wronged. Deputy leader Lucy Powell, the first person sacked from Starmer’s cabinet, has led the campaign from the front with the almost daily support of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, the man Starmer personally blocked from running as the candidate in the seat.
Instead, it has relied on an inoffensive councillor, Angeliki Stogia, as the candidate against the Greens’ more charismatic Hannah Spencer and Reform’s Matthew Goodwin.
All the time, the campaign has been overshadowed by the Mandelson scandal and questions over Starmer’s judgment in appointing him as ambassador to the US despite knowing of his nefarious associations with Epstein.
In the end, though, as Ms Powell admitted in an interview with The Independent, this contest is a forerunner of the fights for Labour to come up to the next general election.
The party will have to take on the Reform surge and try to hold off advances from Farage’s party. But to do that, it will have to rely heavily on tactical voting.
This is why a Green victory will be worse for Starmer and is what Labour fears because it could, according to pollsters and Labour MPs, see a realignment of British politics, with voters given licence to see Zack Polanski’s party as a genuine alternative on the left.
The various leadership camps behind candidates to replace Starmer do not think even a disastrous third place on Thursday would be bad enough for him to go immediately – nobody wants to have a leadership campaign in the middle of an election campaign for the parliaments in Scotland and Wales and councils up and down England.
But even victory may not be enough to save him if the local and devolved elections are a bloodbath on 7 May.
The effort Labour has put into this, and the PM’s personal stake in it, underlines that there may not have been a more important by-election in British politics for decades.
Nobody really knows who will emerge as the winner on Friday morning, but everything is at stake.
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