by Hugo Timms, spiked
Appealing almost solely to Muslim voters might seem like a strange way for a major party to go about winning a by-election in Manchester. Producing adverts in Urdu, the native language of Pakistan, might be considered even odder. Yet, to prove that nothing is too strange for British politics in 2026, that is exactly what the Green Party has done in a recent campaign video.
‘Shopkeepers, drivers, cleaners, mothers – it is we who keep this area running’, a female narrator says in Urdu. Hannah Spencer, the Greens’ candidate for this week’s Gorton and Denton by-election in Manchester, then introduces herself in Urdu. ‘A cruel politician can win if we don’t vote Green to stop Reform’, the female voiceover continues. Pictures of Reform UK’s candidate, Matt Goodwin, appear at the bottom of the screen. ‘They want to break up our communities, deport families who have lived here for years, and tax people born abroad even more’, the ad continues. ‘They fuel Islamophobia and put our safety and dignity at risk.’
It isn’t just Reform the video targets. To ram home the message that the Greens are the only suitable party for Pakistani-heritage Muslim voters, it throws some punches in Labour’s direction, too. The video shows UK prime minister Keir Starmer and deputy prime minister David Lammy with Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu – the leaders of India and Israel respectively. It also shows footage of American ICE agents arresting immigrants and drone footage of the flattened Gaza Strip. Other snippets include Muslims in Manchester going about their daily tasks: one man is sweeping leaves on a street, another is standing behind the counter of what appears to be a vape shop, talking to a customer.
This video is not an aberration. The Greens, who many polls suggest could win the by-election, appear to be focussing their campaign on Manchester’s Muslim population – as high as 40 per cent in certain Gorton and Denton council wards – as well as the constituency’s large student and graduate population, for whom Gaza is the overriding concern. The result so far has been a brazenly sectarian campaign – an attempt to cleave the local population along ethnic and religious lines, using the faithful hatchets of the Gaza ‘genocide’ and alleged ‘Islamophobia’.