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Comment on Green Party wins Gorton and Denton by-election with Labour pushed into third by Reform

What’s great about those numbers is Con+Reform is soooo far behind Lab+Lib+Greens.

The margin the Greens won by is so big that even if was more split with Labour, Reform still wouldn’t have one. Which will horrify Labour as people won’t fear vote splitting as much.

It’s one small bi-election, but I like what it says about the Overton window.

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echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
It’s actually quite reassuring that Labour are third and not second because as you say it indicates that the vote isn’t being split or at least not all that much. I suspect at least some of those Labour votes will have been concerns over splitting the vote and not wanting to do that, so going with the more traditional option. I suspect that subsequent elections (there’s one coming up in my constituency soon) will look at this result and see that it is in fact safe to vote green.

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moderatecentrist@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

What’s great about those numbers is Con+Reform is soooo far behind Lab+Lib+Greens.

Because of our crappy first-past-the-post system though, the most likely next government (if an election were held soon) would be a Reform government, or maybe a Reform/Conservative government.

Reform’s support in recent polls has only been around 24% - 30%. So around 70% of British voters don’t support Reform. Nonetheless, because Reform polls better than any other individual party, they could run the next government. Like how Labour in 2024 only got 34% of votes, but this gave them 63% of seats.

If the anti-Reform vote continues to be split between Labour/Greens/LibDems/SNP (and even Tories, since there will be Tory voters who don’t like Reform) then Farage will be the next prime minister. Surely the best counter to Reform would be a big tent centrist or centre-left party with wide appeal.

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- jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  I don’t disagree. I think FPTP is immoral and a liability. I’m disappointed in Labour to looking to address it despite their membership overwhelmingly supporting it. They hope to pay on “it is us, or Reform” which is party before country and could backfire and massively damage the country.
  
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  - moderatecentrist@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    They hope to pay on “it is us, or Reform” which is party before country and could backfire and massively damage the country.
    
    True. I don’t think it’s a popular message with the public. Clearly people in Gorton and Denton thought “actually we don’t have to vote for Labour as the only alternative to Reform; we can vote for the Greens instead”.
    
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    jabjoe@feddit.uk ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    It didn’t work of the Democrats either. It should of because how awful Trump is and Kamala seamed good, but how good she would be wasn’t the focus. But their system is even worse than ours.
    
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