Gorton and Denton’s new rep has railed against “posh boys” in Westminster — and shows the Greens leaning into cost-of-living messaging.
LONDON — The Green Party’s decisive victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election thrusts Hannah Spencer — a plumber and plasterer by trade — into the British political spotlight.
The 34-year-old is the first MP to win office for her party since Leader Zack Polanski vowed to retool the environmentalist party as a vehicle for progressives hoping to take chunks out of Labour.
Spencer shows the Greens moving away from their archetypal middle class image and focus on the environment, and her campaign has put cost-of-living concerns, her own relatability, and left-wing anger at the war in Gaza front and center the center.
“People already know how much we care about the climate crisis and the environment,” Spencer told POLITICO in February. Instead, the Greens are hoping to combine their climate credentials with wider topics, “linking it to other things we really care about.”
‘I fixed homes for a living’
When Spencer was announced as the Green Party’s candidate, her working class backstory was core to her messaging.
“I didn’t go to university to study politics,” she said at the party’s campaign launch last month. “I’m a plumber here in Manchester. I fixed homes for a living. I spend my days in people’s kitchens, in their bathrooms, and their front rooms.”
Spencer left school at 16 — a far cry from a university-dominated Commons — and took an apprenticeship, eventually setting up her own business: Hannah’s Household Plumbing. Responding to questions about the authenticity of her working class roots during the campaign, she told the New Statesman: “I’ve been a plumber for nearly 20 years. What do they want, to see a toilet I’ve fixed?”
“They want to keep Westminster for a small club of posh boys that all went to the same schools or studied at Oxbridge,” she argued. “That’s why things have been run into the ground – we’ve had too many politicians that don’t know what it’s like to graft.”
Spencer also qualified as a gas engineer and plasterer — the latter while the by-election campaign was in full flow. The owner of four greyhounds, Spencer took the dogs — Olive, Forrest, Judy and Will — on the campaign trail, and has spoken about the impact of campaigning against dog racing on her politics. “I’d turn up and hand out leaflets, kindly explaining but also listening to people,” she told the Manchester Evening News.
Spencer is by no means a political newbie. In 2023, she became a local councilor for the Greens on Trafford Council. She later stood in the Greater Manchester mayoralty and a Cheshire parliamentary constituency at the general election in 2024, coming fifth place in both. Last year, she became the Greens’ leader on the council, and endorsed Polanski for party leader, gaining a position as migration and refugee support spokesperson soon after his win.
During the campaign, Spencer faced criticism for a 2021 online post saying she was “glad” to have left the area due to the number of “money-laundering takeaways” — though the Greens insisted that was a catalyst for her bid to improve the constituency.
Her campaign has also come under fire from rival parties for targeting Muslim voters, and repeatedly attacking Labour over support for Israel. A campaign video released entirely in Urdu included a photo of Starmer with India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reform UK on the right argued Friday that “Islamists” had helped Spencer win power.
Spencer has shot back that the Greens want to make the U.K. political system accessible to everyone, and insisted it’s her rivals — with a focus on immigration and attacks on the Greens’ drug policies — stoking division.
In her victory speech Friday, the trained plumber also apologized to customers for whom she’ll now have to cancel work. At least she’ll have a good reason this time.
Sam Francis contributed reporting.