Green Triumph Is Catastrophic for Starmer, Terrible for Farage

For a governing party, defeat in a midterm by-election involving fewer than 40,000 people is usually nothing to sweat about. The loss by Britain’s Labour administration of a hitherto safe seat in northwest England is nothing short of catastrophic.

Defeat in the Manchester suburb of Gorton and Denton came not as expected at the hands of Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK, but via an engaging young plumber called Hannah Spencer, representing the Green Party in its new social-justice activist guise.