Labour and Reform are pushing the same drugs-panic smear because polling has Greens ahead, so the “only Labour can stop Reform” line has failed. Right, so Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has decided that the way to hold Gorton and Denton is to tell people they don’t get a choice in the matter. The pitch is “only Labour can stop Reform”, it’s their only pitch, God forbid they stand for something rather than arrogantly demand your vote, but there we are. The threat is “a vote anywhere else lets Reform in”, never mind they’ve been copying Reformesque policy for months and the proof they’ve waved around for that claim has already been pulled apart in public. You see Full Fact has looked at Labour’s “only Labour can beat Reform” ad and said the bar chart in it is built on answers from just sixty-two respondents, and that it can’t reliably show how support compares between the parties. Whoops, you got full facted, and Labour could have just dropped it there, taken the loss that is coming their way regardless, and tried to win on something real. Standing for something if they can convince people something coming out of Starmer’s face is believable to begin with, but they didn’t. Of course then came the Omnisis poll didn’t it? This polled the seat with a sample size of four hundred and fifty-two and put the race where everyone can see it: Greens on twenty-two per cent, Reform on twenty per cent, Labour on eighteen per cent, with twenty-seven per cent undecided and thirteen per cent saying they would not vote. That’s before you even get into the numbers that come out once you exclude undecideds and non-voters and look at the weighted results, where the top three are sitting close enough to each other that nobody gets to talk like they’ve already won, or can speak like they expect to either. But both Labour and Reform have decided nevertheless that Zack Polanski is the person both will build attacks around, as well as Green candidate Hannah Spencer – how dare she go on holiday to San Francisco 12 years ago and be married whilst also not married to a chemist whilst also simultaneously living but not living in a gated mansion, I mean who does she think she is?