Green Party candidate Hannah Spencer on why student loans don’t work – and why drugs need to be legalised

“We would get rid of tuition fees. We don’t think that you should pay to access university.”  

So says Hannah Spencer, the plumber and Green Party councillor taking a plunger to the political landscape in the Gorton and Denton constituency, where a by-election will take place on Thursday (26 February). 

She does so while battling a ferocious gale in Levenshulme’s Greenbank Park, which attempts to swirl her blonde hair into the shape of a Walnut Whip.  

The 34-year-old Mancunian isn’t a typical politician. She’s working class, learnt a traditionally male dominated trade and is now working towards qualifying as a plasterer, but Spencer says this real-world experience is perfect preparation for a potential career in the House of Commons. 

“A lot of us do the jobs that keep the country turning and already have skills that are needed in parliament. I know how to work well under pressure, not just on my own but as part of a team,” she told NQ.

“In my job, I meet so many people from so many different backgrounds, and I have that skill of resilience and just working hard to get the job done. 

“That’s what we need more of in politics, not just people who go swanning down this path into parliament. I want to change that. 

“There are so many people like me who are doing jobs like mine who already have the necessary skills to get into politics.” 

Spencer bemoans the archaic political systems at council level (“I’m sure they’re designed to keep us out”) and doesn’t hold back when it comes to batting for one of the Green party’s more controversial policies: the legalisation of all drugs. 

She said: “To be honest, a few years ago before I was political, I would’ve been quite wary about it. I didn’t really understand, but I understand now how much the drug laws we’ve had for nearly 60 years have been failing our communities.

“It’s too easy for anybody at any age, but especially young people, to get hold a Class A substance. 

“We used to talk about being able to get it on a street corner, and you can do that, but actually you can get it in a WhatsApp group without even having to leave the house. 

“People don’t know what they’re taking, they don’t know where it’s from, but what I do know is that it’s causing misery in our communities and creating this criminal network of gangs with all this exploitation that goes along with it. 

“We want to regulate it and have an open conversation where it’s not underground. But we can only do that that by acknowledging that what we have now is so broken that we need to be able to look at doing things differently.” 

We’re seeing debts that people have after leaving [University] and to me it’s a scandal, its borderline miss-selling

Hannah Spencer

Campaign leaflets have been snowing through letterboxes in this eastern portion of Manchester ahead of polling day, with voters heading to the ballot box after the resignation of previous MP, Andrew Gwynne.  

He stood down citing ‘ill health’, stemming from his sacking as a health minister last January when messages leaked from a WhatsApp group called Trigger Me Timbers. In it, the then-Labour MP said he hoped a 72-year-old woman would “croak it” before the next election, while other local councillors were found to have made a series of racist, sexist and homophobic comments. 

It hasn’t gone down at all well in Denton, where Gwynne was brought up and still lives, with polling data showing the electorate turning its back on left-leaning politics altogether. Reform UK have based their campaign there, with its leader Nigel Farage showing up to back his GB News presenter candidate, Matt Goodwin, who has leaned heavily on his family’s Salford roots to lend him an air of creditability with the largely working-class electorate. 

It’s a dramatic turnaround for an area that hasn’t returned anything other than a Labour MP in almost a century. 

The wheels are spinning elsewhere in the constituency, though, with the Greens having the edge in Gorton, Burnage and Levenshulme. The latter is a place Spencer knows well having lived on Broom Lane before, while a quick tour of the neighbourhood suggests her party is well clear in M19. 

The occasional red Labour banner peeps from living room windows among a forest of Green, and rather than Reform or Conservative, the only blue signs outside houses belong to estate agent Edward Mellor. If anyone plans to vote for a party on the right around here, they’re keeping quiet about it. 

Back in Greenbank Park, activists laden with posters, placards and door-knocking plans stride towards their routes, while Hannah’s four rescue greyhounds wait without a whimper for her to finish her media duties. Many of those activists are students and graduates energised by a campaign that prides itself on zigging while the main political parties are zagging. One such topic is student finance, with Spencer saying tuition fees – set to be £9,790 for the next academic year – are “a huge barrier and always have been”. 

“We’re seeing debts that people have after leaving and to me it’s a scandal, its borderline miss-selling,” she adds. 

“We’ve got people leaving education with eye-watering amounts that they’re never going to pay off, and it’s unacceptable to have a price like that attached to education. 

“I’m so passionate about talking about all routes when you’re at school. I didn’t go to university, but I’ve done apprenticeships and I do a manual job, and that should be treated and seen in the same way as any other route of education. But university should be free, you shouldn’t have to pay to access it.” 

There’s also the issue of unscrupulous private landlords that have been a thorn in the side of students in Fallowfield, Rusholme and Withington for decades. 

“We’d look at things like rent control,” Spencer says. “When you’re a student you’re paying eye-watering amounts to live somewhere – we want lower bills for everybody, but especially for students, who then won’t have to worry about taking on a job or two jobs.

“We want you to just be able to focus on your studies and to spend money in our economy in our local, vibrant places, instead of paying off a landlord’s buy-to-let mortgage.” 

Hannah Spencer says she wants to smash the idea of what politicians look and sound like, and if the bookies are right, parliament will have a bold new voice by Friday morning.