MANCHESTER – In a night of political theatre that made Coronation Street look like a documentary, the citizens of Manchester went to the polls yesterday and delivered a verdict that has left political analysts reaching for the smelling salts and a very large map.
In a seismic shock that has sent ripples through the Westminster bubble, the Labour Party has lost a seat it has held since before the invention of Vimto. But in a twist that has provided belly laughs in university common rooms and utter confusion in Wetherspoons, the far-right Reform Party managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of… well, also defeat, spectacularly imploding amid revelations of a rather inconvenient tie to an ongoing geopolitical controversy.
The fallout began in the constituency of Manchester Haddonfield, a bellwether area known for its fiercely independent spirit, its 47 different kinds of artisanal coffee shops, and its deep-seated suspicion of anyone who doesn’t support the local football team. For decades, this was a safe Labour seat, a place where the winning candidate could have been a particularly charismatic mannequin wearing a red rosette.
But the mood on the doorstep had been “off,” according to local party insiders. “People were angry,” confided one canvasser, sipping a flat white with a look of thousand-yard stare. “They said the council bins aren’t emptied enough, they said the potholes are deep enough to swallow a Mini Cooper, and they said Keir Starmer’s tie was too narrow. It was a perfect storm of petty grievances.”
Enter the Liberal Democrats, who, sensing blood in the water, parachuted in a candidate whose main policy platform was “a new bypass and a firm but fair approach to squirrel management in Platt Fields.” Against all odds, and thanks to a surge in support from residents who simply wanted to “send a message,” the Lib Dems squeaked over the line with a majority of 12.
“It’s a victory for common sense, community, and the relentless pursuit of the median voter!” declared the victorious candidate, looking as shocked as a cat in a kennel.
But the real entertainment was reserved for the Reform Party. Buoyed by national polling and the scent of an upset, their candidate, local retired businessman and part-time Facebook pundit Nigel “Bulldog” Barkworth, had been confidently predicting a “political earthquake.”
His campaign, however, hit a minor snag halfway through the week when a series of leaked WhatsApp messages, apparently from a group called “Barkworth’s Bulldog Babbling B-S,” were published by the Manchester Evening News. The messages showed Mr. Barkworth attempting to navigate the complex issue of the conflict in Gaza.
In one exchange, after being asked by a supporter about his stance on the “Israeli genocide,” Mr. Barkworth reportedly typed: “The what now? Look, I’m very busy. Is this about the plumbing? I’ve got a man coming about a boiler. Tell them I’m sound on Israel. And Palestine. Whatever gets me the protest vote.”
When pressed further on the humanitarian crisis, he allegedly attempted to change the subject by sending a link to a Daily Mail article about the “shocking price of bungalows in Dorset.”
The pièce de résistance came the following day when it emerged that Mr. Barkworth had attempted to counter the negative press by hastily organizing a “Solidarity Rally for Global Peace and Justice (and Also British Sovereignty).” The rally, held in Piccadilly Gardens, was attended by exactly 14 people, three of whom were undercover reporters and two of whom were there to protest against the new bus lane on Oxford Road.
The final nail in the coffin was hammered in when a local voter, 54-year-old teaching assistant Margaret Tilsley, was interviewed outside a polling station. “I was going to vote for him, you know,” she said, clutching a copy of the Metro. “He said he’d sort the bins out. But then I saw he was mixed up with all that ‘genocide’ business. It’s just not very nice, is it? And besides, he looked a bit shifty. I voted for the Squirrel Management Party instead.”
In the end, Reform polled 98 votes, placing them behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (144 votes) and a single, determined man who stood as “The Humanist, Pro-Pigeon, Anti-Pothole Candidate” (217 votes).
As the results came in, a dejected Mr. Barkworth was seen outside the town hall, attempting to blame the result on “deep-state liberal media bias” and the fact that his “very good friend” had been distracted by a “minor misunderstanding about a large sum of money in an offshore account.”
Political historians are already calling the Manchester Haddonfield result a landmark moment. “It proves two things,” said Professor Lynda Snell of the University of Walford. “Firstly, that the Labour vote can no longer be taken for granted, even in its northern heartlands, if the bins aren’t emptied. And secondly, that to be a successful far-right party in modern Britain, you need to have a much, much better grasp of global geopolitics and, at the very least, be able to convincingly lie about it. ‘Getting a man about a boiler’ is simply not a sufficient alibi for genocide denial.”
As dawn broke over Manchester, the city was left to ponder its new political landscape: a Lib Dem MP, a thoroughly disgraced Reform candidate, and the lingering, unsettling question of what the Squirrel Management Party is actually going to do about the squirrels.