Hannah Spencer is a plumber, a qualified plasterer, and the woman who has just become parliament’s newest MP in a historic series of firsts.
The 34-year-old is the Green Party’s first northern MP – and its youngest.
She is also the first person to win a parliamentary by-election for the Greens.
And, she is the reason the wider Gorton and Denton area isn’t being represented by a Labour MP for the first time in almost a century.
She told Sky News she knew a victory in the seat “was always possible” and that the win shows “there is an appetite here for change”.
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Plumber-turned-MP
Ms Spencer was born in Bolton and lives in Trafford, and has spent her whole life in Greater Manchester.
She left school at 16 and decided to train to be a plumber, a trade she continued to practice right up to the Gorton and Denton by-election.
Ms Spencer went on to set up her own company, Hannah’s Household Plumbing, and completed training to be a plasterer while campaigning to become an MP.
In her work as a plumber, she retrofitted houses to make them more energy efficient.
She joined the Greens in 2022 and was elected to be a councillor on Trafford Council the following year.
Ms Spencer then ran to be the mayor of Greater Manchester in the 2024 mayoral election, winning 45,905 votes and finishing in fifth place.
That race was won by Labour candidate and former minister Andy Burnham, who later asked to run in the Gorton and Denton by-election, but was blocked from standing by his party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC).
