A selection of our recent appearances in the UK media.
The Guardian
27 February 2026
Labour’s worst fears realised by Greens’ victory in Gorton and Denton byelection
The Greens’ convincing win in the Manchester seat gives the leftwing party its best byelection result and its first northern seat. More importantly, however, it gives progressive voters a clear signal that they do not have to vote Labour to beat Reform – a signal that could prove catastrophic for the government in some of its strongest heartlands over the next few years.
“What makes this loss so consequential to Labour is not just the scale of the defeat but the message it sends to voters about future contests,” said the pollster Luke Tryl. “One of Labour’s ace cards had been the hope that, however frustrated or disillusioned progressive voters might be with the Starmer government, the threat of Reform would be enough to bring them back into the fold and reunite the left – a similar approach to President Macron’s re-election against Marine Le Pen [in France].
The Guardian
26 February 2026
Sarwar gambles on break with Starmer as Labour support slumps
“People look at Holyrood and think: ‘Lets give them all a bloody nose’,” says Alex, a betting shop manager. Speaking in a focus group of people who voted Labour at the 2024 general election, Alex captured the downbeat mood of a cohort bitterly disappointed with the Labour government’s early performance, frustrated by the record of the Scottish National party and wearied by what they described as “scandal after scandal” polluting public life.
Organised by the public opinion researchers More in Common, the discussion took place last week in Glasgow’s southside, where the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, grew up and still lives with his family.
Financial Times
26 February 2026
Starmer braced for high-stakes battle for Manchester seat
Luke Tryl, of think-tank More in Common, said: “The worst outcome for Labour is either a Green win or a Reform win with the Greens in second.”
Tryl said it would not only reinforce the trend towards a split in the left vote — a mirror of the Conservatives’ loss of support on the right to Reform — but it would also undermine Starmer’s main electoral message.
“It makes it much harder for Labour to run a ‘Macron strategy’, that is ‘however much progressives might be frustrated with us, it is us or Reform and so you have to hold your nose and back us’.”
The Telegraph
25 February 2026
Luke Tryl: What it’s like living in the Gorton and Denton ‘political storm’
Over the past few weeks, More in Common, the research company and consultancy, has been speaking to voters about what it is like living at the centre of a national political storm.
Gorton and Denton is literally a divided constituency. The M60 flows through the middle: Gorton, on the Manchester side, feels closer to the city centre. It is more diverse and more metropolitan; about two in five residents are Muslim, and two in five are either students or graduates. On the other side of the M60, Denton is more white and working class.
The Spectator
23 February 2026
‘It’ll be a photo finish’: inside the Gorton and Denton by-election
Both Labour and the Greens want to frame this as a binary contest: vote for us to stop Reform. Yet this slugfest risks becoming a stalemate. ‘A lot of voters on the left seem stuck in tactical paralysis: they’re desperate to keep Reform out but don’t know which party is the safer bet,’ says pollster Louis O’Geran of More in Common. ‘Even this early on, voters are already seeing competing claims from Labour and the Greens on Facebook, each presenting themselves as the tactical choice to stop Reform.’
The New Statesman
23 February 2026
In Gorton and Denton, the Muslim vote is fracturing
On a Wednesday evening, eight days before the by-election, seven voters joined a More In Common focus group on Zoom. They spanned a range of ages, professions, and life experiences: a joiner, a cardiologist and a woman with a small child playing in the background. All were Muslim, all had voted Labour in 2024, and all were unambiguous – albeit with varying intensity – that they would not be supporting Labour this time.