Good morning Millers, and welcome to the latest edition of our by-election coverage. We’re profiling each of the key contenders for Gorton and Denton (you can read Jack’s piece on Labour’s Angeliki Stogia here), and they're all free to read. We believe that quality local political coverage is vital for Greater Manchester’s democracy, and that every voter in Gorton and Denton — indeed, every voter in Greater Manchester — should have access to in-depth coverage. To read today’s profile on the Greens’ Hannah Spencer, and to access our profile of Reform’s Matt Goodwin next week, all you need to do is take out a free subscription below.
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Reform are on the rise. Can Hannah the plumber put a spanner in the works?
I meet Hannah Spencer in a park in Gorton – the grass is green, there are campaigners everywhere and their jumpers are green, the leaflets green, placards green – when a group of black-clad ten-year-olds walk by and they shout “Vote red!” What could possibly galvanise a bunch of pre-teens into such frenzied support for our record-breakingly unpopular government, or indeed for their relatively low-key candidate Angeliki Stogia? I shout after them, perplexed: “You lot support Labour?”
“Nah,” one boy shouts back. “United!”
It's a valid point. The Greens know, like United, that popularity is more about branding than anything else. Take their candidate in the upcoming election, Hannah-the-plumber. It’s a moniker redolent of Keir Starmer’s infamous toolmaker dad. It means to say: she’s not one of those politician-types that everybody hates — she’s a plumber! She eats pasties on Instagram and shows up to our interview with a Greggs sausage roll. Two Tuesdays ago, The Mill team went along to a locals-only semi-secret hustings (a hushtings, if you will) and I got talking to a 30-something woman in a beret and her similarly Levenshulmey friends. They’re toying with the idea of voting Green — but what do they think of Spencer? “We know she’s a plumber,” one man tells me. “I’d like to hear what her policies are.”
And we’ll get onto that, but there’s a reason politicians do this: it works. Spencer and I walk down Claremont Range, an enviable cul-de-sac on the fault line between Gorton and Denton. We go round knocking on doors, and every single time that, specifically, a man answers, the response is instant and singular. “Come on Hannah, get me boiler fixed! Have you got your tools with you? Good girl. Crack on.” They know her face, they know her name, they know her profession and her party. They’re seriously considering giving her their vote. Meanwhile, when my colleague Jack went around Longsight Market with Labour’s Angeliki Stogia, no one seemed to have a clue who she was. One boy named Amar, whose uncle runs a market stall, ran up while Jack was taking her photo. “Are you from the Green party?” he enquired. “She’s down here taking pictures all the time.”
Crucially, being a plumber means you can come out with lines like this: “There’s more shit in politics than I’ve ever found in somebody’s toilet.” Spencer, 34, blonde, lipsticked, eyes a black-flecked blue that makes them appear permanently dilated, says this to me on the corner of Claremont Range. It’s so good that at first I assume it’s her catchphrase, plastered all over Green party leaflets and already quoted in the Guardian. But no, Spencer’s just got lines like that – if you’ll excuse me – coming out of her arse.
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