2017 Manchester Gorton by-election

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A by-election for the Manchester Gorton seat was due on 4 May 2017 after the death of Labour MP Sir Gerald Kaufman, who had held the seat since 1983 and was the Father of the House. The by-election was cancelled on 20 April after Prime Minister Theresa May announced a general election for 8 June. It would have been the first by-election to be canceled since 1924.

Manchester Gorton is an urban seat in Greater Manchester. The Labour Party has held the constituency for decades; Kaufman led the seat from 1983 until his death.

Labour selected Afzal Khan, a Member of the European Parliament for North West England, as their candidate on 22 March from a shortlists of five candidates, all from South Asian backgrounds. Ten other candidates were set to stand in the by-election, including George Galloway (standing as an independent), and candidates from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and UKIP.

Because a general election was imminent, the by-election did not go ahead. At the general election in June, most of the by-election candidates stood again. Afzal Khan won for Labour with a large majority, taking about 76% of the vote, with the Conservative in second place. This was one of Labour’s highest vote shares in the election.

Khan was re-elected as MP for Manchester Gorton in the 2019 general election, increasing his share to around 78%.

The constituency has long been a Labour stronghold, part of the city of Manchester. In the 2015 general election Kaufman had won with a large majority, making the seat very safe for Labour.