This by-election isn’t about the seat — it’s about whether Labour’s control model still works when voters stop playing along. Right, so Andrew Gwynne has resigned as a Labour MP, which means a parliamentary by-election is now locked in, whether anyone likes it or not and that certainly applies to Keir Starmer, this being his first parliamentary test since conning his way into power 18 months ago. Coming as this likely is to coincide with May’s local elections, all the more attention will be on it, and the speculation is rife as to whether or not Andy Burnham might run, or whether another Manchester local boy in Zack Polanksi might have a run at it too, especially off the back of a dynamite party election broadcast last night. But above anything else, from this point on, Starmer’s Labour in name only party has to actively defend its authority in a ...