Greens To Target “Unease About Gentrification” Under Burnham In Manchester Mayoral Race
Councillor Geraldine Coggins, the Green Party’s candidate for the Greater Manchester mayoral race, with recently elected Green MP Hannah Spencer (Alamy)
3 min read
Exclusive: The Green Party remains confident it can move ahead of Labour in the Greater Manchester mayoral race and plans to target local unease about gentrification under Andy Burnham, according to senior insiders.
The election of Burnham as Labour MP for Makerfield in June triggered a by-election in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, with polling day set for 30 July.
Labour has sought to portray the election next month as a two-horse race between itself, with candidate Bev Craig, the Manchester city council leader, and Reform UK’s Sian Astley, a newly elected local councillor. The Greens are running Geraldine Coggins, a councillor in Altrincham.
The government put into effect a change of electoral system from first-past-the-post to the supplementary vote, a preferential system under which voters will cast a first and second choice. Labour sources believe this will boost their chances of holding onto the mayoralty.
While optimism around the by-election has grown within Labour since Burnham’s upcoming coronation as leader and prime minister became clear, the Greens are still hopeful that the “Burnham bounce” is surmountable.
Senior Green insiders say the first week of the campaign has been overshadowed by the noise around Burnham's ascent to Downing Street, but insist their party’s ground campaign is strong and support for Labour is “soft”.
The party led by Zack Polanski, who originally hails from Salford, believe there is “a lot of unease” among voters about the policies Labour has enacted in Greater Manchester, including “gentrification” and “the role of developers in pricing people out of the areas they want to be in”.
The Greens will emphasise their offers locally on affordable housing, rent controls and a policy of no more money to developers without guarantees of affordable housing targets.
Green figures also suspect that while Burnham is a better communicator than Keir Starmer, the former mayor may not be as radical in government as some on the left hoped. The party will be highlighting demands such as dropping the fiscal rules, public ownership rather than increased control and a concrete commitment to electoral reform nationally.
The Greens will be aiming for first-preference voters primarily, and senior insiders point out that YouGov polling from February showed Labour voters being more willing to tactically vote Green than the other way around.
Earleir this month, the Greens' former leader, Caroline Lucas, told The House mag that her party would "throw everything" at the Manchester mayoral election after deciding not to run a full-throttle campaign in Makerfield.
She compared the election next month to the by-election in Gorton and Denton in February, where Green candidate Hannah Spencer won 40 per cent of the vote to unseat Labour.
However, Labour sources counter that Burnham has changed the national picture since then and that the likelihood of the Greens repeating their success in Gorton and Denton is low, given they will not be able to target a particular demographic among voters across the combined authority in the way they did so effectively to secure Spencer’s win.
They also point out that Spencer finished fifth in the mayoral contest two years ago, and add that the Green vote share in the wards making up the whole combined authority in the recent local elections showed them placing significantly behind Labour and Reform, as it was concentrated in select areas.
“They’re trying to talk themselves into the race, but there’s no evidence for it,” a Labour source told PoliticsHome.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority covers 27 parliamentary seats, making the scale of the by-election unprecedented in British politics.
The Conservative candidate is Trafford councillor Phil Eckersley, the Liberal Democrats are running Manchester councillor Richard Kilpatrick, and Restore Britain has grooming gangs campaigner Marlon West as its candidate.
