When Green Party heroine Hannah Spencer delivered her victory speech after the Gorton and Denton by-election, it proved there are still politicians connected to us ordinary people
Memories are immortal. With the power to give us joy and perspective at the same time. To listen to Green Party heroine Hannah Spencer deliver her victory speech after the Gorton and Denton by-election was to be reminded there are still politicians connected to us ordinary people.
Hannah’s skill, bringing the kind of real hope so many of us feared might have been lost, brought back memories of a time when Labour politicians spoke with such conviction – and delivered on it. Now we have government ministers who, in opposition, said all the right things – before turning their backs on us. And plumber Hannah’s electrifying, yet simple, six-minute speech will have sent fear coursing through a Labour government riven with betrayal. Good.
Witness Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, condemning Iran for having the temerity to fight back after being bombed at the weekend. Then you get a sense of why Hannah and her party are gaining traction with those who reject seeing innocent people killed.
Domestically, there’s the two-child benefit cap, the Island of Strangers speech with which Prime Minister SirKeir Starmer abandoned people of colour in this country. The scrapping of indefinite leave to remain, the scrapping of jury trials for certain crimes – just some of the reasons why Hannah could yet represent a tip of the electoral iceberg.
Her speech was all the more powerful because, as a white, working-class woman, the poisonous Reform candidate, Matt Goodwin, couldn’t attack her. What could he say? Given what he’s said since about it being a sectarian by-election I’m sure he’d have loved for her to have been a brown woman wearing a hijab so he could demonise her. He’d have loved the chance to repeat the shameful, racist lie, proffered by the hapless Manchester United part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, that the country has been colonised.
Hannah, though, spoke the language of so many good people around the UK – people that Goodwin, with his divisive, one-trick pony rhetoric, wants to hoodwink into believing are under threat. Hannah’s paean to the honest folk of Gorton and Denton, just trying to work hard to have a nice life, was a snapshot of the bigger picture.
It means Labour need to get their act together. It represented yet another reminder, if one were needed, that the incestuous political classes remain utterly detached from reality. Hannah’s speech sounded more authentically working class than the vast majority of current Labour MPs. No longer can the Green Party be lampooned as a collection of idealists, fantasists and hippies whose world view belonged on a different planet.
Led by the fearless Zack Polanski, the 2026 Greens engage the media head on, without dodging questions. Their social media reaches new audiences and wipes the floor with traditional parties. And their skill at retaining the umbilical cord of relatability to the communities they live, work and grew up in, should worry the life out of Labour.
Starmer and his cronies have held voters hostage, knowing many wouldn’t countenance embracing the racist, xenophobic and extremist policies of Reform and the Tories. But Hannah’s gentle, yet magnificent six-and-a-half minutes of triumph drove a stake through the heart of the idea that the good people have gone.
They’re out there. In our communities. In our workplaces. They are our friends, our workmates, our neighbours. They are you.
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