Labour could lose six councils in London alone in next month’s elections (Image: Getty)
Labour trailed behind all rival parties to take last place in a Cornwall by-election in yet another blow to Sir Keir Starmer‘s Government. Lyndon Harrison, of Reform UK, held onto the Newquay Porth and Tretherras seat on Cornwall Council with 645 votes, following the death of previous councillor for the area Kevin Towill. He managed to see off the Green Party, which came second with 529 votes, an Independent candidate, with 361, and the Liberal Democrats, with 349.
In a clear sign that politics has broadened from the traditional two party system, both the Conservatives and Labour received significantly lower results, with Tory candidate Oli Kimber winning 132 and Labour’s Suzanne Featherstone on just 120. Reform UK’s successful defence came just months after it also managed to hold onto the seat for St Column Minor and Colan in December, further cementing it as the largest party on the southwest England council.
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Nigel Farage’s party is now the largest on Cornwall Council (Image: Getty)
The results will likely cause concern among Labour members, coming just weeks ahead of the May local elections and following yet another Reform by-election victory in Salford, marking its first seat on the council this week.
It comes after new polling predicted that Reform UK and the Green Party could be set for major gains in London on May 7, including in Labour-held authorities like Barking and Dagenham.
YouGov said Labour could lose six councils next month, while Reform and the Greens gain three and four respectively.
Downing Street was also forced to insist Sir Keir Starmer will still be Prime Minister beyond the current Parliament on Friday after he faced calls to resign amid the fallout from the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal.
Sir Keir’s official spokesperson said: “He’s very focused on the job. I refer you back to his previous language that he will continue to lead the Government throughout this Parliament and beyond.
“He’s got a huge amount of work to do. We’re in the middle of a global conflict, the like of which we’ve not seen for years.”
Adding to pressure on the Prime Minister, the leader of a group of backbench MPs said on Thursday that Sir Keir had made the “biggest mistake of his life” by appointing Mandelson as British ambassador to the US.
Jo White, who chairs the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, said the Government must “cleanse” itself of the problems that have emerged from the vetting scandal, for which former Foreign Office chief Sir Olly Robins was sacked last week.
Total Humiliation for Starmer as Labour Come Sixth in By-Election
A disappointing by-election result has once again highlighted the dramatic changes taking place in British politics, with Labour facing renewed scrutiny over its support and electoral strategy.
The headline that Labour “came sixth” requires some clarification, however. The most significant 2026 parliamentary by-election defeat involving Keir Starmer saw Labour finish third, not sixth. In the Gorton and Denton contest on 26 February, the Green Party won the seat, Reform UK came second and Labour finished third. The “sixth” in reports about the contest referred to the fact that the Labour majority overturned was the sixth-largest Labour majority to fall at a by-election since the Second World War.
That distinction matters because the actual result was already highly significant without exaggerating it.
A former Labour stronghold changes hands
Gorton and Denton had long been regarded as a strong Labour constituency. At the 2024 general election, Labour won more than half of the vote and held the seat with a majority of 13,413.
The by-election produced a radically different result.
Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer received 14,980 votes, equivalent to about 40.7 per cent of the vote. Reform UK’s Matt Goodwin finished second with 10,578 votes, while Labour candidate Angeliki Stogia received 9,364 votes, or 25.4 per cent.
The result gave the Greens their first victory in a parliamentary by-election and their first MP representing a constituency in the north of England.
For Labour, the most striking feature was not simply losing the seat but falling behind both the Greens and Reform.
The Conservatives were a distant fourth with 706 votes, while the Liberal Democrats received 653.
Why the result attracted so much attention
By-elections are frequently interpreted as opportunities for voters to express dissatisfaction with a government without necessarily changing the national government.
That makes them particularly useful for protest voting.
Nevertheless, Gorton and Denton was difficult for Labour to dismiss as an ordinary marginal contest. The party had previously secured more than 18,500 votes in the constituency at the 2024 general election. Its by-election total fell to 9,364, despite turnout being broadly similar to the previous general election.
The Green victory therefore demonstrated that Labour’s previous electoral dominance in the area could not automatically be assumed to continue.
At the same time, Reform’s second-place finish demonstrated that the challenge facing Labour came from both sides of the political spectrum.
That was one reason the result generated considerable debate about whether Britain’s traditional two-party system was weakening.
Starmer’s response
Starmer personally faced questions about the result because the contest had taken place while he was Labour leader and prime minister.
Following the defeat, he described the result as “very disappointing” and argued that governing parties often suffer difficult outcomes in by-elections. He also said he intended to continue fighting for the political programme on which Labour had been elected in 2024.
The response reflected a broader problem for any incumbent government.
A by-election can provide a snapshot of public dissatisfaction, but it does not directly determine who governs the country. The government remains in office unless the prime minister resigns, loses the confidence of the House of Commons or a general election produces a different administration.
Consequently, a dramatic by-election defeat can create political pressure without automatically producing a change of government.
Labour faces competition from both Greens and Reform
The Gorton and Denton result was particularly notable because Labour was squeezed between two parties with very different political identities.
The Greens attracted voters who had previously supported Labour, while Reform captured a substantial share of the vote from voters seeking a different direction on issues including immigration, taxation and the role of the state.
The result therefore cannot easily be interpreted as a simple transfer of Labour support to a single rival.
Instead, it showed a fragmented electoral landscape.
Labour’s 2024 general-election majority had been large, but the by-election demonstrated that a large parliamentary majority does not necessarily translate into permanent loyalty in individual constituencies.
The Greens’ victory also suggested that Labour faced pressure from voters who believed the party had moved away from their expectations.
Reform’s second-place result showed a different source of pressure, particularly among voters attracted to its more restrictive approach to immigration and its criticism of the established political parties.
The significance of the sixth-largest majority
This is where the “sixth” reference in the headline becomes important.
The Gorton and Denton result overturned a Labour majority of 13,413 votes. According to ITV and other reporting, it was the sixth-largest Labour majority to be overturned in a by-election since the Second World War.
That makes the scale of the defeat easier to understand.
It was not simply a marginal seat changing hands after a close contest. Labour had previously enjoyed a substantial advantage.
The fact that such a majority could disappear between general elections illustrates the volatility of British electoral politics in 2026.
The result also followed Reform’s victory in Runcorn and Helsby in 2025, where Sarah Pochin narrowly defeated Labour, further demonstrating that Labour-held seats were becoming contested by parties outside the traditional Conservative-Labour rivalry.
A wider pattern of political fragmentation
Gorton and Denton was one of several by-elections in 2026 that illustrated how fragmented British politics had become.
The later Makerfield by-election provided a contrasting result. Andy Burnham returned to Parliament for Labour and won 54.8 per cent of the vote, defeating Reform’s Rob Kenyon. Labour’s majority increased compared with the 2024 general election.
The June by-elections in Scotland produced still more variation. The Conservatives won Aberdeen South, the SNP retained Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, while Labour finished fourth in Aberdeen South and fourth in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
These results make it difficult to describe Britain’s electoral environment through a single national trend.
Different constituencies have produced sharply different outcomes depending on local candidates, political circumstances, turnout and the distribution of competing parties.
What the result meant for Labour
For Labour, Gorton and Denton nevertheless represented an important warning.
The party had entered government after its landslide 2024 general-election victory, but its support could not simply be assumed to remain at that level.
The by-election showed that Labour could lose voters to parties on both its left and right.
It also demonstrated the importance of local campaigning. By-elections often attract unusually high levels of attention from national parties, while voters can use them to register a view about the national political situation.
For Labour strategists, the challenge was therefore not simply recovering votes from one particular rival.
The party had to understand why some former supporters were choosing the Greens, why others were choosing Reform, and why some were potentially choosing not to vote at all.
The limits of the “Starmer humiliation” narrative
Describing the result as a “total humiliation for Starmer” is political and media rhetoric rather than an objective measurement.
There is no formal electoral category called humiliation, and the by-election itself did not remove Starmer from office.
However, the result clearly created political difficulties for Labour leadership. Contemporary reporting described renewed pressure from Labour MPs and debate about Starmer’s leadership following the defeat.
That pressure subsequently became part of a much larger political story.
By June 2026, Starmer announced his intention to resign as Labour leader and prime minister, according to the House of Commons Library. He subsequently left the Commons in September, triggering a forthcoming by-election in Holborn and St Pancras scheduled for 8 October 2026.
Those later developments should not, however, be presented as though the Gorton and Denton result alone caused them. Leadership changes involve multiple factors, including polling, internal party politics, government performance and other electoral results.
A warning about Britain’s changing electorate
The real significance of the Gorton and Denton contest lies beyond the immediate fortunes of one party leader.
The result demonstrated how quickly electoral loyalties can change in a constituency that had previously appeared highly secure for Labour.
A Green victory, a strong Reform performance and a sharp fall in Labour’s vote all occurred in the same contest.
That combination would have been difficult to imagine under Britain’s older two-party political system.
The subsequent by-elections produced different outcomes, reinforcing the point that Britain’s political landscape cannot be reduced to one simple national narrative. Labour won comfortably in Makerfield, while Conservatives and the SNP secured victories in Scotland.
The lesson from Gorton and Denton is therefore not simply that one party suffered a defeat.
It is that traditional assumptions about safe seats, established voting patterns and predictable party competition have become less reliable.
For Labour, maintaining support will require understanding voters whose political choices have become increasingly divided. For the Greens and Reform, the result demonstrated that there are opportunities to challenge established parties even in constituencies with long histories of Labour representation.
And for observers of British politics, the contest offered another indication that the next phase of Westminster politics is likely to be more fragmented and competitive than the political landscape that existed before 2024.