Terry Prone: Bid to scare voters against Green candidate in UK by-election backfired immensely

Late tactic to scare the Gorton and Denton electorate away from voting for Hannah Spencer had the opposite effect. 

Newly-elected Green MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, eats chips in curry sauce from a takeaway near her constituency office in Manchester. Picture: Andy Kelvin/PA Wire

The plumber with the chips. Correction. The member of parliament with the curried chips. The picture is never going to compete with the one of Mountbatten-Windsor, pop-eyed in the back seat of a car after a day’s interrogation, but it defines a moment, nevertheless. The Green Party candidate won. Romped home, we believe is the correct description for winning almost 15,000 votes in a 21% swing.

This is even more remarkable, given that the UK doesn’t have proportional representation, which tends, in Ireland, to allow minority party candidates to sneak into a seat at the final count, although at the last general election here, even that didn’t happen. Roderic O’Gorman, our one and only Green Party TD, must be looking at Hannah Spencer and wondering what electoral lessons her victory offers him and his party.