In British politics, victory speeches usually brim with triumph and party slogans. Hannah Spencer chose something else entirely: an apology.Moments after being declared the winner of the Gorton and Denton by-election, the 34-year-old plumber-turned-politician told supporters she might have to cancel customers’ plumbing appointments. “I think I might have to cancel the work that you had booked in, because I’m heading to parliament,” Hannah Spencer was quoted as saying by The Times. In a political culture often defined by soaring rhetoric, the 34-year-old plumber’s matter-of-fact regret struck a different note.So, who is Hannah Spencer, the tradeswoman-turned-politician who overturned a once-safe Labour seat?
From toolbox to ballot box
Hannah Kathrine Spencer, born in Bolton in 1991 or 1992, left school at 16 and trained as a plumber, later completing qualifications as a gas engineer and, most recently, a plasterer. She founded her own firm, Hannah’s Household Plumbing, after taking part in a Prince’s Trust enterprise programme.In February 2026, she pulled off one of the biggest upsets in recent British politics, winning the Gorton and Denton by-election with 40.7 per cent of the vote, overturning Labour’s long-standing dominance in a seat the party had held since 1931. The victory made her the first Green MP in the north of England and the party’s first-ever by-election winner.A councillor for Hale ward on Trafford Council since 2023, Spencer had only entered politics in 2022, driven, she says, by anger at widening inequality exposed during the pandemic and Partygate. She finished fifth in both the 2024 Greater Manchester mayoral race and the Warrington North general election contest before her breakthrough.
A campaign that turned toxic
Spencer’s rapid rise was shadowed by a bruising and polarised campaign. She and the Green Party of England and Wales were accused by Labour ministers of mobilising Muslim voters over the war in Gaza, with critics alleging they were deliberately raising the issue’s salience in a constituency where roughly three in ten residents are Muslim.Spencer dismissed the claims as “disappointing”, saying she had spoken to “tens of thousands of people across the constituency” about everyday concerns, from NHS waiting lists to the cost of living.Her campaign was also targeted by online misinformation, including false claims that she was married to a senior executive at AstraZeneca. She is not married; the claim referred to a former partner. Other posts falsely suggested she lived in a multimillion-pound property in Hale. The abuse grew intense enough that she appeared at some events with security.
A hard-left image, a complicated profile
Spencer has been portrayed as a hard-left challenger to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Yet scrutiny has also fallen on her property interests: she owns two homes in the more affluent Altrincham and Sale West area, together valued at around £1 million. One is a terraced house in Sale bought in 2019; the other, a detached fixer-upper under renovation.Green-held councils have backed second-home council tax premiums, and national party policy includes expanding social housing, rent controls and buying up older housing stock for conversion. Party sources have said Spencer’s past online comments about property were “normal conversations years ago”.
The greyhound rescuer
Away from politics and plumbing, Spencer rescues greyhounds, a detail that has become central to her public persona. On the Green podcast Bold Politics, she spoke emotionally about her first rescue dog, Graham.“There is a bit of Graham in all of us,” she said. “We just want to be accepted and we just want to be happy and we just want to be safe.”The image of a tradeswoman balancing plastering classes at Trafford College with canvassing shifts, and then heading home to care for rescued dogs, helped craft a relatable, outsider narrative.
A new kind of Green politics
Spencer is seen as close to Zack Polanski, whose leadership has steered the Greens toward a more populist emphasis on bread-and-butter issues such as the NHS and living costs, alongside climate policy.Her victory in Gorton and Denton is widely viewed as a warning shot to both Labour and Reform UK, a proof that the Greens can break out of their traditional strongholds in Brighton and Bristol and make gains in northern, working-class constituencies.Four weeks before polling day, few outside Trafford had heard her name. By dawn on Friday, after apologising for missed plumbing jobs and thanking voters, Hannah Spencer had made history, a plumber who rescues greyhounds, now carrying a wrench into Westminster.
