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- [00:00]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time. Me too. I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle, the founder of Olive and June. And this is exactly why we created the Gel Mani system. We wanted to make it possible for everyone everywhere to give themselves a beautiful manicure at home with our tools and our gel polish that lasts up to 21 days. Each manicure with our system comes out to just $2. That's right, $2. No more. 60, 70, $80 salon chips that take hours.
- [00:28]
Professor Rob Ford
Hours.
- [00:28]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
Now you can paint your nails on your time and love them more than ever. And by the way, when people ask you where you got your nails done, you're going to proudly brag that you did them yourself. And here's a little something extra. Head over to OliveAndJune.com and get 20% off your first gel mani system with code DIY GEL20. That's code DIYGEL20 for 20% off your first mani system at OliveAndJune.com DIY GEL20.
- [00:54]
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- [01:30]
Professor Rob Ford
Hello.
- [01:30]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Welcome back to Unherd. We try not to be parochial here at Unherd and many of our viewers are from Europe, across the continent, North America, Canada, Australia, all over the world. But when something happens hyperlocally that seems to resonate with what is happening across the world, we want to zoom into it. And one such thing is happening here in the UK three weeks from today. It's a by election in a constituency outside Manchester and it's becoming the most significant political event of the year so far. Because in this tiny constituency, just one of 650 across the land, all of these different communities, the urban metropolitan, the immigrant community, the white majority, are all represented in different pockets of this fascinating by election. And honestly, no one can tell who's going to win. It was a Labour seat for many, many years. Manchester is a Labour stronghold, but Reform have fielded a very high profile candidate in Matt Goodwin and the Green Party, which is currently surging under leadership of Zach Polanski, is also doing well. So I think that whatever happens in three weeks in Gordon and Denton is actually going to tell US quite a lot about how the huge political ripples might play out across Europe and even in North America. So come with us for the next hour on a deep dive into a corner of outer Manchester, and let's see by the end of it what we think might happen closer to home. We have gathered voices from across the spectrum with real deep expertise in this part of the world. So we'll be talking to Professor Rob Ford, who is professor of politics at the University of Manchester, lives outside, just outside this constituency and can give us a real kind of war map of the area. We'll be putting those on the screen if you're following on YouTube. We're also going to talk to the founding editor of the Manchester Mill, the up and coming local paper there, someone who has a kind of a different take on the politics and what the vibes might be in that part of the world. And because we don't want to only talk to academics and theorists, we want to talk to practitioners on the ground. We've also gathered people from very different perspectives to feed in. We have the only Reform councillor in Greater Manchester. There is one in the eastern part of the Thameside district of Manchester. He's going to be giving us his view of the vibe and the energy on the ground. And then from the absolute opposite pole, we will be talking to Shabazz Sawar, again, the only Workers Party councillor. So this is a politician representing one of the most Muslim constituencies or small wards in the whole country, from a party that is often considered a sectarian party for that community. They all have very different things to say, but hopefully by the end of it, you will get a sense of how this complicated battle is playing out. First up, we are joined by Professor Rob Ford, who is professor of Political Science at Manchester University, lives and works all around this constituency and has become a bit of a expert both on the local politics and how this might play out, but also, as it happens, co authored a book with Matthew Goodwin back in what feels like ancient history, when that person was an academic, not a politician. But we may come onto that first. Welcome to Unherd, Rob.
- [04:50]
Professor Rob Ford
Hello. Very glad to be here.
- [04:53]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Let's look at the map. First of all, if you're following on the podcast, not on the YouTube, I will try and describe it for you. So go Gorton and Denton is a newly formed constituency post the boundary changes and is particularly interesting, I would say, because it consists of seven wards which are the smallest units of our democracy, and four of them, the kind of Gorton side, are within what you would normally think of as the Manchester area, the Manchester proper, and then Denton. The three wards kind of on the east of the constituency, are really very different. They're much more suburban and a very different vibe. So give us an overview from a kind of cephalogical perspective of this fight.
- [05:38]
Professor Rob Ford
One way of mentally visualizing the constituency is it's shaped a bit like a sort of battle axe or a warhammer. There's a long, thin part heading down southwest, and then there's a sort of big head of the axe up at the top, the head of the axe that is the Thameside wards, the three Denton wards, which are very white, quite working class, relatively few university graduates, quite a lot of large council estates, and in all these respects, looking like the kind of terrain where Reform UK already did quite well in the general election in 2024 and was doing very well indeed in local elections last year. Then you've got four wards stretching down southwestwards, which are all in Manchester City Council. And three of those wards, Burnage, Levenshum and Longsight, those all have very large Muslim populations, but also large populations of students and younger graduates. And for somewhat different reasons, both groups, the Muslim communities and younger graduates and students, have been shifting away from labor and towards parties on Labour's left, the Greens, also the Workers Party. At the hinge of the seat, you have the ward of Gorton and Abbey Hay, which is part of what gives the seat its name, and that's not quite like either of the other parts. It's more diverse than the Denton wards, but diverse in a different way to the Manchester wards. There's a big black community there and a smaller Muslim community. But it is also a good deal poorer than the Manchester wards, with Levenshum and Burnage in particular having gentrified. So in a way, it's a seat of two halves. But you could also, if you want to carry on as I do, burrowing into the data, make a case that it's a seat with three somewhat distinct parts.
- [07:31]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
That's what's so interesting about this by election, isn't it? That in a way, it is the microcosm of the whole populist question that you've made a study of, that within this tiny little parcel of land, all of those groups that are battling out on a national stage, and you could say on the international stage, because they're very similar dynamics across Europe and in North America, the kind of younger metropolitan student and younger people, plus immigrant communities who tend to vote for parties of the left, and then whiter, more suburban Older and less affluent groups are going overwhelmingly for parties of the populist. Right, let's just outline some of the actual demographic differences because there are numbers attached to this, it's not just speculation. So you've done a helpful grouping on your substack of these two parts of the constituency. So the Manchester wards, the metropolitan wards, compared to what you're calling the Thameside wards, which are the more suburban ones, share white. That is the percentage that is white white of the voting population, 82.6% white. In the Tameside ward, 41.9% white. So minority white in the Manchester wards, Muslim, 39.5% Muslim. In the metropolitan part of this constituency. That's high by any standards, nationally or otherwise. I think to drill down even further, if you look at Levenshume, that's even higher, isn't it? It's actually majority Muslim.
- [09:05]
Professor Rob Ford
I think Long Sight is majority Muslim and Levin's human as well. I mean, believe me, if you drive through these areas, they feel extremely ethnically diverse. There's very visible large Muslim community all the way along that stretch of the sea.
- [09:19]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Well, I guess to someone on the reform side might say less ethnically diverse than increasingly ethnically homogenous and more literally majority Muslim in the case of Long side.
- [09:31]
Professor Rob Ford
Yeah, that's true. Although Long Sight is an unusual slice of south Manchester in that you've got a very large population that's religiously Muslim. So one religion. So religiously diverse, not so high, it's a majority Muslim. But there's several different Muslim communities in that ward. You've got a Pakistani origin Muslim community, you've got a Bangladeshi origin Muslim community. You've got more recent migrant Muslim communities, you've got second generation British born population there. You've also got people who've come in in the last 10 to 15 years. So it's religiously all of one religion, but in terms of origins, time of arrival, language, country, quite a lot of diversity within that.
- [10:16]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
So one thing I think people get confused about and particularly on the political right, it's often said almost as a joke or a kind of talking point about the left, that there is this strange coalition of quite conservative Muslim group. You know, in those areas you see people walking around with the veil. Women will very often not be working if they're of an older generation. And there is this sense that they are quite socially conservative because they've imported some of that culture to the UK and yet right, juxtaposed both in terms of which parties they vote for, but also physically There are these students and quite kind of affluent hipster voting blocs kind of explain that to us. How can those two groups get along so well and end up voting for the same parties?
- [11:04]
Professor Rob Ford
Well, I think one way of explaining it, Freddie, would be to illustrate with a similar example from the other side of the political spectrum in terms of the right. If you look at the Boris Johnson coalition of 2019 that delivered the Conservatives, a large majority, got Brexit done and so on, you had wealthy suburban middle class home counties types cheek by jowl with some of the sort of poorest, most economically struggling, socially marginalised, white working class council estates in the north of England. And they were unified by a cause that they both believed in, which was Brexit, but also by who they were not. An awful lot of politics these days is about identifying a common enemy as much as having a common cause. Brexiteers of all kinds were against the Ramonas and the social liberals and the people that they felt were not sufficiently patriotic and out of touch elites and so on. It's a really important element of populism across the political spectrum is finding a common enemy that everyone can get riled up about. And I think you see the same kind of politics in a rather different set of colours here in South Manchester, where you would have, as you say, very socially conservative Muslim communities lining up together with some of the most socially liberal young graduates and ethnic minorities in the country. And their common cause is stopping reform, opposing nationalism, opposing a kind of anti immigrant politics. So as long as they're on that terrain and focused on that enemy, they're all on the same side. But if the arguments got into, for example, the role of religion in schools, gay rights and so forth, it would be a rather more difficult conversation.
- [12:49]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Yeah, so this is the kind of the Queers for Gaza phenomenon, which again is often talked about because it does feel quite absurd that people who are proud of being progressive and in favor of gay rights and the rest of it would take a cause like Gaza, where the ruling party has no gay rights interest at all. In fact, the exact opposite is very dangerous, almost impossible to be an out gay person in those kind of administrations. Is that something that could be decisive in this election, do you think? If the Green Party, which is doing extremely well and appears to be polling well, headed by Zach Polanski nationally, if they get too progressive and sort of, you know, multicolour lgbt, will they put off the Muslim voters?
- [13:40]
Professor Rob Ford
It's possible, looking further down the line towards the general election, that that's going to start to become an issue for the Greens in seats like this. In other seats with large Muslim communities, Birmingham, London and so forth, I think in this by election specifically, they're probably going to be able to duck that kind of friction because they're very much framing their campaign as a vote against labor and a vote against Reform. And so they've kind of got two compelling villains to mobilize their electorates. Again, Muslim communities have been showing a lot of disaffection with labor for several years. Young social liberals as well, for very different reasons. But in both cases, at this point, the kind of mobilizing, rallying cry is the same. If you want to give Starmer a bloody nose, vote Green. If you want to stop Reform winning, vote Green. So for the next few weeks, I think that's going to be relatively easy to hold that coalition together. But I think you're exactly right that there are going to be some pretty sort of difficult internal strains on that going forward. And how sustainable it proves to be going forward is a very different question. I mean, right here in this seat, we had a very big vote in one ward for George Galloway's Workers Party in the last local elections two years ago. And of course, they are a very different brand of populist left politics, which they marry together with a much more sort of socially conservative. They initially said they were going to field the candidate who beat the deputy leader, the Labour deputy leader on the council in Longsight Ward two years ago. Then they withdrew that nomination, said they were thinking about it, and then came out and said that they're standing down in this election, which they see as they didn't give an explicit endorsement, but they said that they saw this election as a chance to oppose both Labour and Reform, which kind of leaves it fairly obvious where they're implying their voters should go.
- [15:42]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Just to underline that, I'm looking here at the local election results from these wards. So Longsight, which is the most Muslim of the seven wards in this seat, as you say, they returned the Workers Party candidate, Shabazz Sawar in 2024. Close. Runner up was Luthor Rahman, who was the Labour Party candidate. Nearly equal numbers of votes, frankly. There were no other parties anywhere close. So that's a pretty much an even split between the Workers Party, which is this more I guess you would call sectarian party versus Labour. Meanwhile, in Levenshume, the neighbouring ward, it was just the reverse. So Labour Party still a Muslim candidate, Zahid Hussein, it would appear, won, but only quite narrowly. And Mohammed Iqbal, who was the Workers Party candidate came second. So we're really seeing this kind of struggle on the left, even within the Muslim voting bloc, whether Labour, Green or something like the Workers Party is going to be their party of choice. Does it mean, do you think that the left vote will end up divided in this by election and does that ultimately favour Matt Goodwin and Reform?
- [16:52]
Professor Rob Ford
I think it is a very plausible scenario, not just because of the potential divisions within the Muslim vote, because I think the Greens have been kind of handed a couple of favors on that front, whether they want them or not. In terms of the Workers Party not standing. The Muslim vote, all capital letters, proper noun rather than just Muslim voters, is an organization that backs a lot of the independent candidates that did well in the general election. They have endorsed the Greens in this seat as well. So I think the queens have been getting a bit of an assist with the Muslim community from both who's standing and who's endorsing them. However, when we look at the seat as a whole, and I think your long sight Levenshum comparison is quite useful for this, Levensheim is somewhat lower share Muslim and somewhat more bougie. So more students, more middle class professionals and stuff. And their Labour came out narrowly on top. Whereas in Long Site, which is a bit poorer and a bit more heavily Muslim, more recent immigrants, it was the Workers Party came out on top. If you expand out to the seat as a whole, you could make a case that taking the longer view on electoral history, this is an area of exceptional Labour Party dominance. So cutting them down to size is a pretty big task for the Greens on their left. And the risk is they get half of the way there, but not the whole way there. So you end up with the Labour Party, you end up with say a 25, 25 split on the left. So the left vote's like half of the total, should be a winning share, but it's split evenly. And then if reform get 30 or high 20s, they win through the middle. That is a very plausible scenario because both Labour and the Greens can make quite a compelling case that they are the best available party on the left.
- [18:39]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
It's quite amazing, isn't it really, that we're seriously talking about the Muslim vote now with capital letters. There's even an organization and as you say, their endorsement seems to carry weight. It wouldn't have been something that we would have talked about five or 10 years ago that there is now a sectarian politics in this country where you can expect particular groups of immigrants to vote in a particular way. I mean how profound a shift is that?
- [19:09]
Professor Rob Ford
The first thing to say about sectarian politics more broadly is there is nothing new about that at all in British political history. There was a sectarian element to the Liberal vote at the start of the 20th century, there was a sectarian element to the Labour vote in, say, Liverpool, indeed, Manchester, Glasgow.
- [19:28]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
What was that?
- [19:30]
Professor Rob Ford
And that was Irish Catholic immigrants in those communities. Catholicism was a pretty strong predictor of Labour voting. In fact, Catholicism to this day is, unusually in Britain, a predictor of voting for the left. In most of Europe with Christian democracy and so on, it's a strong predictor of voting for the centre right. But because in this country it's associated with a migrant community, a migrant community that sometimes faced some hostility from native voters. It was associated with the Labour Party for a long time and then more recently every black and Asian migrant community has been aligned with the Labour Party for as long as we've had data on that. There's absolutely nothing new about that. I mean, Lord Ashcroft did a report, I think, in the early Cameron years in which he pointed out that if you only could ask one survey question to figure out how somebody vote, you'd ask their ethnicity because if they weren't white, it was almost certain that they were Labour.
- [20:28]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Although, Rob, that's no longer as true as it was. Right, because some of those groups are now going green or.
- [20:35]
Professor Rob Ford
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, what was really new and very startling in the 2024 general election and the locals that preceded it was the Muslim community rallying behind candidates who were explicitly campaigning on a very distinctive set of issues resonant in that community. And all of them running essentially as Muslims representing the Muslim community. Because when these immigrant communities were aligned with labor, they were aligned with the party that wasn't campaigning for their vote in a sectarian way. I mean, there were obviously overlaps of interests and so on, but it wasn't like you should vote labor because Labour promotes the identity and interests of the Muslim community specifically. Whereas what we've been seeing with the Workers Party with some of these Gaza independents is a much more explicitly community based form of identity politics, which again is not without precedent in British political history, but it's not something we've seen in recent times.
- [21:32]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
It sounds quite a negative development.
- [21:34]
Professor Rob Ford
I don't think it's ideal, personally. Political parties and representative democracy is about the aggregation of interests. And if you are mobilizing almost exclusively within a single community that will tend not to aggregate interests very effectively. It also, of course can prompt exactly the same kind of counter mobilization from other communities produce segregation and polarization, which is not really necessarily a very helpful development. So I agree there are elements of that that are concerning. What we don't know at this stage, of course, is whether or not this is just a transient spasm of frustration with the larger parties or the start of something more lasting.
- [22:17]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Do you think Reform have made a good decision and do you think your erstwhile reflects co writer of your book about populism, Matt Goodwin has made a good decision in choosing to fight this by election because it looks from the map and from the numbers of voters that to put it simply, there are more people in the metropolitan Manchester bit than there are in the suburban overwhelmingly white bit. So even if he absolutely cleans up among the people of Denton, Matt Goodwin and Reform need to get votes from those metropolitan Manchester wards, otherwise he hasn't got a chance. How likely is that to happen?
- [22:56]
Professor Rob Ford
I think the first thing I'd say is that I think it is a good decision for them strategically because it strikes me as being a bit of a one way bet. This seat. If they win, it's a huge earthquake. Even if they lose and come say a strong second, it's a huge earthquake. But if they were to have a disappointing night and say come third and that would say 20% of the vote, they can point at the seat's history and its demographics and say, well, it was never really on for us anyway. So it's easy to spin defeat if they lose as being about a very cold climate for their kind of politics, given the demographics, particularly of the Manchester wards. But if they win, there's huge upside to them. It would be by some margin, I think, their most impressive election victory if they were to achieve it. And of course, as we talked about in the first bit of this discussion, there is a clear and logical path to victory for them because of the potential split on the left. So I do think it is a sensible strategic decision to fight the seat hard. But it is an uphill struggle because the Denton Wards that we're talking about constitute maybe a third of the vote. It's not enough on their own, so they would need to perform well in at least some of the Manchester wars. Their best prospect is probably Gorton and Abby Hay, which is also quite poor, has quite a lot of poor white working class voters in it as well, of the kind that they particularly appeal to. But it's only 55% white, it's got a large black community in it, it's got a decent sized Muslim community in it as well some students. So that's tricky. And then they probably got to pick off some votes in the Manchester wards too. And that's going to be difficult because it's hard to campaign in places where literally no radical right party has ever stood that I could find evidence of, like, ever. So they have nothing to go on. And where a lot of the local population are going to be fairly hostile to their kind of politics. But there are going to be reform leaning voters in those places too.
- [24:55]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Well, that's key, I feel like, because that is not well understood and I think that must be part of Reform's gamble here, that they're chairman of their party. Zia Youssef is Muslim. Leila Cunningham, their candidate in London is Egyptian. I mean, there are lots of people who are not white people even who have Muslim backgrounds who quite like reform because they think it's talking sense or they're fed up with the alternatives, or maybe they're small business owners or they feel overtaxed. There could be all sorts of reasons. And it's just a bit of a myth. We saw the same in the Donald Trump election when he performed very well with ethnic minorities. It's a bit of a myth that 100% of ethnic minorities vote in a particular way. There are surprising numbers of those groups that are quite right wing.
- [25:42]
Professor Rob Ford
That's absolutely right. And particularly on social and religious issues. I think, though, if reform strategy for this seat was to win over a pivotal slice of the Muslim vote, it possibly wouldn't have run a candidate who's said such provocative things about the Muslim community quite recently. For example, statements about that. He doesn't regard most of them as being British or English, even if they have British citizenship. That kind of stuff isn't going to go down well with Muslim voters, even if they share Reform's views. I mean, Zir himself could have stood and might have been.
- [26:21]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
I feel like I'm going to get a call from Professor Goodwin in a moment. Did he say that he doesn't believe that Muslims are British, even if they were born here? I'm not sure he did.
- [26:31]
Professor Rob Ford
I believe that's more or less exactly what he said. I mean, people can feel free to look up his words and he can feel free to correct me if he wants to, but that's pretty much exactly what he said on a number of occasions, in fact. And not resiled from those statements, I think are problematic to defend in the Muslim part of this seat. But as I say, that's not even in those wars, which in the Aggregate, I think, are 35% Muslim. That's not the majority. The majority of the voters in those wards are not Muslim, of course. So there are going to be white working class voters in Levenshume, in Long Sight in Burnage, who reform can appeal to as well. So one strategy would have been to appeal across ethnic groups. I'm not really sure that that's. Well, they've made that, let's put it this way, they've made that strategy more difficult to pull off, I guess.
- [27:22]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Also, if you are a white working class voter and you are surrounded by a majority of Muslims every day and you feel like the area that you grew up in and knew well is now completely foreign and unrecognizable to you, you probably are quite reform minded. So it may be that those minorities, even in the majority Muslim areas, could be quite reformy.
- [27:44]
Professor Rob Ford
Yes, exactly. There could be quite a few older white voters who've seen their areas change very rapidly in the past few decades, who may be therefore very responsive to a message that focuses on immigration is changing our country too quickly and we need to slow this down or reverse it. So there could be quite a few voters, even in wards that in the aggregate are very diverse, who aren't necessarily that happy about the level of diversity or the speed with which it has happened. And that, I think, is part of the path to reform's victory. They really need to max out their support in the Denton wards, but they're going to need to find a 15, 20% slice in the Manchester wards as well. But it does pose a campaigning challenge because it means you've got to campaign in places where most of the doors you knock on you won't necessarily get a friendly reception, but you've got to go searching for that 10, 15, 20, 25% of doors on that street where actually you will get heading. That's hard work, but I wouldn't rule them out in that respect. I think they are going to put a pretty big effort across the seat.
- [28:46]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Rob, thank you so much for your time today.
- [28:48]
Professor Rob Ford
My pleasure.
- [28:51]
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- [31:50]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Next up, we are joined by Yoshi Herman, who is the founding editor of the Manchester Mill, which is a small, surging, extremely popular local publication which knows more about Manchester than Most. So, Joshi, welcome to Unherd.
- [32:03]
Yoshi Herman
Thanks very much.
- [32:04]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
What's your take living there, working there, studying these areas? Do you think national commentators like me are just missing what's really going on on the ground?
- [32:14]
Yoshi Herman
The danger here is that you simplify and you say that Labour and the Greens are going to do incredibly well in this bit. The Denton bit's going to go very over reform. I think reform will clearly do better in the Denton bit. However, when you speak to people there, as I have been in the past week, there are plenty of families in the Denton part of the constituency who they work in hospitals, they work in the public sector. They are not necessarily as classically reform in the way they're going to vote than some of the places where reform has done well. So I would imagine that reform will be thinking this is a little bit more difficult than the national media is giving us credit for.
- [32:54]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
And I guess just as there might be professional people in Denton who are a bit uncertain about reform, there will be people in the metropolitan wards who quite like reform. Of the groups you mentioned, I suppose some of those Catholic, Irish by ancestry, families that may have just been lifelong Labour voters potentially might now be quite tempted by reform.
- [33:18]
Yoshi Herman
If you look at this seat at the last election, there wasn't a super strong reform vote. I mean, you're talking about like labor getting sort of 50% of the cast votes and reform getting about 15%. So that's a pretty big gap. However, if you go down the high street of Gorson, for example, you would think this is not going to be a very reform area. It's incredibly diverse. It feels like an inner city area, et cetera. If you go off the high street into some of the estates around that part of the world, you know, there are some places that I think could be more reform sympathetic, as you say. Some of the Irish community in Levin seem like there will be some reform voters there. So I think it is a very difficult seat to predict.
- [33:56]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
We at the very least are expecting a very depressed Labour vote. Do you think a lot of those people go green then? Because those ones who are just not even interested in reform? I guess that's the alternative. Yeah.
- [34:07]
Yoshi Herman
This is the one I actually struggle with because on the one hand you'd say, well, Labour is unbelievably unpopular, they haven't picked their best candidate. The second best candidate didn't even want to run. So you would think this is a real opening for the Greens. And particularly with Matt Goodwin running for reform, you would think that would motivate A lot of sort of progressive voters to rally round one of the two left candidates in order to stop reform. However, when I've been wandering around this seat a bit recently, there are plenty of people who just describe them and their families as Labour people, right? Labour has a very, very deep stronghold in Manchester. Labour wins everything in Manchester all the time. Reform has one councillor in Tameside, but it's not on this bit of Tameside, it's on the other bit. It's not on the bit closest to the city, it's on the bit basically right in the countryside, in the Labour Green sort of runoff here. My real question is, would the families, the Muslim families in Levenshum and Gorson, would they go green? I don't know. That would be a really interesting one. I really don't know. We know that Galloway's party has stood aside, which does really change the dynamics here, because if you look at recent elections, Galloway, the last elections, Galloway's party was the one that was rising fast in those more Muslim areas, would those Muslim families go green? I really don't know. Would some of the old sort of working classes, white voters in some of those Mancunian parts of the seat, would they go green? I'm not sure. So the Greens will definitely do well among the kind of very visible gentrifiers of Levenshume, et cetera. And I think they'll do well, you know, in bits of Gorton, et cetera. There are some students who live in Gorton, et cetera, although not loads, but this is why it's such a difficult seat. Everything would tell you that Labour shouldn't win this by election because it's a by election. Governing parties tend to do well and this government is unbelievably unpopular. However, there is a kind of loyalty that Labour has in some of these kind of areas.
- [36:07]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
So you might share our previous speaker's instinct that although they may not be odds on favourites, the kind of underpriced outcome is a Labour hold because on the political betting they're a distant third in terms of probability. But both of you two seem to say that actually there's such roots there that those people who aren't paying that much attention to the latest trends might just carry on voting for them.
- [36:32]
Yoshi Herman
I think so. I mean, it's funny, I don't think the kind of people who live in a seat like this, a pretty working class seat, a very diverse seat, I don't think they're like very, very online, like, I don't think they're involved in lots of the kind of online debates, et cetera, I would have thought this is a seat where some of the Labour loyalties would be a little bit stronger.
- [36:50]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Yoshi, it's sort of significantness, isn't it? Because in a way this just sounds like kind of angels on the head of a pin. Who really knows? Tiny measurements of different groups within a constituency. But fundamentally, the big message is that if Labour does hold it, it is a real sign that a lot of the kind of narrative that is on the front pages and social media is hysterical about is not cutting through as much as people think. Meanwhile, if reform win shows that it is, basically it shows that the anger is truly as deep and broad as they think it is and that we should really prepare for a tidal wave at the next election.
- [37:28]
Yoshi Herman
Look, if reform can win a seat that is 2/3 of the population of which is in Manchester, that is a really, really, really big moment of British politics. I mean, we've all expected reform to win some suburban seats, seats in the Nottinghamshire coal fields. No one had a Manchester seat, a largely Manchester seat down as a reform area before. If that is what's going to happen, that portends a very significant shift in British politics that we think is underway. And this will be like the most powerful proof point so far. It'll be a much more powerful proof point than previous by elections, to be honest, because the demographics in those by elections were more pro reform and in.
- [38:09]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
A way, probably the choice of Matt Goodwin, who is sort of a celebrity within Westminster, within the chattering classes, as a reform spokesperson. He used to be an academic and the rest of it. What's his name recognition like in the constituency? Would that if he's successful, it shows the same thing in a way, doesn't it? It almost makes that point stronger that that kind of talk really does cut through. Whilst if he's just roundly rejected, it will be a very sobering moment for those people who are so excited every day about these new narratives.
- [38:41]
Yoshi Herman
Yeah, possibly. I was at the launch where they announced Matt Goodwin. I was expecting a local candidate, either a Mancunian candidate or someone like a Maggie Oliver, someone who's very well known in Greater Manchester, former police officer who's spoken out a lot on grooming gangs. When Matt Goodwin was announced, my initial instinctive reaction, as someone who knows the area very well, lives nearby, is that that is a mistake, because I thought that looked like picking someone who's very online, GB news, et cetera, very involved in the kind of online conversations and discourse, but who would not go down well in a seat like this, which is a working class seat and which is a very diverse seat, and where, frankly, he won't be able to run the kind of lines that reform would want to normally run. And it was interesting in his first speech, he mentioned immigration a little bit, he mentioned multi occupancy households, et cetera. But it wasn't a very red meat reform speech. It wasn't a classic Goodwin speech at all. I mean, if you look at his tweets over the years where he has suggested that people who are not born in the UK or whose parents weren't born in the UK might not be as British as someone who's white, I mean, that wasn't in the speech. That's not what he was running on. He talked about high streets, he talked about overtaxed high streets, meaning that there were empty shops, et cetera. Much more of a kind of economic, local economics campaign. So my initial thing was it was a mistake and that he was the wrong candidate. And I think I will only be proven right on that if the presence of Matt Goodwin in the race means that progressive voters and centre left voters will coalesce around one of the Greens and Labour right because they're so motivated to stop someone who is a GB news host, et cetera, being the local MP for a Mancunian district. But we don't know if that's going to happen yet. Is that coalescing happening? That is too early to say. I would say Labour would have had a better chance of achieving that if they'd had a different candidate. However, I think you started a couple of minutes ago by saying, are we underpricing Labour's chances here a bit. Are we writing them off? We probably are. We probably are. Given the seat, given the local organization that Labour has given the loyalties, I think we're probably underpricing Labour's chances here.
- [40:55]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Yoshi, thank you so much. I guess in three weeks time to the day we'll know the answer and we might have to get you back on and you can either eat your words or muse with us about the changed world. Thanks for your time and a bit.
- [41:07]
Yoshi Herman
Bye.
- [41:09]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
It's been fascinating to look at the theory. We've had some experts and commentators there giving us some of the big themes. But I think it's time we hear from people who've actually been elected in Greater Manchester. If you cast your eyes over the whole of Greater Manchester, there is only one human being from the Reform Party who has so far been elected. Yes, there is One Reform councillor from the eastern part of the Thamesside district of Manchester. His name is Alan Hopwood. He was formerly in fact an actor in Shameless. You might remember him from there, which, funny enough, was based in Gorton. He has found a minute or two to talk to us between council meetings and he joins us from his car. Hi, Alan.
- [41:48]
Alan Hopwood
Hi. Apologies for being in the car, but things are very busy at the moment.
- [41:53]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
No, I completely understand. So we've been pontificating about what might or might not happen in this forthcoming BY election. We've done a bit of a deep dive into the map, looking at these very different districts, the seven wards that are represented in that constituency. As the only person from Reform who's ever been elected in Greater Manchester, what do you think Matt Goodwin's chances are?
- [42:15]
Alan Hopwood
I think they're very good. Having seen the response on the ground at the doors, I think he's got an excellent chance.
- [42:24]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
And why is that? What are they saying?
- [42:26]
Alan Hopwood
Well, they're tired of things being the way they are with Tamesize, been a Labour run council now for 47 years, if I'm honest, they've gone a bit stale in the methodology, the way they do things. It's clear to me that people definitely want a change.
- [42:41]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
What do you think of the selection of Matt Goodwin as a candidate? Because we've spoken to some people on the ground who say, yeah, he's a talented performer, he's a celebrity, he's got his show on GB News and appears in national newspapers and the like. But despite his connections to Manchester, his grandfather was from there. You know, he talks with the southern accent, he kind of doesn't feel like a local. Do you think that's a worry?
- [43:07]
Alan Hopwood
It's not a worry for me because obviously having known him personally, I know he's committed to do a fantastic job. He has got connections to the area and I'm quite sure that his professionalism in office, when he takes on that role will be unsurpassed. I know that you only have to look at his predecessor, Andrew Gwyn, and he was a local, he was a local guy and he was despised by the locality for the some of the things that he'd done while he was in office. So being local perhaps isn't always. Or having that much locality isn't necessarily always the best thing to compliment you in that job.
- [43:50]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
How much do you find that the Reform support you're seeing in Tameside is about immigration? Because I'm looking at the statistics here. I mean, it's 83% white the wards within Tameside, 86.2% born in the UK, basically, the very small immigrant populations in the Thameside part of this constituency. Is it immigration that is. That is worrying them? And do you think that is explaining most of reform's success?
- [44:21]
Alan Hopwood
No, I don't think it is. I think it's the financial environment as well. Things such as the business rates we've seen now with a lot of pubs that are being closed. People are just fed up in general of the way the country's being run on a national scale and I think that's filtering down also. It's not simply about immigration and I want to stress immigration isn't really the cutting edge for us. Illegal immigration is a real problem. It's not immigration per se. So when people talk about that, I really think that they're trying to make it that we're like a one trick pony and that immigration is what it's all about. It's not. And if you look closely, you'll see now that we've been working very hard to be in a good position to govern the country and all our policies are being rolled out now so that you can see the things that we want to do to make improvement within this country.
- [45:24]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Do you think that's why Matt so far seems to be dialing down some of the rhetoric around Muslims, around immigration? He's really leading on other topics so far in his campaign. Do you think it's important, if he's going to win, to dial that back a bit?
- [45:40]
Alan Hopwood
I think that's an organic situation because really, the whole divisiveness that seems to be creeping in about the race and immigration status of people is, from my point of view, it comes at us. It's not something that we're putting out there, it's something that, that the media seems to always want to ask us questions about. I'll be completely honest, I don't care if I knock on somebody's door to speak to them, if they live in the ward, in my ward or in any other ward, I don't really care where they come from. As far as I'm concerned, they're a member of that community and that's it. And I would imagine anybody else, any counsellor or MP worth their salt will see everybody in that community with the same value.
- [46:32]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Final question for you, Alan. In order for reform to win this whole constituency, they need to get quite a few votes in the more metropolitan parts of that constituency. Can you see younger people, Muslim origin people, newly arrived immigrants, voting for reform?
- [46:51]
Alan Hopwood
I wouldn't 100% rule them out. I think people are starting to be a lot more informed than they used to be. So at one time you'd see people thinking, oh, this is my demographic, this is where I belong. I'm going along this route. But what I'm seeing increasingly now is people want to be more tentative and careful about some of the choices that they make, who they're going to vote for. They're looking for somebody that they can get on board with, that they can trust. And I don't think it's as straightforward as, you know, narrowing people down to demographics, because having spoken to people on the door, what I've found is people have said to me, you know, can you tell us a bit more about what your policies are? They don't dismiss you offhand. And it makes me quite happy to realize that people are doing the right thing by looking into it rather than just being sheep. And I think the problem we've had is, as you explained at the beginning, mainly with Labour supporters over the years, there was like this ingrained familial thing where they've always voted Labour, they've had to vote Labour, as if they were voting for some kind of a football team or something along those lines. And people now are looking more to the future. What can you do for us? As opposed to, oh, I'm not supposed to vote for you because my friends don't think I should.
- [48:18]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Have you got immigrant background voters supporting you in your ward?
- [48:23]
Alan Hopwood
I did have quite a lot of nice interactions with people during my campaign from all different walks of life. I couldn't really say that there was any kind of demographic that I'd go to and say, oh, no, I'm not getting. Nobody's going to vote for me here. What they did was, and I'm quite pleased to say.
- [48:47]
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- [50:22]
Alan Hopwood
And humbled and honored really that they spoke to me as a person, got to know a bit more about me, what, what my intentions were. I think people want to know that you're a human being at the end of the day and that you will go out and you will fight for those people. I could honestly say that people of all different demographics had pledged to vote for me and I'm honoured, I'm honoured to have been in that position.
- [50:52]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Alan Hopwood, thank you so much for finding time for us today.
- [50:55]
Alan Hopwood
No problem. Thank you very much.
- [50:58]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
We've spoken to the only Reform councillor in Greater Manchester. There's also a councillor from the Workers Party. Shabazz Sawa unseated the long standing Labour councillor in Longsight ward, which is within the Gordon and Denton constituency narrowly. But very significantly, and many people thought he was going to be the Workers Party candidate if they were going to field one in this by election. George Galloway, the leader of the Workers Party, has decided not to field a candidate. And I guess my first question to you, Shabazz Sawa, must be, why not? Why is the Workers Party not showing up to this fight?
- [51:33]
Shabazz Sawa
We went in, we were looking to stand. Then when we basically had a look in the scenario where things were and that's where we pulled out. I think our stance was more on the people, the residents, the waters than anything else. Because when you look at it, Manchester has always been a community that's been united and reform, I think would break that vote and create friction within the community. And that's one of the reasons that we stepped back.
- [52:05]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
So you're partly stepping back not to further divide the left wing vote and make a reform victory more likely. So what are you recommending to your voters? I mean, 60, more than 60% of your constituents in your ward of Longsight are Muslim. What are you advising them to do on February 26th?
- [52:24]
Shabazz Sawa
What we're saying is, you know, look into both parties majority of the voters here have always voted for Labour. Here's an opportunity for you to have a look at other options. If we compete and if we are competing for the same votes, we are going to split them and let another parachuted politician come into Manchester and basically divide the community. And we do not want division in Manchester.
- [52:51]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
It's interesting that you say that. You're almost encouraging them to look at new options. You would think that the Green Party might be something that you're almost encouraging your voters to look at for this election.
- [53:02]
Shabazz Sawa
We don't want to encourage anybody, but obviously, because if we are standing, we want the voters come back to us, we don't want them to see us basically pushing a narrative towards them that you can choose here or you can choose there. Because there's some policies, even in the Green Party, where the Muslim vote is a little bit on the edge, otherwise they would look at Green Party. So I think if policies are changed within the Green Party, then Muslim vote could be attracted by them.
- [53:34]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
That's so interesting, because it's always been a bit surprising to people that Muslim voters would be attracted to the Green Party because, yeah, it's a progressive kind of party, socially, very liberal, very strong on LGBT rights, et cetera, whilst your party is much more socially conservative and many, particularly the newer arrivals of Muslim voters are more socially conservative. How do you square that? Why would they be happy to vote Green when it seems so opposite to their social conservatism?
- [54:04]
Shabazz Sawa
This is where we think that we would have split the vote, because when you look at the faith groups, not just the Muslim group but the faith groups, they have little hesitation with the Green Party. And this is based on the LGBT aspect of things, especially when it comes to education for children, because we believe, or the Muslims believe, or the faith groups believe that that option should be given to the parents rather than being forced that their child is learning on LGBT issues.
- [54:34]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
So it might be. Then they might choose reform some of those voters. I mean, it may seem like a surprising thing, but if they are anti. Woke. Anti some of this overly progressive LGBT stuff, they might be attracted to Matt Goodwin.
- [54:48]
Shabazz Sawa
That's correct. I mean, it's a difficult one. I mean, you know, it's untested grounds at the moment, especially when it comes to Manchester, because Manchester has never seen anything else other than Labour Party. Lib Dem could have had an option if they played the cards right and pushed a little more. I think that could have been a fourth party that could have come into the game, but they're not as Aggressive as the Greens are at the moment as present. And Greens are having a very good social media network, so there's an opportunity for them. Labour Party has always been here and I think is embedded with a lot of the communities and a lot of the voters, but they do feel that Labour Party has let them down in many ways. And I think that is where the new grounds have come. And with Andy Berner stepping back and being blocked, I think that's another issue. This party within the party, there's divisions and I think those are the things that we need to look into and see on long terms how this is going to affect Manchester as well nationally.
- [55:46]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Or if you think about the big picture story, a big part of the reason why Reform UK are doing so well in the polls and are having this surge of energy is wards like yours. They are very anxious and a lot of people in England are anxious that these pockets of mainly immigrant communities are forming that don't feel properly integrated into the wider culture. And they would point to parties like the Workers Party, which seem outwardly almost like a sectarian party dealing with a particular immigrant group and focusing a lot on foreign issues like Gaza and so on. Do you worry about that your own Muslim community are not integrating enough?
- [56:28]
Shabazz Sawa
No, I don't think the community isn't integrating. I think the communities are integrating. The generation that are born here, you know, the fourth generation coming up, I think they represent Britain very, very well and they're integrated in every aspect. I mean, 90% of the generation that's born here, the Boatopia, they don't even speak the second language, Urdu or Punjabi or Bengali or whatever background, the ethnic city that they belong to. So a lot of them are 100% British. I mean, I look at my own children. I mean, their first language is English, so it's not that they're not integrating. Yes. There was a generation that came here before that was more of labor workers than anything else. So there's a generation that's. I think the focus is still being put on, rather than the generation that's growing here, that's educated here, that is integrated here. That generation is not being focused on. And the narrative that Reform is bringing into or on the table. Majority speaks on divisions and divide rather than bringing everyone together. And their policies are based on immigration. And that's the only subject that they do highlight on. And when you look at immigration, immigration is dropping, you know, yes, illegal immigration should be stopped. And I don't think there's a party or a person in the United Kingdom that would go against that. So legal immigration should be controlled and should be stopped. You know, there should be full force behind that to make sure that that policy is implemented. But when it comes to immigrants coming here or others coming here, I don't think, I think it's unfair for media or people to think that those that are living here or the generation that's growing here is not integrated.
- [58:17]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Final question for you, Mr. Sawa. If reform wins in Gorton and Denton, what message will that send to you, to your ward, to your voters? What will it make you think about the nature and the state of public opinion?
- [58:34]
Shabazz Sawa
Like I said before, people are looking for something new. People are tired and they feel frustrated that the parties that they have been representative for decades now in power, in government and the two party system that we have had here, they have not been over time representing the residents. And this is where the anger is and this is where the frustration is. And the vote that is picked up by Reform, majority of that vote is in a way there's basically sending a message to their own parties that, look, if you don't get your act right, then we have to look somewhere else. And that's somewhere else at the moment because media hype is there because there's voices coming in terms of nationalization and flags being raised and so on. People are assuming that this could be a new party that we could link into, but when you look at it, it's another party where majority of the MPs or the people that are coming into it are from Conservative parties. So it's a new Puri party coming up, but with a different language and that language of division and divide I think would be dangerous for Manchester.
- [59:51]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
Shabazz Sawad, thanks for your time today.
- [59:53]
Shabazz Sawa
No, pleasure, thank you.
- [59:55]
Unherd Host (Freddie)
That was Shabazz Sawa, the Workers Party councillor for the Longsight ward, one of the most Muslim wards in the whole of England, inside the Gorton Denton constituency. Our thanks also to Professor Rob Ford from the University of Manchester, Yoshi Herman, the founding editor of the Manchester Mill, and Alan Hopwood, the Reform councillor in the east of Manchester. All of them had very different interesting things to say. Let's see what happens three weeks from today. My hunch is whatever happens in then will tell us a lot about what is going to happen in the general election here and possibly in elections around the continent. Thanks to you. This was Unherd.
- [60:41]
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- [61:55]
Professor Rob Ford
Uh, yeah.
- [61:56]
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