While the winner of the Gorton and Denton by-election can be identified by all and sundry, the situation facing the many losers is far more complex.

The largest loser is, of course, Sir Keir Starmer, a man whose judgement on everything from staff appointments to the Chagos Islands appears calamitous. To spend so much political capital on blocking Andy Burnham only to see it blow up in such a spectacular fashion is beyond embarrassing and heaps yet more pressure on him as he struggles to get away from a series of dizzying U-turns that see support for both his party and its leader haemorrhaging.

This constituency had been the sixth-safest Labour seat and less than two years ago the party scored almost half of the vote in a seat they had held for just under a century. Although on one thing Sir Keir was right, there was only one party that could stop Reform. The problem for him is that it wasn’t Labour!

With the local elections looming in May, Labour’s doom loop is set to continue and how Sir Keir is now meant to staunch the flow of his supporters turning right to embrace Reform UK or left to join the Green Party seems a thankless and impossible task.

For the other ‘heritage party’ the picture is gloomy, albeit nothing like as bleak as it is for the Government. No one ever expected the Conservatives to win the seat, but to score a vote share of under two per cent and lose their deposit is getting close to being as bad as it can get.

Reform UK tried to put a brave face on it and their defence that it was not a target seat is valid, but when the by-election was announced there was a genuine sense the party might pull off another eye-catching coup and as they’ve consistently led in the polls for the last 12 months they would have wanted a better performance. Finishing 5,000 votes behind the winner is not the message they want to put out so close to the local elections.

The result also confirms that the Lib Dems are growing daily in irrelevance. Smiling at pictures of Sir Ed Davey making a splash – on occasions literally as he hurled himself off surfboards and down water chutes – is over and perhaps it might be time for them to have an actual policy idea that resonates?

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But the other big loser must be our electoral system. Having the political racecourse designed solely for two horses no longer works. It is now a crowded field and if you tally up the percentage of the votes for Reform and the Greens it is a whisker under 70%, which makes it unsustainable for that to be ignored by an electoral system that means in too many seats a donkey wearing a rosette in the right colour would win.

If young people – a striking core of Green support – see their votes being written off in constituencies up and down the land, they’ll disengage and democracy will suffer.

As each party reacts to last week’s by-election, there is one clear message that should resonate with all of them. First past the post has passed its sell-by date.

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Wonder if Sir Lindsay Hoyle knows where Fergie is?

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BAFTA’s self-obsessed awards host misses the mark

What a welcome to the two Sinners’ stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo who travelled from the US to hand out the first award at the BAFTA’s exactly one week ago.

Both showed such dignity as the ‘n word’ was hollered out twice by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson as they took to the stage and while no blame whatsoever can be directed towards him, the BBC have rightly been condemned for leaving the content up on its iPlayer for more than 12 hours.

But surely the greater offender is BAFTA itself? While self-obsessed awards host Alan Cumming offered an apology to anyone who had been offended, no apology was made to the stars themselves on air or, reportedly, in person either. You can only imagine how they must feel about the value of flying thousands of miles to be treated like that, and possibly not even receiving an apology!

I have one question for Bridget Phillipson

Quite a row after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said on my breakfast radio show that boys should be allowed to wear dresses to primary school even when they are as young as five. Question: how confident are you that any of us are fully aware of all gender issues at that young age?

Killer inquiry latest evidence of woke agenda

The Nottingham triple-killer Valdo Calocane was not sectioned because staff involved feared it could appear racist. An inquiry heard of concerns of “research that shows over-representation of young black males in detention.”

Now even our personal safety plays second fiddle to what at times can clearly be seen to be ludicrously misplaced slavish devotion to the race agenda.

Davey’s flip-flopping answers one common question

Compare and contrast. Ed Davey on Prince Andrew in 2011: “I believe that the Duke of York does an excellent job as the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment … he has been a long-standing success.”

Sir Ed Davey on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor last week: “He shamed our country and the royal family.” And politicians wonder why they are so frequently vilified.

Streeting at risk of falling victim to his own failings

There can be little doubt one of the pledges that helped power Labour into government was to fix the ailing NHS. Now, nearly 20 months on that promise looks increasingly threadbare as virtually half of all adults avoided or delayed contacting their GP last year as in many cases they had difficulties in getting through to their surgeries.

This is wholly unacceptable and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, supposedly obsessed with climbing the political greasy pole needs to fix it. Or he’ll come back to earth with the sort of bump that could require treatment of its own.