So how did a party long dismissed as fringe upend political reality? I spent a good time in Gorton and Denton, and I can tell you. Like New York’s Zohran Mamdani, it maintained a relentless focus on the cost of living crisis. In Hannah Spencer, a local plumber, it selected a candidate who radiates authenticity. It paired hopeful, sharp-edged social media with old-fashioned shoe leather, galvanising thousands of activists to knock on doors – many for the first time in their lives. By polling day, the Greens had more volunteers than they knew what to do with. When I visited, I met lifelong Labour voters – many of them older working-class white people regarded as prime Reform recruits – defecting to the Greens. But in the final days, the party’s grassroots army noticed undecided voters suddenly flooding to their camp.