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Gorton and Denton marketing campaign hits closing day with new ballot suggesting Greens, Labour and Reform UK all attainable winners
Good morning. It’s the final full day of campaigning within the Gorton and Denton byelection and a brand new ballot is out which suggests – that it’s too near name, and that the Inexperienced get together, Labour and Reform UK all have a reputable probability of successful.
The info is a little more particular than that. Opinium has achieved the ballot for Byline Instances and Ahead Democracy and the figures present a useless warmth amongst all voters (the Greens and Labour on 28%, Reform UK on 27%), however the Greens (30%) marginally forward of Labour and Reform UK (each on 28%) amongst individuals prone to vote.
That is the second ballot suggesting the Greens are marginally forward. An Omnisis ballot on the finish of final week had the Greens on 33%, Reform UK on 29% and Labour on 26%. However constituency polling could be very erratic, and most of those leads are throughout the margin of error, and so the one dependable takeaway with regard to the result’s – it’s too near name.
However there’s one other takeaway that’s dependable. In what historically has been a secure Labour seat, there are two rebel, challenger events which can be aggressive. We’re used to byelections the place one outsider get together is doing nicely, however right here Reform UK and the Greens are each potential winners. That is additional affirmation that the two-party system has utterly damaged down, and we are actually in an period of multi-party politics.
There’s additionally one other, apparently stable discovering within the Opinium polling. Adam Bienkov experiences in his write-up for Byline Instances:
The ballot means that tactical voting might simply swing the competition, with anti-Reform voters considerably extra prone to swap to the Greens than to Labour.
Round two thirds (66%) of these Labour and Liberal Democrat voters surveyed mentioned they might be ready to modify to the Greens in the event that they have been the get together most probably to beat Reform, in comparison with simply 41% of Inexperienced and Lib Dem voters who mentioned they might swap to Labour to defeat Farage’s get together.

Commenting on the ballot, James Crouch, head of coverage and public affairs at Opinium, mentioned:
The Gorton & Denton by-election is shaping as much as be an extremely tight and unpredictable three-way race, with this newest ballot additionally suggesting the Greens may benefit greater than Labour from tactical voting within the closing days of the marketing campaign.
We’ll hear extra about this at PMQs.
Right here is the agenda for the day.
Midday: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a go to the place she is speaking concerning the Ofgem value cap announcement.
And the federal government is publishing its courts and tribunals invoice right this moment.
If you wish to contact me, please publish a message under the road when feedback are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t learn all of the messages BTL, however should you put “Andrew” in a message aimed toward me, I’m extra prone to see it as a result of I seek for posts containing that phrase.
If you wish to flag one thing up urgently, it’s best to make use of social media. You may attain me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, however particular person Guardian journalists are there, I nonetheless have my account, and should you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I’ll see it and reply if mandatory.
I discover it very useful when readers level out errors, even minor typos. No error is simply too small to right. And I discover your questions very attention-grabbing too. I can’t promise to answer to all of them, however I’ll attempt to reply to as many as I can, both BTL or typically within the weblog.
Key occasions
There have really been three polls revealed from Gorton and Denton however the first one, a Discover Out Now one, has been principally ignored as a result of it solely had a pattern dimension of 143 (too small to take significantly) and the corporate says it was not concerned within the resolution to launch the figures to the media. However, for the report, here’s a chart with all three units of polling outcomes.
Within the mild of right this moment’s Gorton and Denton polling (see 9.11am), it’s value remembering what Philip Cowley, one other politics professor, describes as his regulation of byelection evaluation.
I really feel Thursday could possibly be a check of Cowley’s Regulation of By-Election Evaluation: that an excessive amount of consideration is paid to who wins.
Additionally, Cowley’s hardly ever used Supplementary Regulation of By-Election Evaluation: an excessive amount of consideration could be paid to who comes third.
Subsequent EU-UK summit prone to occur in July, later than anticipated, EU commissioner says

Lisa O’Carroll
Lisa O’Carroll is a Guardian correspondent overlaying commerce.
The subsequent EU-UK summit will most likely not occur till July, Maroš Šefčovič has mentioned.
It means the summit will happen two months after it was anticipated and will point out that negotiations over a brand new farm meals settlement involving sanitary and phytosanitary checks, together with negotiations of the carbon border mechanism, are taking longer than anticipated.
Talking to the European parliament, Šefčovič, the EU commissioner for commerce, additionally confirmed that the UK and EU are intensifying engagement with calls anticipated between the commissioner and Europe minister Nick Thomas-Symonds each fortnight.
Sources mentioned this was to permit political decision to avert any looming roadblocks that emerge at official degree.
One supply mentioned it was to make sure there was no repeat of final November’s “embarrassing” collapse of talks between the UK and the EU over becoming a member of the EU’s Secure defence programme.
European parliament president Roberta Metsola is in London right this moment whereas enterprise secretary Peter Kyle is in Brussels
Byelection protection within the UK would most likely be a lot improved if MPs have been solely allowed to resign, or die, in constituencies with a politics professor energetic on social media dwelling close by. Luckily, in Gorton and Denton, there’s one available. Prof Rob Ford, one of many nation’s main psephologists, lives within the constituency subsequent door, he as soon as wrote a ebook with the Reform UK candidate (they’ve since fallen out), and he has been writing at size concerning the contest on his Substack account.
His newest publish was revealed final night time, and it consists of evaluation of the newest ballot. (See 9.11am.) It’s nicely value studying in full, however right here is an extract from his conclusion.
Whoever wins on Friday, the result’s prone to affirm quite a lot of tendencies. Labour are sinking, populist events are rising on the proper and on the left, and as these events have gotten viable and aggressive in ever extra seats, elections have gotten much more unpredictable. Prospects have by no means appeared bleaker for the mainstream events who’ve dominated British politics for therefore lengthy – each could quickly fall out of the highest two in nationwide polling, each face annihilation within the Could native and devolved elections, and because the tide of revolt rises all over the place there are not any secure seats left for both get together’s MPs or native councillors ….
Whichever get together emerges victorious on Friday, we could come to see this because the day Labour’s electoral Tinkerbell dies. And if voters’ beliefs about who can and can’t win are modified by this weeks occasions, then the tempo of change could also be about to speed up as soon as once more. Maintain on to your hats.
Power payments will fall by £117 for tens of millions of households in Nice Britain from April
Annual power payments will fall by £117 for tens of millions of households from April after Rachel Reeves’s plan to chop £150 a yr from payments was partly foiled by rising prices, Jillian Ambrose experiences.
Gorton and Denton marketing campaign hits closing day with new ballot suggesting Greens, Labour and Reform UK all attainable winners
Good morning. It’s the final full day of campaigning within the Gorton and Denton byelection and a brand new ballot is out which suggests – that it’s too near name, and that the Inexperienced get together, Labour and Reform UK all have a reputable probability of successful.
The info is a little more particular than that. Opinium has achieved the ballot for Byline Instances and Ahead Democracy and the figures present a useless warmth amongst all voters (the Greens and Labour on 28%, Reform UK on 27%), however the Greens (30%) marginally forward of Labour and Reform UK (each on 28%) amongst individuals prone to vote.
That is the second ballot suggesting the Greens are marginally forward. An Omnisis ballot on the finish of final week had the Greens on 33%, Reform UK on 29% and Labour on 26%. However constituency polling could be very erratic, and most of those leads are throughout the margin of error, and so the one dependable takeaway with regard to the result’s – it’s too near name.
However there’s one other takeaway that’s dependable. In what historically has been a secure Labour seat, there are two rebel, challenger events which can be aggressive. We’re used to byelections the place one outsider get together is doing nicely, however right here Reform UK and the Greens are each potential winners. That is additional affirmation that the two-party system has utterly damaged down, and we are actually in an period of multi-party politics.
There’s additionally one other, apparently stable discovering within the Opinium polling. Adam Bienkov experiences in his write-up for Byline Instances:
The ballot means that tactical voting might simply swing the competition, with anti-Reform voters considerably extra prone to swap to the Greens than to Labour.
Round two thirds (66%) of these Labour and Liberal Democrat voters surveyed mentioned they might be ready to modify to the Greens in the event that they have been the get together most probably to beat Reform, in comparison with simply 41% of Inexperienced and Lib Dem voters who mentioned they might swap to Labour to defeat Farage’s get together.
Commenting on the ballot, James Crouch, head of coverage and public affairs at Opinium, mentioned:
The Gorton & Denton by-election is shaping as much as be an extremely tight and unpredictable three-way race, with this newest ballot additionally suggesting the Greens may benefit greater than Labour from tactical voting within the closing days of the marketing campaign.
We’ll hear extra about this at PMQs.
Right here is the agenda for the day.
Midday: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
Afternoon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is on a go to the place she is speaking concerning the Ofgem value cap announcement.
And the federal government is publishing its courts and tribunals invoice right this moment.
If you wish to contact me, please publish a message under the road when feedback are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t learn all of the messages BTL, however should you put “Andrew” in a message aimed toward me, I’m extra prone to see it as a result of I seek for posts containing that phrase.
If you wish to flag one thing up urgently, it’s best to make use of social media. You may attain me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, however particular person Guardian journalists are there, I nonetheless have my account, and should you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I’ll see it and reply if mandatory.
I discover it very useful when readers level out errors, even minor typos. No error is simply too small to right. And I discover your questions very attention-grabbing too. I can’t promise to answer to all of them, however I’ll attempt to reply to as many as I can, both BTL or typically within the weblog.