Labour clung on to hold the Westminster seat of Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire by just 323 votes in a by-election held Thursday.
Good news. Hope somebody took advantage of those odds. Bookies are not always right & nor are the polls.
I still think Keir can have a decent run at it. NB not by anything he's shown so far - he will have to up his game.
If he fails at the election, kick him out, but not before.
I disagree ctk, I still think he’s the wrong person to lead Labour into a General Election. But crucially, trying to replace him so soon without an actual plan about who should step in and exactly what they should do differently could well wreck Labour for a generation. In terms of a leadership change, it’s still all about the timing of the next election though, and that’s in Johnson’s hands, so hard for Labour to get right.
Interesting poor showing by the Tory candidate, if all of Galloway votes came from Labour
Pollsters and bookies seriously underestimated Galloway there.
Depressing that he ran such a bigoted campaign and did so well
Although the Labour party is celebrating this morning, that is largely a function of how expectations were shaped ahead of the result. As Prof Michael Thrasher, a leading psephologist, explains in an analysis for Sky News, the fundamentals for the party remain bleak, and it is stuck in “crisis management mode”.
Here’s an extract.
A Labour majority of 3,525 votes has been reduced ten-fold. Labour’s vote share fell to 35.3%, a drop of seven percentage points from the last general election and a 20 point decline since the 2017 election.
The Conservative vote too fell but only by 1.6 points. The swing was 2.9% from Labour to Conservative.
Labour’s vote share has fallen in the last 12 parliamentary by-elections. There may not be a challenge to Sir Keir’s leadership but Labour remains in crisis management mode.
Depressing that he ran such a bigoted campaign and did so well
Identity politics isn't it, that and a self destruct mission by the left to get rid of KS
Yes Labour still can't figure out how to be electable - and the reasons for that are obvious on every political thread on here - but the Tories must be a bit disappointed this morning.
The swing was 2.9% from Labour to Conservative.
Not a great psephologist then. There was no swing to the Conservatives.
How so, this went from a safe Labour seat to a scraping through by the skin of their teeth Labour seat?
But yes, everything is fine now
Commenting on the result, a senior Labour source said:
Everyone’s been calling this a referendum on Keir’s leadership.
Well we’ve won – bucked the trend, held on to this marginal seat and advanced in Tory areas. A fantastic result.
😆
How so
A swing requires one party to increase its share of the vote. The only ‘swing’ here was from Labour to Galloway’s little band of shysters. That’s depressing, but the real story here.
everything is fine now
I’ll be surprised if a single person contributes to this thread today suggesting “everything is fine now”.
If Labour drop seven points and Cons drop 1.6 points, then how have Cons not increased their share of the vote compared to Labour?
I'm sure you know better than someone who does this for a living though. 😛
I’ll be surprised if a single person contributes to this thread today suggesting “everything is fine now”.
I was talking about the attitude of the person quoted, seems wildly optimistic to me. 'we just lost two by elections but this one where we scraped by is the only one that counts'
Hard to draw conclusions from this seat, but everyone will draw the conclusions they want regardless
Loads of confounding factors:
Seat was always Tory, until blair
Brabin leaving created Labour resentment
Sister of Jo Cox
Hancock scandal
Starmer unpopularity, especially with taken for granted Muslim vote
Vaccine bounce
Restrictions lifting/not
Galloway - took 8000 votes! -
Extrapolating that into national picture isn't easy
Starmer has the summer to shape up & a few years yet before a GE (I still see 0 benefit to Johnson risking an 80 seat majority with a GE)
Everyone will claim it as their victory. But it does show Johnson not to be infallible, the Hancock story won't go away and Starmzy can relax (a bit). With furlough ending, evictions back on the agenda, 1% for hospital workers, uptick in the Delta variant, chaos in the schools, empty food shelves, I don't think they will be in for a particularly easy ride but much depends on whether there is opposition in the workplace and on the streets as there will be little opposition from the 'no magic money tree' Opposition. I doubt whether people will be protesting for austerity.
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
Yep, an analysis of that vote would be very interesting and revealing. Few would have predicted that outcome.
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
Who were we told that by though? IIRC it was 'labour sources' so perhaps they were just managing expectations.
I was talking about the attitude of the person quoted, seems wildly optimistic to me.
Ah, I see. I agree.
Leadbeater will be a great MP. Labour only scraped it though, this is a time for sighs of relief, not triumphant justification. I’ll be thanking those I know that campaigned in the seat. Depressing that so many people felt they could vote for someone like Galloway, for whatever reasons.
Depressing that so many people felt they could vote for someone like Galloway, for whatever reasons
shows Labour are vulnerable to the kind of ukip insurrection tories faced, fortunately there's no lightning rod like brexit
(also Galloway at best was polling at 6%, shows that pollsters still can't gauge outsiders)
Tories have lost 2 byelections on the trot tho, which is cheering
this is a time for sighs of relief, not triumphant justification.
Exactly
We were told Labour had a 5% chance of winning this seat
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
It was based on the bookmaker odds
Khalid Mahmood left the LP supposedly over the tendency towards 'woke' not going down well especially with (small c) conservative Muslim voters, and working class voters in general. He probably has a point but where do you go with that?
Galloway bizarrely threatening to challenge the result in court. Whoever is funding this is certainly getting their money's worth.
It might stop before we reach outright fascism. It might not. Who knows? There does seem to be a very real appetite for something closely resembling fascism in this country at the moment though.
Binners; when you put your mind to it, you can actually come up with something that is very intelligent, insightful and worthy of discussion. Why not do this more often? I'm 100% in agreement with you on this, and I think anyone who doesn't see this is naive or in denial. I've mentioned earlier in this thread, how we are sliding towards fascism, and this was dismissed by those who simply cannot/don't want to face the truth.
by hysterically yelling ‘RACIST!!‘ at everyone who even raises these issues, you are far more of the problem than they are.
That's just the kind of thing Lawrence Fox would come up with though. 😀
Leadbeater will be a great MP
Based on what evidence? She's only really there because of who her sister was, let's face it. She scraped through on a wave of sentiment; had Labour fielded any other faceless candidate, they'd have lost by a big margin.
There was the fact that George Galloway stood here and he took 8,000 votes from traditional Labour voters in the Asian community, which is fairly sizeable in Batley and Spen. (From BBC)
Dog whistling aside (the MSM do seem to be framing this in terms of race/culture, and yes, those were pertinent issues, but still); Labour face losing a significant chunk of voters because of Starmer's total lack of understanding of certain minority communities, and as mentioned, takes the 'Asian/Muslim' vote for granted. Well, he's seen here, how that can backfire. Being too much like Tony Blair isn't a great look...
Surely Owen Jones has ended his credibility now?
Giving a platform to a man that ran a divisive anti-semitic, transphobic, homophobic dog whistle campaign
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1410854848782864384?s=19
I was out on the doors a couple of times this week in Batley and Spen - it was interesting.
There was some real push back against Galloway after the hassle over the weekend. Also a lot of positivity for Kim even where people had issues with the party nationally or Starmer in particular
If it wasn't for Galloway Labour would have walked it - and Galloway's party is no UKIP so will only be any risk where he stands personally
Tories have lost 2 byelections on the trot tho, which is cheering
Both of which they expected to win. Maybe there is a bit of hope?
I assume the left wingers that tried to elect a Tory MP in B+S will think they won the argument?
Gorgeous George's supporters 'left wingers'? A lot of the Labour vote would have been holding their noses at the ballot box (me too).
IMO it wasn't a bad result for Labour, although not good for all three main parties, terrible for the LibDems.
Also terrible for all 3 far-right parties with openly racist agendas, the English Democrats, Ukip, and For Britain, they each got well below 1 percent, which challenges the commonly heard claim of the rise of the far-right.
The Tories were expected to do much better especially as many expected them to benefit from the fact that an independent (a former UKIP official) didn't stand this time. Although the ruling party winning from the official opposition is rare. I think it went beyond Labour expectation management.
The only person out of the long list of candidates that can particularly pleased with the result imo is George Galloway, who appears to be becoming evermore self-indulgent and attention-seeking with age. It really is a shame he is so much up his own arse that he can't put his undoubted skills to good constructive use. Although he did of course fail in his aim to cause a Labour defeat.
It was an extraordinarily dirty campaign and Labour don't come out of it untarnished with their disgraceful use of a photo showing Boris Johnson shaking the hand of a Hindu politician. Still I guess they will justify to themselves their dog whistle racism as against expectations they held on to the seat. Perhaps it is a tactic which we will see them use again in the future. Sad times.
IMO it wasn’t a bad result for Labour, although not good for all three main parties, terrible for the LibDems.
Also terrible for all 3 far-right parties with openly racist agendas, the English Democrats, Ukip, and For Britain, they each got well below 1 percent, which challenges the commonly heard claim of the rise of the far-right.
The Tories were expected to do much better especially as many expected them to benefit from the fact that an independent (a former UKIP official) didn’t stand this time. Although the ruling party winning from the official opposition is rare. I think it went beyond Labour expectation management.
The only person out of the long list of candidates that can particularly pleased the result imo is George Galloway, who appears to be becoming evermore self-indulgent and attention-seeking with age. It really is a shame he is so much up his own arse that he can’t put his undoubted skills to good constructive use. Although he did of course fail in his aim to cause a Labour defeat.
It was an extraordinarily dirty campaign and Labour don’t come out of it untarnished with their disgraceful use of a photo showing Boris Johnson shaking the hand of a Hindu politician. Still I guess they will justify to themselves their dog whistle racism as against expectations they held on to the seat. Perhaps it is a tactic which we will see them use again in the future. Sad times.
I'm going for a lie down, I pretty much agree with the Croydon Communist
Gorgeous George is from the same mould as Farage, the sooner that type of politician become extinct the better
So what does KS need to do next? How does he start to make ground and define himself?
Gorgeous George’s supporters ‘left wingers’?
Nope, try again.
I assume the left wingers that tried to elect a Tory MP in B+S
Who were they then? I didn't see any leftwingers running a campaign against Leadbetter.
So what does KS need to do next? How does he start to make ground and define himself?
Some policies which speak to the concerns of working peoople would be a good start, and less time spent trying to marginalise and stigmatise anyone to the left of Neil Kinnock. Maybe try having a go at the free market capitalists instead? He's got an open goal on the horizon with the end of furlough, rocketing property prices and rents, evictions, and the inevitable cut in universal credit post-covid. Perhaps he could focus on those instead of waving flags and saying nothing can be done.
The Independent: Batley and Spen’s new Labour MP refuses to say Keir Starmer was an asset during by-election.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/batley-spen-by-election-result-kim-leadbeater-keir-starmer-b1876845.html
"According to a Survation poll of the constituency conducted in mid-June, Sir Keir had a net favourability rating of -32 per cent in the constituency, compared to a +18 rating for Boris Johnson."
Apparently the Tories never mentioned Kim Leadbeater by name in any of their election literature, they didn't even refer to her as the Labour Party candidate candidate, preferring instead to always refer to her as 'Starmer's candidate'.
They obviously thought that Starmer was more toxic to voters than Kim Leadbeater or even the Labour Party. Despite narrowly losing the election I suspect they were right and focusing on Starmer will be a reoccurring theme for them.
I don't suppose that Labour paraded their latest "coupe" Bercow on front of the people of Bateley and Spen, which must have helped them. I certainly didn't hear of any reports of him wowing voters there.
According to a Survation poll of the constituency conducted in mid-June, Sir Keir had a net favourability rating of -32 per cent in the constituency, compared to a +18 rating for Boris Johnson.”
The polling companies were wildly out on their voting estimates for B&S
Survation in particular
This is very true kimbers, the wild card appears to have been Galloway whose support they didn't get vaguely right.
Not good news for an organisation whose bread and butter relies on a reasonable accuracy of public opinion. Not sure how much that translates into other polling though, Survation has a reputation for being fairly accurate, in fact better than many.
They are going to have to work hard to regain confidence.
-illustrates why Johnson would be daft to gamble on a GE, whatever the polls say
I would have said he would go for an Autumn election, based on the only thing they are capable of spouting about at the moment; the vaccine bounce.
But while the by-election was going on, a local councillor election was won by the Libdems in Cobham and Downside, true blue tory heartland and part of Dominc Raabs constituency. While this may appear insignificant, when coupled with the Libdems recently winning that by election, may indicate that some of the the tory heartlands are not liking what they see in Government.
Could be a protest vote, but will the tories go early with an election and risk potentially losing seats, or leave it to 2024? The problem with 2024 is that they could be even more unpopular at that point and lose seats and potentially the election.
I think it will be 2024, and if they become increasingly unpopular, particularly in the tory heartlands, make no mistake they will eject Johnson over the side before his first term is up.
the tories are ruthless. Labour should learn from this.
But while the by-election was going on, a local councillor election was won by the Libdems in Cobham and Downside, true blue tory heartland and part of Dominc Raabs constituency. While this may appear insignificant, when coupled with the Libdems recently winning that by election, may indicate that some of the the tory heartlands are not liking what they see in Government.
Probably the planning reforms, the Economist likened Tory voters to Hobbits who want to live quietly and comfortably in the Shire with nothing much changing. The planned reforms are seen as railroading crap housing stock in to benefit large developers
Turn out will be a factor as well
The polling companies were wildly out on their voting estimates for B&S
There was only one constituency poll, the Survation one, despite the media constantly referring to the Polls. Constituency polling is difficult to do and the sample size tends to be pretty small leading to double the margin of error to that of national polls. Even so the result was still "wrong" but people may have changed their minds in the last two weeks.
Starmer hails Labour revival after Kim Leadbeater wins Batley and Spen
"It is a start. Labour is back. Labour is coming home,” the party leader told cheering activists...
IMO it was a good result for Labour, but only for 2 reasons. Firstly because it was widely assumed that Labour would lose the seat. And secondly because it was massively better than the 1.6% vote they got a couple of weeks ago in Chesham and Amersham.
In every other respect it was a very bad result for Labour. They saw their 7% lead over the Tories in the general election 18 months ago reduced 1%.
If that was replicated throughout the country in a general election I can't begin to imagine how mindbogglingly huge the Tory majority would be.
Labour doing considerably worse than it did 18 months ago is not the sign of a revival. And if Starmer thinks it is Labour need to quickly replace him with someone with greater ambitions.
Someone who doesn't consider Labour doing considerably worse than it did 18 months ago under Corbyn is a step in the right direction.
In every other respect it was a very bad result for Labour. They saw their 7% lead over the Tories in the general election 18 months ago reduced 1%.
In a General Election George Galloway wouldn't take away 20% or so of their vote.
However, the Greens are becoming more popular & would take a fair chunk.
A by-election like this is almost impossible to extrapolate onto the national stage.
In a General Election George Galloway wouldn’t take away 20% or so of their vote.
You seem to have missed the point. Galloway's entire campaign was purely anti-Starmer. "If Starmer loses it's curtains for Starmer". Galloway's election posters showed him in a boxer's stance, idiotically.
It was only ever about fighting Starmer, Galloway knew that he had no chance of winning.
And yet 20% of voters backed Galloway, he got over 8k votes, another 300 odd and he would have succeeded.
The point is that Starmer is not an asset to Labour. If he was Labour voters would be flocking to the party, they would certainly be voting in far larger numbers than they did when Corbyn was leader. Galloway would have received probably less than 2% of the vote as was originally anticipated.
The truth is that Starmer is toxic. He has nothing to offer. And nothing that happened yesterday suggests that Labour are on course to reverse a 80 seat Tory majority, whatever Starmer says.
PrinceJohn’s assessment seems sound to me.
Alternatively, there's a fair chunk of the population who want 'none of the above' so have voted for GG despite him being a **** or not knowing much about him
Well certainly only a fool would use a by-election result to predict what the national state of the parties would be in a general election, but Starmer seems to have done exactly that..... Labour's coming home, apparently.
What you can come away with from the by-election result is that Starmer is not popular with voters, and Labour holding on by the skin of their teeth to one of their own seats is not a sign that it is heading in the right direction.
Under normal circumstances the opposition party should be winning seats from the governing party as it experiences the inevitable midterm blues.
SKS on a different plant
