Even when losing a contest you badly want to win, there’s something to be said for dignity in defeat. You can still lose gracefully and earn respect and win friends.
There are memorable examples of this, which stand out against the febrile atmosphere surrounding public discourse today.
When New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern resigned in 2023, she said she “no longer had enough in the tank” to do the job justice. She could have blamed opponents or spun the decision. Instead, the message was simply: it’s time for someone else to lead.
Then there’s the letter I wrote about five years ago from former US President George HW Bush to his White House successor Bill Clinton in 1993, congratulating him on his victory and wishing him well.
“I’m rooting for you,” he wrote.
Losing gracelessly
Gorton and Denton in Greater Manchester is not national government, but some responses to defeat in last week’s by-election seem light years away from the examples above.
Before I go into this, let’s start with the facts about the results. The Green Party’s local candidate Hannah Spencer didn’t just scrape a win by a few votes. This wasn’t ‘hanging chad’ territory. She won big, by more than 4,000 votes on a turnout of 47.5%.
And yet, almost immediately, Reform and some of its media supporters cast doubt on the result, with comments about sectarianism and cheating.
Losing Reform candidate Matt Goodwin didn’t hold back in his speech to the hall, as reported in The Guardian here.
Goodwin did not take the defeat gracefully. Without evidence, he claimed: “I think that what you’ve seen is the emergence of a dangerous sectarianism in British politics. I don’t think the progressives beat us, I think the progressives were told how to vote,” adding that it was, in his view, “a coalition of Islamists and woke progressives that came together to dominate the constituency”.
And he didn’t flinch when asked by colleagues at GB News why he lost: ‘Sectarianism,’ he said, straight off the bat.
Losing gracefully, it isn’t. It was interesting to hear Goodwin’s comments about how well they campaigned and how their messages resonated. And 27% of the vote to come second is a strong performance.
Maybe in a moment of reflection, he’ll consider how his anti-immigration stance played in an ethnically diverse constituency with a high student population. Maybe his suggestions that people who don’t have children should be taxed extra as punishment landed badly.
And compare Goodwin’s chippy comments blaming dark forces to Hannah Spencer’s here.
“To people here in Gorton and Denton, who feel left behind and isolated, I see you, and I will fight for you. Because while our communities may sometimes be labelled in different ways, the thing everyone seems to have underestimated here, especially over the last few weeks, is how similar we all actually are.
“How we have common ground, how we get along, how we stand up for each other.”
Both comments came straight after the vote declaration. Both speak of the same contest. But when people prize attention above all else, where virality matters more than understanding, casting doubt on an election result makes more sense. In doing so, they undermine the basic idea that elections hold weight.
Where have we seen this before?
We need better than Project Fear
That this is a chilling glimpse of how Reform could behave in local and national government doesn’t really need saying. We can expect Labour to go on the attack on this over the coming months.
But I really hope they take note of a glaring omission from their strategy for Gorton and Denton, where ‘only we can stop Reform,’ was a key message.
People who dislike what Reform stands for don’t need scaring into voting for you as much as they need a positive alternative.
In Gorton and Denton, that alternative was the Greens. In Caerphilly, it was Plaid Cymru. Both seats were Labour strongholds for generations.
It should be clear from these examples that “we are not Reform” is not enough to win.
Progressives should stop obsessing about how awful ‘the other lot’ are and set out their vision for something positive that people can get behind.
If the government presses ahead with its devolution agenda, invests in skills and housing and bears down on the cost of living, I think it has a chance.
That takes bravery and honesty about the challenges we need to navigate together. The public showed last week that they aren’t mugs, despite claims from those unhappy with the result.
Congratulations and all the best to Hannah Spencer, a plumber-turned politician and a genuine working-class voice in parliament. It’s churlish not to wish her all the best.
It’s a shame that others couldn’t find it in themselves to do that.