Labour and Greens vie for Gorton and Denton’s large Muslim vote
The Greens are deploying Urdu and Punjabi speakers while Labour calls in its national big guns. We asked local Muslims if any of it has cut through
Longsight Market on a Tuesday morning is a mix of stalls selling carpets, vegetables, clothes, secondhand goods and perfumes. The town, part of the parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton, has a population that is more than 60% Muslim — making this a key target community for parties in the by-election on 26 February.
Labour and the Greens have been fighting it out for this voting bloc since the by-election was announced, with both the Workers Party of Britain and Your Party having stood aside. But when Hyphen visited a fortnight before polling day, many local Muslims still hadn’t made up their minds, while others felt alienated by parliamentary politics altogether.
“The big issue here is drugs,” explains Mohammed Shoaib from behind his clothes stall. He is concerned that children are using and selling illegal substances but that “you can’t do anything or say anything to them”.
Shoaib is a long-time Labour voter who is for the first time thinking of casting his vote for the Green Party — because of his disappointment in Labour’s performance locally. Manchester City Council has been controlled by Labour for more than a decade.
Other traders complained about the economic outlook for their businesses, but said they felt disillusioned with politics. “Everyone is working on their own agenda,” said one, who declined to give their name.
The election is for the seat vacated by scandal-hit former Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, who is retiring for medical reasons. Labour is battling both Reform, whose candidate Matthew Goodwin could do well in Gorton if national trends are replicated locally, and the Green Party, which is riding a wave of popularity under its new leader Zack Polanski. Its candidate is Hannah Spencer, a local plumber.
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Arguably, Labour is also battling itself, with the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham having been blocked from standing by the party’s National Executive Committee. Labour has, instead, selected local councillor Angeliki Stogia. It comes amid the fallout from revelations about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which prompted the resignation of two senior government officials just before our visit.
The Gorton and Denton constituency was created for the 2024 election, amalgamating parts of the safe Labour seats of Manchester Gorton (represented by Afzal Khan, now MP for Manchester Rusholme) and Denton and Reddish, which Gwynne had represented since 2005. Labour easily won the seat with 18,500 votes and a majority of 13,400 votes over runner-up Reform.
It is also an area of high deprivation and child poverty, ranking 16th across England and Wales. Nearly 30% of voters are Muslim, making it something of an outlier at the last election, which saw independent, Green and Workers Party candidates cut similar majorities down to the hundreds in several seats with high Muslim populations.
Along Stockport Road, a long street lined with small businesses, there is a gentle buzz of activity. There are few empty units, although an array of betting shops sits incongruously near the library and Pakistani Community Centre, which provides free hot meals every day for anyone in need.
Inside the Pindi Chaiiwala cafe, Mohammed Hassan, 18, says he’s voting “likely Labour” despite feeling cynical about politics. “I feel like it’s all talk, and it’s the same thing every other year, just worded differently,” he said.
Further up the street, two students, Bismah Sahi and Amina, say they are most concerned about safety for young women and a clean environment. “Just making it safe for young girls to come out without having to fear for their lives,” Sahi tells me. Both say they will look at the different policies of the candidates before making their minds up.
Inside S&B Scissor Cut, Usman Yaseen, a medical lab assistant at a local hospital, was firm that he would vote Green. “I work for the NHS where, just in the Manchester Foundation Trust alone — it’s a few sites — they’ve told us we need to cut back £24 million,” he said.
Yaseen is disappointed in Labour for having “backtracked on practically all of their policies”, along with the party’s response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. On the morning of our visit, he points out, it has been revealed that even one of the government’s own ministers, health secretary Wes Streeting, has privately expressed the view that “Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes”.
The shops display mostly Labour posters, while, down the side streets, the Greens seem to have the edge on visible support. Labour politicians who spoke to Hyphen are keen to point out the Greens have no councillors elected in the area and do not have a strong history of campaigning here. In practical terms, that means the Greens are having to start from scratch, while Labour can still draw on the relationships and infrastructure it has built over years.
We meet Fesl Reza-Khan, co-chair of the Muslim Greens, a military veteran who lives in Manchester, as he knocks on doors with fellow volunteer Hannah Smith. Reza-Khan broaches conversations in English and Urdu, speaking into doorbell intercoms and setting out his pitch that Labour is finished and that the Greens are best placed to beat Reform. The party is deploying any and all Urdu and Punjabi speakers among its ranks to this area in an effort to get its message across to as many people as possible.
As we progress down the street, a young man shouts “you’ve got no hope” and says he’s voting Reform. Reza-Khan asks why. The man, who says his name is John, starts off with the question “can a woman have a penis?” before criticising Green Party policy on immigration and commitments to public spending on the NHS and welfare as wasteful, despite saying he receives benefit payments. Things get heated when John says Reza-Khan isn’t British because his ancestors were not born in Britain, dismissing his military service as “not for us”.
“I’ve still got the card in the car,” says Wakar Rashid, referring to the flyer he was handed by Green activists outside the mosque. He is concerned about the ongoing situation in Palestine and the threat of the far right in the UK. “I will be looking at it, and then seeing where I put my vote,” he says, accepting that no party would be “perfect”.
Labour is mobilising activists across the country to defend the seat, with high-profile Labour Muslims including London mayor Sadiq Khan and home secretary Shabana Mahmood making campaigning visits. Labour claims that only it can stop Reform from winning the seat.
“It’s a tough campaign,” says Lord Wajid Khan, a former faith minister, “but we’ve got a wonderful candidate, and the votes in the Muslim community are holding up.” He bases this on conversations he has had so far in the constituency, including at a large event held the night before by Labour Party supporters at My Nawaab, a local restaurant and banqueting hall. In photographs seen by Hyphen, it appears to have been well attended.
Khan adds that the cost of living crisis is an issue that keeps coming up and that people are “impatient for change”, but insists: “Labour can not just stop Reform, but also can deliver for people.”
He is planning on spending this week’s parliamentary recess campaigning, saying it is vital to keep turnout high in an election that happens to fall during the month of Ramadan. “We’re going to fight, knocking every door,” he adds.
One notable political absence is that of the Workers Party of Britain, the populist party led by George Galloway, which won a council seat in the area and 10% of the vote at the last general election. The party has announced that it will not contest the by-election and will instead lend its support to the Greens.
“I think Gorton and Denton is one of those grounds that are unpredictable at the moment,” says councillor Shahbaz Sarwar, who represents the Workers Party for Longsight. “That’s one of the reasons why I pulled back.
“When we looked at the scenario, we thought: there’s so many of us on the left and there’s one on the right. Are we going to divide our votes and are we going for the same pockets? And the answer was yes.”
He praises the strength and the policies of the Green Party, welcoming them as the “new player in town”, but says that newness could be a barrier to prising people away from their long-held political loyalties and certainties.
We catch up with Raheel Ahmed, president of the Madina Masjid in Levenshulme, by phone. “The Muslim community is feeling the same pressures as any other community in terms of our day to day,” he says. “Life is becoming difficult and the cost of living is going up and up, whereas wages and employment are not keeping up with that.”
He highlights challenges with local services, including NHS waiting times, housing and the quality of schools, but also the impact of the conflict in the Middle East. “The Muslim community really feels let down,” he says. “It is a very strong factor in terms of the community deciding and dealing with these elections.”
Islamophobia is also a pressing concern. “[The] majority of the cases of Islamophobia are not reported,” he says. “We are being scapegoated for all the problems of the country.” This, he explains, has left many in the community scared and upset.
But Ahmed feels positive about the election and the opportunity it is giving people, particularly young people, the opportunity to campaign and participate in the democratic process. He adds that the masjid is open to any politician who wants to visit, and that whoever wins the election will be held accountable to the promises they make.
Later in the evening, standing outside the Dar Ul Uloom mosque, Reza-Khan is still campaigning and greets people as they leave evening prayers. One older worshipper says he’s voting Labour: “It’s never been my thing,” he says of politics. “But I just keep it as it is, because there’s no reason to change.” Mohammed, a 20-year-old student, disagrees and says his family is likely to vote Green.
“This community has been voting for the Labour Party for the last three, four elections,” he says. (This is an underestimate — the local parliamentary seat has been Labour since 1935.) “However, they’re not doing anything to obviously benefit the community.”
