In three weeks, the people of Gorton and Denton will head to the polls for their byelection. And the rest of the UK will be watching. The attention given to this vote will be huge. The main talking points are the verdict it gives on Keir Starmer’s premiership, the decision to stop Andy Burnham standing, Reform UK potentially taking the seat and the Greens being the current favourites. It is both an important election in its own right, and a microcosm of the biggest political questions facing the country.

Given the state of flux that politics seems to be in, you might think it would be hard to predict what is going to happen. Luckily, there is a very good indicator of what we can expect: at the end of October, there was a byelection in the Welsh parliament seat of Caerphilly – the similarities between that vote and Gorton and Denton are stark.

Both areas had been safe Labour seats for a long time (though Gorton and Denton and its boundaries were created for the last election, its previous forms have been mainly Labour). Both were set against the backdrop of a deeply unpopular Labour government (in Caerphilly’s case, it was the Welsh Labour government in Cardiff Bay). And in both, Reform committed huge resources towards winning the seat. And finally, in both cases a left-of-centre party besides Labour appeared to have the best chance of stopping Reform. In Caerphilly, it was Plaid Cymru, which won. In Gorton, the Greens’ early polling numbers are strong.

I will never forget sitting in the count at Caerphilly on 23 October last year.........

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