Andrew Western, the Labor candidate, won with a majority of 9,906. The Conservatives came second, winning 15.9% of the vote to Labour’s 69.6%. With temperatures in Manchester below freezing on election day, only 25.8% of voters were eligible to vote. After thanking his mother for her support, Western said the result sent a “strong message” to Rishi Sunak’s government. “The people of Stretford and Urmston speak not just for this constituency but for millions more people up and down the country who know that this government has been failing us for the last 12 years,” he said. “The Tories have given up on governing and it is increasingly clear that the British people are abandoning them.” After taking his seat in parliament, Western is expected to step down as leader of Trafford council, which he has led since 2018. On the campaign trail, the 37-year-old said his three priorities would be fighting for properly funded public services, a Green New Deal to tackle the climate emergency and an end to the housing crisis. Labour’s victory followed an easy victory in Chester earlier this month. Kate Green, a former shadow education secretary, resigned in November after being nominated as Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing and crime. He has been an MP since 2010 and in 2019 won a majority of 16,417. Western, 37, comes from a Labor family. His mother, Denise, is a Trafford councilor and works in the NHS, and his father was a senior trade unionist and served as regional secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. Stretford and Urmston includes the Old Trafford area around Manchester United’s stadium, as well as Trafford Shopping Centre. It is often described as the birthplace of the NHS after Trafford General Hospital became the first NHS hospital when it was opened by Labor health secretary Aneurin Bevan on 5 July 1948. The constituency has been Labor since its formation in 1997, when Beverley Hughes won the seat in a landslide for Tony Blair. She went on to be Blair’s children’s minister before stepping down in 2010 to become a peer of Gordon Brown. Burnham appointed Hughes as his first deputy when he won the Manchester mayoral primary in 2017. The result will be uncomfortable for Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the influential 1922 Conservative Party Committee and MP for the neighboring Trafford seat of Altrincham and Sale West. In parliament since 1997, Brady has a majority of 6,139 and would be vulnerable in the next general election if recent polls are correct. Western was runner-up at home in 2019. Labor will be hoping for another election victory in early 2023 when voters in West Lancashire go to the polls to elect Rosie Cooper’s successor. She announced her resignation to take up the job as chairman of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, just years after she was targeted in a far-right plot.
