The Green Party is attempting to execute The Progressive Squeeze in the Gorton & Denton by-election and make it seem like a two-horse race between themselves and Reform UK.
The Progressive Squeeze is a political strategy where parties of the left position themselves as the main and most credible opponents to Reform UK in order to squeeze the vote share of other left parties and consolidate progressive voters.
The Greens’ ability to execute this strategy hinges on the psychological erasure of Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.
Hence, the Greens’ adverts use bar charts that feature almost any data except the result of the last general election in the seat, and position Labour as having lost hope.
The bar chart that features “Reform’s internal polling” is very misleading. To the median voter in Gorton and Denton looking at this ad for under 3 seconds, they could easily deduce that the Greens are in a close second place and Labour in a distant third. But there’s no evidence that is the case.
The Labour Party has long hoped to be the Progressive Squeezer rather than Squeezee. It was logical to assume that mainstream Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens would support Labour to defeat Reform UK.
The risk was always, however, that this anti-Reform tactical voting may benefit another party in seats where Labour gets deemed either unworthy of votes, or unlikely to win. Or both. We saw Labour being a victim of The Progressive Squeeze in the Senedd by-election in Caerphilly.
Labour is clearly trying to avoid the narrative setting in that they are not the default progressive opponent to Reform UK. Labour is fighting hard in the constituency with Meta ads live which position the Greens as unlikely to win and remind voters of the things Labour have delivered to improve their lives.
Labour is also trying to be the loudest proponents of a progressive ‘hope not hate’ style message by associating the Reform candidate with Tommy Robinson.
Lucy Powell, the Deputy Leader of Labour, and Andy Burnham, the Labour Manchester Mayor, have been hitting the campaign trail to enthuse voters and to attempt to create some distance with the Westminster party brand and Keir Starmer.
Labour will be hoping to get the party faithful turning up for canvassing in the constituency every day until polling day. They’ll need every activist and their kitchen sinks to hold on to this one. It promises to be a fascinating contest.
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