Labour hoping for easy win in Stretford and Urmston byelection

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Voters in the Greater Manchester constituency of Stretford and Urmston go to the polls on Thursday in a byelection called after the sitting Labour MP quit to become Andy Burnham’s mayoral deputy.

Labour will be hoping for a comfortable win after the party’s comfortable victory in Chester earlier this month.

Kate Green, a former shadow education secretary, resigned in November after being nominated as Greater Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime. She had been an MP since 2010 and in 2019 won a 16,417 majority.

Stretford and Urmston includes the Old Trafford area around Manchester United’s stadium, as well as the 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 the Labour health secretary Aneurin Bevan on 5 July 1948.

The constituency has been Labour since its creation in 1997, when Bev Hughes won it in Tony Blair’s landslide. She went on to be Blair’s children’s minister before quitting in 2010 and being made a peer by Gordon Brown. Burnham appointed her his first deputy when he won the inaugural Manchester mayoral election in 2017.

Labour’s byelection candidate is Andrew Western, the leader of Trafford council.

The Conservatives have fielded a PR executive, Emily Carter-Kandola, 29. Tory big-hitters have been conspicuous in their absence from the campaign trail, with a few backbenchers and local councillors turning up to canvass.

The result, expected in the early hours of Friday morning, will be watched keenly by Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the influential 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers and MP for the wealthier Trafford seat of Altrincham and Sale West.

In parliament since 1997, he has a majority of 6,139 and would be vulnerable in the next general election if recent polling is right. Western was runner-up in the seat in 2019.

Labour will be hoping for another byelection win in early 2023 when voters in West Lancashire go to the polls to elect Rosie Cooper’s successor. She announced her resignation in order to take up the job as chair of Mersey Care NHS foundation trust, a few years after being targeted in a far-right plot.