Hope and fear battle it out in Gorton and Denton

My new documentary showcases our divided nation

A historic by-election beckons, so I was in Gorton and Denton filming this weekend - and I’d love to hear what you think about our documentary.

I’ve got some other thoughts, too (and also I’ll be in Manchester on Sunday for the campaign’s last push - please do join us!)

A woman we spoke to in Denton raised an objection to undocumented migrants, and then said she was minded to vote Green.

Her voting intention was somewhat surprising because she made immigration a priority issue.

But to succeed, the Greens are going to attract significant numbers of people who have similar views on immigration to her. It comes back to what I think is the most important chart in British politics.

The population is divided between those who believe our problems are mostly called by rich and wealthy elites and their political allies, or migrants and asylum seekers and politicians blamed for allowing them to enter Britain. (A cause for the hope is that the former outnumber the latter).

A significant number of voters who primarily - correctly - blame the elites for the state of the country have objections to immigration.

Of course it is important to try and drive back the vicious anti-migrant scapegoating that defines British politics. Starmerism has indulged this phenomenon because it is opposed to challenging elites - partly for ideological reasons, partly because of who has funded it and showered its leading lights with freebies, partly because its politicians have one eye on future lucrative private sector jobs.

In doing so, it has helped doom itself - because Labour has just made immigration more of a salient issue. When it dominates the political conversation, that is almost always to the benefit of the right, as the experience of multiple European countries shows.

Of course the left needs to try and drive back vicious anti-migrant scapegoating - not least by humanising migrants and refugees.

But the most effective strategy is a laser like focus on holding elites accountable - and linking an improvement in living standards to redistributing wealth and power. The Mamdani strategy, if you will.

We met this Green voting woman in Denton, the older, less diverse part of the constituency which is deemed to be Reform’s heartland. And we undoubtedly met former Labour voters defecting to Nigel Farage’s party. It was depressing to put to one such voter the number of Tory ministers who have defected to Reform - and it didn’t bother him one bit.

But then we also met another lifelong Labour voter - an older working-class Mancunian who again many would stereotype as likely to opt for Reform over the Greens. But he was minded to vote for the Green Party’s Hannah Spencer, the local plumber who has become something of a political star.

I was deeply impressed talking to her. She’s unbelievably Manc - with the certain type of friendliness and humour that comes with it - as well as super smart and savvy. As much as the left rightly emphasises collective struggle, leaders do matter. She has a strong sense of class politics and a belief that, to succeed as a politician, she must be embedded in her community.

The Greens have assembled a very impressive grassroots campaign. They’ve got hundreds of activists knocking on doors, and I’ve rarely seen so many posters and garden stakes for a political party.

But we shouldn’t underestimate the online campaigning of the British hard right. There’s eight days to go, and the stakes are very high indeed. If Reform win, then Nigel Farage’s band of extremists will be a step closer to power. If the Greens win, then Labour face being replaced in their urban heartlands, losing the argument of ‘vote for us, or you’ll get Farage’.

I’ll share more thoughts when I go up on Sunday - but please do join us!