Greens ‘seismic’ win could send Labour to the ‘dustbin of history’

Polling expert says ‘seismic’ by-election loss could put Labour in ‘dustbin of history’

Polling expert John Curtice has reacted to the Green Party’s “seismic” by-election win in Gorton and Denton. And he suggests it could be a further step towards putting both Labour and the Conservatives in the “dustbin of history“.

Speaking to the media on 27 February, Curtice:

Highlighted prime minister Keir Starmer’s hopelessness at connecting with working-class voters and stopping his party’s self-inflicted decline.
Said it’s increasingly clear that voters are fully prepared to dump both Labour and the Conservatives.
Insisted the Tory-Labour duopoly has “never looked weaker“.

Greens replace Labour: A working-class woman enters ‘the history books’

Curtice challenged the historic conception that Labour is the “party of working people”. And he suggested the Greens had produced a real masterstroke by putting forward:

a very articulate working-class woman, sounding much more… authentically working class than the vast bulk of Labour MPs

Professor John Curtice:

The new Green Party MP sounded much more authentically working class than the vast majority of Labour MPs. pic.twitter.com/FxrySn7Gl0

— Tory Fibs (@ToryFibs) February 27, 2026

Curtice has long insisted that Starmer’s mimicry of far-right Reform UK is a doomed strategy. He previously highlighted that a right-wing Labour was losing far more voters to the Green Party and Liberal Democrats than it was to Reform. And he suggested actually improving the NHS and the economy would be the real vote winner.

At the same time, a monumental rise in the popularity of the Green Party under Zack Polanski’s leadership has bitten a massive chunk out of Labour’s voter base. And Curtice believes more and more people are becoming aware that Starmer is thoroughly unable to stop Labour’s decline:

Sir John Curtice: "Voters are willing to vote for parties other than the conventional, traditional parties."

Translation: The establishment just got steamrolled by someone who unblocks toilets for a living. But please, continue your navel-gazing about what it all *means*. pic.twitter.com/w3UCan8LaF

— Candice Holmes (@hol40900) February 27, 2026

Gorton and Denton isn’t an outlier, Curtice insists. Instead, it’s part of a growing trend of the Tory-Labour duopoly tanking and the Greens rising:

The Greens’ by election victory raises 'major questions' about the traditional dominance of Labour and the Conservatives as the leading political parties, says polling guru Sir John Curtice. pic.twitter.com/T19VfSD4NG

— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) February 27, 2026

The long Tory-Labour march into the “dustbin of history”

As an election for “the history books”, Curtice said:

The Greens have got their “first ever” parliamentary by-election win.
The Tories got “their worst ever by-election result”.
It’s the “first time”, except for “when Labour disowned their candidate” in Rochdale in 2024, that “neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been one of the top two parties in a by-election contest”.
Labour had its “13th biggest ever fall” in by-election support.

John Curtice: "There are particular elections we all remember.. this is going to be up with those in the history books and in our political memory. This is a seismic event" pic.twitter.com/2t9h32ExID

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) February 27, 2026

Gorton and Denton didn’t just show that the Tories have little chance of stopping a Reform that’s given the right a fascist face-lift. It also showed that the Greens can defeat Labour by proudly representing hope and compassion.

The seismic shift in British politics is leaving the old establishment parties flailing. And the Tory-Labour duopoly is looking increasingly powerless to prevent their fall into the “dustbin of history”:

'It’s not clear that Labour or the Conservatives will be able to fend off these challenges anymore…'

Political scientist Sir John Curtice tells Nick Ferrari that the Green’s historic by-election win threatens the UK's traditional two-party system. pic.twitter.com/W2dp8yzehP

— LBC (@LBC) February 27, 2026

Featured image via the Canary

Comments 1

AussiMoi says:

5 months ago

I remember the Cold War. I remember the world ‘knowing’ this war could never end. I remember the ‘sudden’ fall of the Berlin Wall. Nothing can change, it all stays frozen, until suddenly it does change and yesterday’s certainties look bloody stupid.

Maybe Labour will go the way of Tories, I hope so. Both parties deserve to be obliterated, not least for their illegal war-mongering and confected ‘War on Terror’, their crap handling of a brexit no sane person wanted and which should never have happened, their criminal conduct during the pandemic, their blatant money-grubbing corruption, their subversion of our constitution and the rule of law, their relentless ‘small state’ cuts and malicious austerities, their persecution of the sick and disabled, their scapegoating of any convenient minority, the promotion of transphobia and islamophobia, and their active defence of and material support for genocide. Both were defined by slavish devotion to neoliberalism, both had no more morality than ‘market forces’, perhaps their falls signals the end of an era of fucking evil.

Hopefully, we will now get a spread of ‘extreme’ parties i.e. post-neoliberalism parties which reject the global consensus that dominated Britain from Thatcher/Reagan until Truss/Starmer, half a century of shit, and want something new. I personally cannot see rejecting neoliberalism as anything but common sense but legacy media lives in the past, sees everything through the filter of neoliberalism, so they have to describe anything which is not gung-ho neoliberalism as extreme or crazy or unthinkable. They will resist new ideas until the bunker walls around their minds are smashed by the sledgehammer blows of reality and they finally emerge blinking into a new world order. For people in the current affairs media, they are really, really, out totally of touch and behind the times.

All that matters to me is that the new parties of the Left win the next election and the new parties of the Far Right get their arses kicked like they did in Manchester this week. Once the Left win, constitutional reform must be a priority. We must destroy the old two-party dictatorship and save democracy by ensuring EVERY vote counts. No more fucking ‘safe seats’, no more ‘jobs for life’ for MPs, no more votes for sale, no more lobbying, no more revolving door deals between government posts and corporate cushy numbers.

Hello Westminster Bubble, the ‘ordinary people’ called and they want their country back.