Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Voters in the southeast Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton were headed to the polls on Thursday to elect a new member of parliament in a key test for Britain's ruling Labour Party that could determine the future of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Labour MP Andrew Gwynne won the historically safe Labour seat by a 13,000-vote margin in the 2024 general election but the byelection, triggered by his resignation due to ill-health, has the party facing a serious threat from the Greens, on the left, and from Nigel Farage's Reform UK, on the right.
Green Party leader Zack Polanski said the party was leveling pegging with Reform to win the seat, saying that Labour would have to "search their conscience" if their strategy of trying to scare off voters from voting Green by claiming it would split the Labour vote backfired.
Labour has been telling left-minded voters that the only way to defeat Reform was to vote Labour and that voting for the Greens was "in-effect, a vote for Reform," but Polanski said Labour was "way, way behind" both rivals and warned that a Green win could spell the end for Starmer's leadership.
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