Labor retained the Greater Manchester constituency of Stretford and Urmston in a by-election called after the sitting Labor MP quit to become Andy Burnham’s deputy mayor.
Andrew Western, the Labor candidate, won by a majority of 9,906 votes. The Conservatives were a distant second, winning 15.9% of the vote to Labour’s 69.6%.
With temperatures in Manchester below freezing on election day, only 25.8% of eligible voters turned out.
After thanking his mother for her support, Western said the result sends a “strong message” to Rishi Sunak’s government.
“The people of Stretford and Urmston speak not only for this constituency but for millions more up and down the land who know that this government has let us down for the last 12 years,” he said. “The Tories have given up on governing and it is increasingly clear that the British people have given up on them.”
After taking his seat in parliament, Western is expected to stand down as leader of Trafford council, which he has led since 2018.
On the campaign trail, the 37-year-old said his three priorities would be fighting for properly funded public services, a green new deal to tackle the climate emergency and an end to the housing crisis.
Labour’s victory followed an easy victory in Chester earlier this month.
Kate Green, the former shadow education secretary, resigned in November after being nominated as Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime. She has been an MP since 2010 and in 2019 won a majority of 16,417 votes.
Western, 37, comes from a Labor family. His mother, Denise, is a Trafford councilor and works in the NHS, and his father was a senior trade unionist and was regional secretary of the Fire Brigades Union.
Stretford and Urmston includes the Old Trafford area around Manchester United’s stadium as well as Trafford Shopping Centre. It is often described as the birthplace of the NHS after Trafford General Hospital became the first NHS hospital when it was opened by Labor Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan on 5 July 1948.
The constituency has been Labor since its creation in 1997 when Beverley Hughes won the seat in a landslide for Tony Blair. She went on to be Blair’s children’s minister before stepping down in 2010 and being made a peer by Gordon Brown. Burnham appointed Hughes as his first deputy when he won Manchester’s first mayoral election in 2017.
The result will be embarrassing for Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the influential Conservative Backbench Committee since 1922 and MP for the neighboring Trafford seat of Altrincham and Sale West.
In Parliament since 1997, Brady has a majority of 6,139 and would be vulnerable in the next general election if recent polls are correct. Western was runner-up for the spot in 2019.
Labor will be hoping for another by-election victory in early 2023 when voters in West Lancashire go to the polls to choose a successor to Rosie Cooper. She announced her resignation to take up the chair of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, several years after becoming the target of a far-right plot.
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