Faiza Shaheen nails why people voted for hope in Gorton and Denton
Inequality economist Faiza Shaheen has summed up why people chose hope in the Gorton and Denton by-election. The Green’s Hannah Spencer won by a mile in the Manchester constituency by-election.
“Represent” the people
On social media, Shaheen said:
Greens came from nowhere to win in one of the safest Labour seats in the country. This is evidence that people want politicians that represent them, not the billionaires and city lobbyists
As part of a wide-reaching purge of progressives (that may have now backfired given the rise of the Greens), Keir Starmer arbitrarily blocked Shaheen from standing as a Labour candidate in the 2024 election. That’s despite her performance against Conservative Iain Duncan Smith in the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency in 2019. She came within around 1,000 votes from unseating him.
The Autonomy Institute made the corruption around corporate influence clear with its research last year. 373 companies have made over £60 billion from public contracts following their political donations in “recent years”.
As Shaheen points out, the public are sick of it and the result in Gorton and Denton reflects that. The Greens won a landslide victory in what appeared to be a close race. The party received 14,980 votes to Reform’s 10,578.
‘Muslims would forget’
Economist and politician Shaheen continued with her reasons for the Green win:
Labour’s complicity in a genocide has hurt them (David Lammy once told me that Muslims would forget!); and that people can and will defeat the divisive politics of Reform. Thank you Hannah Spencer, Zack Polanski and the Green PartyÂ
Despite the ceasefire, people aren’t forgetting the indiscriminate bombardment of Palestinian people. Labour was in a position to help stop the onslaught and instead has done the opposite.
As Shaheen says, the Greens are showing that a re-balancing of the economy away from billionaires and elites.
Featured image via the Canary
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It is wrong to say that they Greens came from nowhere. If the Greens had voiced their position more strongly and stopped trying to be nice to everyone, they would win more elections. Now they have a spokesperson who will speak and make a noise, who is able to gain media attention, they will do better. This is not because it is a man, they have had men before but now they talk against division, against genocide against privatization,
Reform won the protest vote because they were noise (as the fascists have before) because there was no left opposition and this is why 35% of the electorate has not voted, meaning none of the above wins most elections.
Greens must prove they are to the left, say there (not like the German Greens), they must have democratic accountability at the local level not have a central committee dictate policy and appoint local politicians as the Labour party now does
Political victory doesn’t come out of nowhere it comes out of engaging the electorate and giving them agency
Hope hay the greens would be another disaster it isn’t hope. We had a chance with JC but we allowed the weasel to kill our hopes starmer the spammer has taken this party so far up the toerags road we only see a government not for the people it’s the turn out of people less than fifty percent this alone tells them on power that we need a new way new honest people in power but you won’t get it with most of those in power