A by-election for the House of Commons constituency of Manchester Gorton was scheduled to take place on 4 May 2017, following the death of the sitting Labour Member of Parliament (MP), Sir Gerald Kaufman. It was cancelled on 20 April following the announcement of the 2017 general election. At the general election in June, most of the candidates who were due to stand in the by-election contested the seat, and the Labour candidate, Afzal Khan, retained the seat for his party with a large majority.
Kaufman had represented the seat since 1983, and was the Father of the House of Commons (the longest-serving MP). At the previous general election in 2015, he had won a large majority with over two-thirds of the vote, and Manchester Gorton was considered a safe seat. When selecting their candidate, the Labour Party announced a shortlist of five, all of whom had a South Asian background (the seat was over 25% Asian), and chose Afzal Khan, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for North West England. Ten other candidates were confirmed to stand in the by-election, including George Galloway, a former Labour MP who stood as an independent, as well as candidates from the Conservative Party, Liberal Democrats, Green Party and UKIP.
On 18 April, Theresa May, the prime minister, called an early election for June 2017, meaning that Parliament would have been dissolved before the by-election took place. Because of this, the by-election was cancelled, making it the first by-election to be cancelled since 1924. With the exception of two minor candidates, the candidates who were supposed to take part in the by-election stood in the general election instead. Khan won the seat with a large majority, receiving 76% of the vote, followed by the Conservative candidate in second. This was one of the highest vote shares achieved by the Labour Party in the election. Khan retained the seat at the 2019 general election with a slightly reduced majority.