Gorton & Denton isn't a swing, it's a re-wiring – here's why it changes the planning landscape

By-elections are usually slaps. The governing party takes a hit, commentators over-interpret, and within a fortnight the polls revert to mean. Gorton & Denton, decided in the early hours of this morning, is not that kind of by-election. It is, as political scientist Robert Ford warned beforehand, the moment "Labour's electoral Tinkerbell dies." What happened overnight is a structural fracture, and one with direct read-across to the policy environment in which advisers and their clients now operate. The numbers are brutal Start with the numbers, because they are savage. Labour's vote...