Hannah Spencer, Green Party MP for Gorton and Denton since the February 2026 by election, is the most vivid proof yet that the Greens can win well outside their leafy comfort zones, and she is unlike almost anyone else in the Commons: a plumber by trade who left school at 16.

Born in Bolton in April 1991, Spencer left education at sixteen, trained at Bolton College and qualified in plumbing around 2008, later adding gas engineering and plastering. In January 2015 she set up her own firm and ran it for a decade, specialising in heat pumps and retrofitting homes for energy efficiency. Known locally as "Hannah the Plumber", she is that rare politician whose trade is not a biographical footnote but the core of her appeal, and in her case it connects directly to Green policy: she was fitting low carbon heating for a living before she was advocating it from a manifesto. She came to politics not through a think tank but through animal welfare, drawn in by opposition to greyhound racing, and rescues greyhounds herself.

Her elected career began on Trafford Council, where she won Hale ward in 2023 and led the nine member Green group, and continued with a run for Greater Manchester Mayor in 2024, finishing fourth against Andy Burnham while lifting the Green share. She had previously lived in Gorton, the seat she now holds.

The by election that sent her to Westminster was extraordinary, and the circumstances matter. Andrew Gwynne resigned on health grounds, and Labour's National Executive Committee then blocked Andy Burnham from standing, selecting Angeliki Stogia instead, a decision that became one of the most contested of the Parliament. Labour had held this part of Manchester continuously since 1931. Spencer broke a ninety five year grip, winning 14,980 votes, 40.7 per cent, with a majority of 4,402. Reform UK's Matt Goodwin took second on 10,578, while Stogia's Labour vote collapsed to 9,364 from 18,555 in 2024, on a turnout of 47.62 per cent. She became the Green Party's fifth MP, its youngest at 34, the first elected at a by election and the first in the north of England.

Her victory speech fused her trade to a wider economic argument. "I didn't grow up wanting to be a politician. I am a plumber," she said, before turning to the broken promise that hard work no longer buys "a house, a nice life, holidays". She even apologised to customers whose jobs she would now have to cancel, promising to "make space for everyone doing jobs like mine".

The win was less an endorsement of the full Green programme than a coalition of younger progressives, squeezed renters, anti Labour protest and significant Muslim community support driven by anger over Gaza, and that coalition is structurally fragile. Holding it against a Labour recovery is a real project that depends partly on factors outside her control. Her trade gives her a credibility on housing and infrastructure that her party often lacks, and she has been clearer than some colleagues that an energy transition has to be paid for by capital rather than by lower income households. Not everything in her record is comfortable: a 2021 Mumsnet post describing Levenshulme's high street as full of "money-laundering takeaways" drew criticism during the campaign, the party explaining it as frustration that such outlets "crowd out independent businesses".

At 35, with a decade of self employment, a heat pump specialism and the most dramatic by election result since Chesham and Amersham, she has time and momentum on her side. Whether Gorton and Denton sees better housing, cleaner rivers and stronger public services because of its Green MP will decide whether the ninety five year Labour break becomes permanent or proves a one off.