The Gorton and Denton by-election is not just a judgement on who will run the constituency. It sounds the death knell on an entire political strategy.

You could almost feel the blood draining from the face of Labour Party officials as the announcement came in. The party didn’t even come second. It was battered into third place, with 9,364 votes to Reform’s 10,578. The Greens soared to an easy victory, with 14,980 votes.

In a typically charmless statement upon learning of his defeat, Reform candidate Matthew Goodwin said: “The progressives were told how to vote. Islamists and woke progressives came together to dominate the constituency.” In fact, the precise opposite was true. The progressive vote split between Labour and the Greens, but it still wasn’t enough to let Reform slip through the middle, as they had hoped.

This is a seismic moment for the Greens and an exquisite moment of disappointment for Reform. They ran a vicious, hateful campaign. Even in the final moments, unable to summon even a hint of grace, Nigel Farage was spreading division and grievance, complaining of “sectarian voting and cheating”. But it is also something else: the final development in the long-running saga of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff.

His government career ended earlier this month, when he left Downing Street over the Peter Mandelson scandal. But his overall........

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