SIR KEIR STARMER’S future is once more on a knife-edge as voters in Manchester go to the polls in a by-election that seems too close to call.

Last-minute polls in the city’s Gorton and Denton constituency, which tomorrow chooses a replacement for Labour MP Andrew Gwynne, show the Greens edging ahead in what would be a historic breakthrough.

But both Labour, which held the seat comfortably in the 2024 general election, and the far-right Reform are very much still in the race.

A Labour loss in a hitherto safe seat would certainly reignite calls for Sir Keir to go from the Labour backbenches, and possibly precipitate a challenge by Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

Polling for Opinium puts Green candidate Hannah Spencer in the lead with 30 per cent support among voters likely to vote. Labour and Reform are both on 28 per cent, with Tories and Liberal Democrats nowhere.

An earlier Omnisis poll also had the Greens winning with 33 per cent, while Reform were on 29 per cent and Labour on 26 per cent.

The polls are more than usually significant as many voters in the constituency will be gauging which candidate has the best chance of beating Reform.

Reform’s candidate is former academic Matthew Goodwin who has made a number of inflammatory anti-Islam comments which have not gone down well in a seat where about 30 per cent of voters are Muslim.

It is clear that he can only win if the anti-Reform vote splits more-or-less evenly between Greens and Labour.

Opinium has also found that tactical voters are significantly more likely to be prepared to back the Greens than Labour.

Sir Keir attacked Mr Goodwin in the Commons today, saying that he had claimed “anyone who is not white cannot be English.”

He then pivoted to denouncing the Greens for calling for the liberalisation of drug laws, an issue Labour has been trying to make a lot of on the streets of Gorton and Denton.

The Prime Minister’s political strategy, shaped by dismissed chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, has pivoted on appealing to Reform-inclined voters while ignoring much bigger losses to parties on Labour’s left.

A Green victory would expose the bankruptcy of that positioning and will panic large numbers of Labour MPs. A Reform win would also be attributed to losing votes to the Greens, so that too would be no endorsement of Downing Street strategists.

The Greens’ Ms Spencer has been supported by Your Party and the Workers Party and has particularly targeted the area’s Muslim voters, who remain deeply alienated from Labour because of Sir Keir’s support for the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

The campaign wound down amid accusations of racism directed at both Labour and Reform.

Nigel Farage’s party was forced to suspend one of its campaign managers, Adam Mitula, after the revelation that he had made offensive social media posts directed at black and Jewish people.

And Ms Spencer accused Labour of resorting to “racist dogwhistles” for protesting against the Greens issuing campaign materials in languages other than English, a very common practice.

“The Labour Party know they’re out of this race,” she said. “They’re clearly happy to weaponise racism and division in their desperate attempts to stop us beating them.”

It seems clear that the vote may mark the end of two-party dominated politics in England. Top psephologist Rob Ford said: “Labour are sinking, populist parties are rising on the right and on the left, and as those parties are becoming viable and competitive in ever more seats, elections are becoming even more unpredictable.

“Prospects have never looked bleaker for the mainstream parties who have dominated British politics for so long – both may soon fall out of the top two in national polling.

“Whichever party emerges victorious on Friday, we may come to see this as the day Labour’s electoral Tinkerbell dies. And if voters’ beliefs about who can and cannot win are changed by this week’s events, then the pace of change may be about to accelerate once again.”