By-elections are often known for delivering unexpected twists, typically making headlines in the early hours as results trickle in from makeshift counting centers. However, the upcoming by-election in Manchester’s Gorton and Denton constituency has already sparked significant developments, even before the campaigning has fully begun.

The first major revelation was that Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester and a familiar face from his time as a Cabinet Minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, planned to stand for Labour. His potential candidacy was expected to stir considerable interest and support.

However, the situation took another dramatic turn when Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer decided to block Burnham’s candidacy over the weekend. It appears Starmer was cautious of Burnham’s possible ambition to re-enter Parliament as a stepping stone to challenge the Labour leadership and potentially vie for the position of Prime Minister.

By preventing Burnham from running, Starmer may have temporarily warded off a leadership threat. Yet this decision has left the contest for the Gorton and Denton seat wide open. Currently, three main contenders are emerging: TV presenter Matt Goodwin, representing the Reform Party, and two others whose parties have yet to finalize their candidates.

In keeping Burnham off the ballot paper, Sir Keir may have obviated a leadership challenge – for now. But he has also ensured that the race to become the next MP for Gorton and Denton is now wide open, with three frontrunners. One is TV presenter Matt Goodwin, standing for Reform, and two are, as yet, unknown because their parties have yet to select their candidates.

However, it is already accepted by all the parties here that it will be a three-way race between Reform, Labour and a resurgent Green Party, which has suddenly discovered – in a seat with a substantial Muslim population – that there are more votes in clobbering Israel than hugging trees.

And during my time here this week, I find that supporters of all the parties (and of none at all) can all agree on one thing: Burnham’s enforced absence has made things much easier for both Labour’s main rivals in a seat that has given us two claims to fame – the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’ and also the Gallagher brothers of Oasis fame.

This by-election was triggered by the sudden resignation of former health minister Andrew Gwynne, who stood down on ‘health grounds’ last week.

Here in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton there have already been two seismic moments and the campaign has not even got its shoes on, writes Robert Hardman

Matt Goodwin, pictured, right, with the Mail’s Robert Hardman, is an experienced performer, having been a presenter on GB News and previously an academic, author and commentator

His political career had already suffered irreparable damage following a series of abusive remarks circulated on a WhatsApp group and revealed in The Mail on Sunday a year ago. As well as writing a putative response to an irritating constitutent – ‘F*** your bins. I’m re-elected and without your vote. Screw you’ – he also complained that a psychologist sounded ‘too Jewish’. He added: ‘Is he in Mossad?’

The remarks were bad enough at the time, all the more so eight months later when a terrorist attack on Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue left three dead.

In the Gorton half of Gwynne’s former constituency, Muslim voters account for more than 70 per cent in some council wards. And that is creating a fascinating dynamic which could do for Labour’s chances here.

This week The Muslim Vote, a coalition of Muslim organisations, urged its followers to vote Green in the by-election. It would have gone for Labour if Burnham had been standing.  

Not now: ‘We believe the Green Party offers the strongest opportunity to win and we urge them to work swiftly with local communities, while calling on all other progressive and independent alternatives to stand aside.’ That is clearly going to inform the way the Greens fight their campaign in a seat where the poll suggest they could win a 5th MP – their first in the North.

I attend this week’s big Green rally to kickstart the by-election campaign. The location is no surprise: Gorton’s Pakistan Community Centre. Party leader Zack Polanski has a boisterous welcome and wins a standing ovation for an oddly underwhelming speech, lasting just five minutes.

In it he attacks Reform as ‘racist’ and Labour as ‘the party that wants to lick the boots of Donald Trump’. Some of the loudest cheers greet his attack on Israel: ‘When we look around the world, we know that our Government is complicit – active participants in the selling of arms to Israel and the sharing of intelligence. And it is time to end the genocide.’

Former leader, Baroness Bennett doing the introductions, says much the same. Try as I might, I didn’t hear anything about Net Zero all night. There is the odd mention of sewage but nothing about the Green staples of climate change or carbon emissions.

This by-election was triggered by the sudden resignation of former health minister Andrew Gwynne, pictured, right, with Andy Burnham, who was kept off the ballot paper by Keir Starmer

I attend this week’s big Green rally to kickstart the by-election campaign. Party leader Zack Polanski, pictured, has a boisterous welcome and wins a standing ovation

There is a lot of ‘hit the billionaires’ stuff and warm words for the old Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. However the other speakers – all drawn from Muslim communities – have a great deal to say about ‘genocide’ in Gaza (the Greens are the only party that formally accuses Israel of the crime).

At one point Birmingham activist Salma Yaqoob gets a round of laughter as she declares: ‘The Green Party is no longer this tree-hugging party just for the graduates and the middle class.’ And she has a point.

This room may be full of stereotypical Greens – the usual student/pensioner combo with as many pink, blue and purple heads as grey ones – but the voters who will make all the difference are those in the streets round here. They do not share the party’s southern obsessions with banning flights, oil and cars, let alone all that LGBTQ+ stuff.

Yet I go for a wander through Gorton and find that the support for the Greens is genuine and widespread. ‘We always used to vote Labour but not after the Government’s double standards on Palestine,’ says driving instructor Abdul Hakim, 37. ‘They do nothing for the people here… only the Greens say it as it is.’ 

This, he assures, me is the unanimous family view. ‘We’re Asian. We vote as an extended family so that means 20 votes for Green.’

The latest poll puts Reform just ahead of Labour with the Greens in third but the bookies favour Reform just ahead of Polanski’s party with Labour third. To stop Reform there will have to be a squeeze on the Left and momentum is now with the Greens.

Much will depend on whom they choose as their candidate when the local party votes today. If they go for a blue-haired graduate eco-warrior, they may struggle here. But I meet one of those in the running for the Green nomination who would certainly give Nigel Farage a headache.

Fesl Reza-Khan is ex-Parachute Regiment, runs his own finance company, had a grandfather who fought for the British in the Second World War and is the only person in the room in a blazer.

This seat has given us two claims to fame – the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’ and also the Gallagher brothers of Oasis fame (Pictured: Hardman standing in front of an Oasis mural)

An articulate, softly-spoken father of one, he tells me that he grew up in nearby Oldham, where he stood as a Green candidate at the last election. He is also co-chair of the Muslim Greens. ‘I just despair of the labels and the abuse in public life now,’ he tells me. ‘I hate the way Muslims are demonised, just as I don’t believe that all Reform voters are bad people either. We need politics to be more civilised.’ One to watch.

This is very much a seat of two halves. The Denton end is still largely what would be called old white working class, built up around the hat industry (locals claim ‘mad as a hatter’ originated here – derived from the mind-altering effects of the mercury used in hat production).

The outgoing MP used to do well here. ‘He was quite a good MP actually,’ says Lauren Hill, owner of Denton’s Red Lion pub. ‘He did a competition for small business and we won it three times. But then the WhatsApp thing happened.’

Wayne Bennett, sitting at the bar, chips in: ‘He was nice enough – he bought one of my puppies, actually.’ So will he be voting for Mr Gwynne’s replacement? ‘Oh no. It’s Reform all the way,’ says Mr Bennett, a retired maintenance man. He has already signed up to the party.

Across the road, I am waiting to be allowed into a pub called The Vault. It had been hired by Reform UK to unveil their new candidate, Matt Goodwin, at an earlier Press conference. 

Now, the media have been ejected and very jumpy minders are manning the door, allowing reporters in one at a time to conduct interviews. Mr Goodwin, 44, is an experienced performer, having been a presenter on GB News and previously an academic, author and commentator on modern politics.

He once ate a page of one of his books live on air having promised to eat his words if Jeremy Corbyn polled more than 38 per cent of the vote in the 2017 General Election (he got 40), so his supporters would argue that he delivers on his promises.

Labour’s crack team of internet archaeologists were out of the traps just moments after his nomination, replaying his past comments including a dig at this place.

Mr Goodwin pictured, right, with Lee Anderson MP. He went to the University of Salford and points to strong family roots in the area

‘I was unfortunate enough to be in Manchester a few days ago,’ he said in one of them. Reform’s attack dogs were equally quick off the mark, reporting Labour to the police for alleged ‘dissemination of false statements’. The clip in question, Mr Goodwin points out, was a comment on the Tory conference taking place in the city, not on the city itself.

He went to the University of Salford and points to strong family roots in the area, including a grandfather who worked in a steel factory a few miles down the road. He says he knows the southern end of the constituency especially well from his student days selling pizzas (he claims he was the fastest pizza deliverer in Burnage). 

He speaks fluently but earnestly, more of the academic he used to be than a fledgling Farage.

‘Historically, this is a safe Labour seat but tribal allegiances are dead.’ He says this will be ‘a referendum on Starmer’ and that immigration is a top issue here. Well aware that his opponents are going to play the racism card with some of his past comments – ‘it takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’,’ he said after last year’s Huntingdon train stabbings – he insists that he is anti-‘sectarianism’.

‘Minority ethnic communities have expressed just as much outrage as white working class voters about broken borders because they all play by the rules. And the worst is when you hear Keir talking about fairness in a system that is so obviously unfair and biased towards rule-breakers.’

Here in Denton is where he expects his vote to be strongest. It seems that way on the streets. I meet Claire, 49, a mother of two and civil servant, walking her dog. She says that what will tip her vote is the way Labour has run the local Tameside Council – ‘a disaster’ – and immigration. She and her husband will both be for Reform.

So where is the Labour vote? The only glimmer of hope I find is down in Burnage, the part of town where the Gallagher boys grew up.

I visit the leafy road where they lived in a semi with Mum.

It’s hardly a pocket of deprivation. Two doors down, there’s a Range Rover outside.

The area is proud of the Oasis connection, with a huge mural of Liam and Noel round the corner from Burnage station. I meet property developer, Sarah, who usually votes Tory but says she’ll probably vote Labour ‘just to keep Reform out’.

‘Don’t look back in anger,’ might be the most famous Oasis line of them all. Unfortunately for Sir Keir, it seems that most voters on Feburary 26 are going to be looking back with a lot of anger indeed.