In 2019, one third of Manchester’s constituencies voted Conservative. In 2024, none of them did. 25 voted Labour and two, Cheadle and Hazel Grove, voted Liberal Democrat. Labour have never held a greater percentage of seats in Greater Manchester before, so they appear to be dominant. However, seat numbers only tell a small part of the story of Greater Manchester Labour’s dilemma. Are the cracks in Manchester’s red wall beginning to emerge?
597,271 people voted Labour in Greater Manchester in 2019. This was an election regarded as Labour’s worst defeat in the history of the party. It may be a surprise, therefore, to hear that 474,043 Mancunians voted Labour in 2024. Looking at individual constituencies, Labour’s vote share either slightly increased like in Altrincham, held somewhat steady like in Wigan, or collapsed like in Rusholme, Gorton and Denton, or Bolton South. Considering this was meant to be a landslide victory for Labour, what happened?
What happened to Labour’s vote share in Greater Manchester turns out to not be that surprising when you look at the national picture. Labour’s raw number of votes decreased between 2019 and 2024, and its vote share only slightly increased. What may help explain the result in constituencies like Altrincham and Wigan is turnout, which plummeted to below 60% – the lowest since 2001. If the number of registered electors who didn’t vote had formed their own “apathy” party, it would have won every seat in Greater Manchester apart from Cheadle, where Tom Morrison for the Liberal Democrats would have won by a mere 27 votes.
However, what this doesn’t explain is why Labour’s vote share plummeted in so many constituencies.
An example of a constituency like this is Manchester Rusholme, an inner-city constituency with a large Muslim and student population. In 2019, 31,554 people voted Labour, or 79%. Three months ago, this plummeted to 15,054 people voting Labour – less than half of the 2019 figure. The main benefactors in the collapse of Rusholme’s Labour vote were the Green Party and the Workers Party.
In Greater Manchester, Labour have been facing all sorts of threats from all parties in recent years, including the Workers Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and Reform.
George Galloway for the Workers Party won a historic victory in Rochdale last March, and the party then went on to get a councillor elected in Longsight, a ward which has traditionally been very safe for Labour.
Labour has also been facing threats from the Green Party; they have taken Council seats from Labour in Wythenshawe and Reddish, again traditionally safe for the Labour Party.
The Liberal Democrats have mounted a threat to Labour locally in Ancoats and Beswick, where Manchester’s first transgender Councillor, Chris Northwood, was elected last year. The Lib Dems have also recently taken seats off Labour in Stockport and Salford Quays.
But the most concerning threat of all is the challenge that Reform UK poses to Labour. Reform came second in nearly half of Greater Manchester’s constituencies this general election, and performed particularly well in Labour’s “red wall”: traditional working-class Labour seats in the North of England that generally supported Brexit. An example of this is in Leigh and Atherton, where about 65% of voters backed Brexit in 2016. The Conservatives won the seat for the first time ever in 2019. Labour took it back in 2024, but Reform came a strong second, winning over 11,000 votes.
What explains Labour’s decline in Manchester? In the city’s multicultural suburbs with a large Muslim population, Gaza has been a major issue for the electorate. There has been outrage over Labour’s hesitancy to call for a ceasefire, and the Workers Party, through their campaigning, have seized on this outrage. When he won this year’s by-election in Rochdale, George Galloway pledged to be a strong voice for Gaza in Parliament.
The UK’s Muslim population has generally voted safely for Labour, but in 2024 this trend changed dramatically: Labour’s vote share fell in areas with a Muslim population of over 10%. Nationally, Labour lost seats to pro-Gaza independent candidates like in Blackburn or Dewsbury and Batley.
However, it wasn’t just Gaza that played on the mind of the electorate; it was also a general sense of feeling left behind by Labour. This was a common theme when the Manchester Evening News interviewed local residents of Longsight in April. Residents said they felt like Labour had taken their area for granted for years, so they would vote for someone who showed up and did the work.
The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have positioned themselves to the left of Labour on both social and economic issues. The Lib Dems’ flagship progressive policies on health and social care resonated with carers, while the Greens’ policies on tax make them stronger on wealth inequality than Labour.
Both parties have also challenged Labour’s record on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender rights. Both the Lib Dems and the Greens have called for a trans-inclusive ban on conversion therapy. In contrast, trans activists like India Willoughby have strongly criticised Labour for having “thrown trans people under the bus”.
Whilst in Parliament, both parties have demonstrated their more progressive credentials, by voting against the two-child benefit cap and the ban on puberty blockers. Some traditional Labour voters who were disillusioned by the party’s shift towards the centre found a new home in either the Liberal Democrats or the Greens.
Reform have also capitalised on disillusionment in deprived areas which previously formed Labour’s “red wall“. They argue that both Labour and the Tories are part of an elite establishment that serve themselves rather than the people they should represent.
In seats which strongly voted for Brexit, like Leigh and Atherton, Reform may have tapped into voters’ socially-conservative views. With these voters also tending to lean left on economic issues, it might be that Labour’s fiscally conservative decisions like scrapping the Winter Fuel Allowance will push voters in these seats even further away.
Labour hold 25 out of Greater Manchester’s 27 constituencies and won a seismic landslide victory this July. In spite of its dominance, Labour has been facing threats from all angles, but whichever party threatens Labour, the common message is that the party cannot keep taking its voters for granted. Many parts of Greater Manchester have voted Labour consistently for decades, but this seems to be changing, particularly in Council elections. If Labour doesn’t fix its relationships with Manchester’s voters, they will eventually vote for whichever alternative presents itself, even if that alternative is Reform.
