It wasn’t even close. The scale of victory of the Green party’s Hannah Spencer in Gorton and Denton changes everything. For years, British politics has oscillated between snuffing out hope and stoking fear. The main parties converged around an economic model that irretrievably broke in the crash of 2008, then encouraged understandably furious voters to blame foreigners for the wreckage. In south-east Manchester, thousands of people just revolted against that wretched consensus.

The Greens’ campaign will be studied for years. Less than two years ago, they limped into third place in the constituency on just over 13% of the vote, with barely any ground operation to speak of. They started this contest with scant data and little local infrastructure, up against a Labour machine that had dominated the area for generations and, in 2024, secured more than half the vote and a majority north of 13,000.

So how did a party long dismissed as fringe upend political reality? I spent a good time in Gorton and Denton, and I can tell you. Like New York’s Zohran Mamdani, it maintained a relentless focus on the cost of living crisis. In Hannah Spencer, a local plumber, it selected a candidate who radiates authenticity. It paired hopeful, sharp-edged social media with old-fashioned shoe leather, galvanising thousands of activists to knock on doors – many for the first time in their lives. By polling day, the Greens had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. When I visited, I met lifelong Labour voters – many of them older working-class white people regarded as prime Reform recruits – defecting to the Greens. But in the final days, the party’s grassroots army noticed undecided voters suddenly flooding to their camp.

This was a vindication of the unabashedly populist strategy pursued by Zack Polanski since he........

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