UK PM Keir Starmer suffers blow as Greens win Gorton & Denton election

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered another blow to his leadership on Friday after his left-wing Green Party won a special election in a seat dominated by the ruling Labor Party for decades.

The result in Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester is likely to intensify speculation about the position of Starmer, who has come under pressure due to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and a series of departures from Downing Street.

Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer won 14,980 votes, or 40.7% of the vote, for the party’s first byelection victory.

The right-wing Reform England party came second with 10,578 votes and 28.7 percent of the votes, while the Labor Party came third with 25.4 percent and 9,364 votes.

Yields on British government bonds, known as gilts, were slightly higher on the news. The 10-year gold yield rose by one basis point to 4.290% on Friday morning, while the 30-year gold yield was marginally higher at 5.083%.

Spencer, a 34-year-old plumber and plasterer, became the fifth Green MP to sit in Britain’s 650-seat House of Commons.

“Instead of working for a good life, we work to fill the pockets of billionaires. Our blood is drying up, and I don’t think it is extreme or radical to think that hard work will bring you a good life,” he said in his victory speech.

Labor won the seat of Gorton and Denton with almost 51% of the vote in the national general election in July 2024, when Starmer comes to power after 14 years in office and unseats the Conservative Party.

The change in fortunes of the ruling party appears to suggest that voters may be willing to look beyond the main parties such as Labor and the Conservatives or Conservatives to more alternative parties such as the Greens and Reform UK in the general local elections in May.

John Curtice, a well-known political scientist and professor of politics at Britain’s University of Strathclyde, said the results showed the two main parties were being challenged.

Curtice told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday: “We’re facing an unprecedented challenge from the Reformation side, as if it’s coming from the right, hitting the more socially conservative end of England, challenging the Conservative party. And now it looks like the Greens are serious rivals with Labor for voters on the left and for voters with a more socially liberal bent.”

“Historically we used to say that elections in Britain were won and lost in the centre-ground. That’s not what’s happening now,” he added.

“The Green Party will definitely be successful,” Damian Lyons Lowe, CEO of London-based pollster Survation, told CNBC.European Early Release” on Friday.