Keir Starmer’s about to lose his biggest battle yet – it’s sunk to new depths | Politics | News

Is there anything more unpleasant in politics than a parliamentary by-election? The stakes are always high, or at least that’s what the candidates believe, and the confusion begins early. But the Gorton and Denton byelection, billed as a make-or-break moment for the Prime Minister, appears to have sunk into entirely new depths of evil.

Before this contest had even begun, Labor dignitaries were at each other’s throats about the devastatingly expensive cost that would be incurred if Keir’s leadership rival Andy Burnham pulled off his current big job and became the candidate. Thus, the election began with the fading of negative campaigns, without Macunions even knowing which names would be on the ballot.

Now, I’m not so naive as to assume that all goes well with the elections; All it takes is turning on the television on any given day to see MPs fighting each other like rats in a sack. But this one, compared to others of its kind, seems to have quickly descended into new depths of backbiting. So we are left to ask: Have political campaigns gotten worse?

None of the three main contestants of this competition can consider their hands completely clean. In his opening speech to announce Nigel Farage’s election, Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin belittled the Green Party candidate as a danger, painting them as a bogeyman to be both feared and mocked.

Before Mr Goodwin even got to his car, Labor had posted an advert online showing him visiting the city he hoped to represent. It was soon revealed that the video was a selectively edited clip of him satirizing the Conservative Party Conference held recently in the city (a joyful event, no doubt).

What followed was an almost daily briefing war in which political operators worked behind the scenes to dig up some good old-fashioned dirt on their opponents. To be fair to the candidates, they probably had no idea what the party’s speculators were up to.

We soon learned that Green Party pollsters had been kicked out of an assisted living facility, their boss supposedly wanted to shoot everyone with heroin (even though he insisted drug policy was about saving lives), and their candidate had the audacity to take a vacation.

Then came accusations that Reform was scaring local women from leaving their homes and that Labor was “covering up” alleged child sexual assaults. This may all sound shocking, but it’s just some of the propaganda the people of Gorton and Denton have been exposed to.

We’ve probably all said things we regret when under intense stress, but is there really a need for such tactics?

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I’m not sure knowing what car your rival candidate drives helps voters – nor do I think it matters what other academics thought of Mr. Goodwin’s papers a decade ago (though I wonder why they’ve decided to share their wholehearted beliefs only now).

I worked on the other side of the fence during the midterm elections. Yes, I once did some campaigning myself, working for one of the parties (not Labour). We informed the media that Labor candidates did not live in the seats they were running in and gave evidence that one of them once ‘did’ with an accent. But we never did anything like this.

Elections are tense, always have been. And for the teams working with them, the risks may be much higher than they actually are. The pressure from campaign offices in London is often immense, as staff are made to feel that every action they take could be the beginning or the end of a campaign. But such policies often force candidates to engage in abusive campaigns, which can be to the detriment of those they hope to serve.

So call me old fashioned — but maybe the next midterm election will be a little more focused on local issues and a little less focused on what candidates ate for breakfast or where they went on vacation later in the night than what was said on Twitter a decade ago.