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Editorial Batley and Spen – a relief but not a reprieve for Labour

LABOUR activists are breathing a sigh of relief after holding Batley and Spen.

The result is a welcome sign that Tory advances across northern England are not unstoppable — indeed, the Conservative vote share was slightly down on the last two elections.

It also shows the importance of locally rooted politics — Kim Leadbeater was a local candidate, in contrast to Paul Williams, the former Stockton South MP who got thrashed when imposed on Hartlepool. 

Labour was able to mobilise activists for an effective constituency campaign, something less evident in May’s local elections, whether because the relaxation of lockdown restrictions has advanced since then or other factors.

Nor should we ignore the importance of mobilisation by Stand Up to Racism against the far-right For Britain and English Democrats parties in the town where former MP Jo Cox was murdered by a fascist in 2016.

The Tory spin on their near miss is that the fallout from health secretary Matt Hancock’s disgrace cost them the seat — plausible, given the narrow result, though not necessarily anything for them to celebrate either.

The stench of sleaze and hypocrisy over Hancock is hardly unique, and if it has started to undermine Conservative support it may continue to do so. 

Keir Starmer pointed to the parallels with Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick’s unlawful approval of a property deal for a Tory donor last week, and MPs including Zarah Sultana and Richard Burgon have repeatedly raised the “contracts for friends” aspect of the government’s response to the pandemic. If this is beginning to cut through, it is good news.

Nonetheless, Labour is in no position to rest on its laurels. If the Tory vote was down, it has not fallen anywhere near as sharply as Labour’s — which has dropped 20 percentage points in four years, from 55.5 per cent in 2017 to 35.3 per cent this week.

Scraping a win over the Conservatives in a seat it held comfortably in 2019 does not indicate a political recovery. 

Especially not when over a fifth of votes went to an “anti-system” challenger, George Galloway standing for the Workers Party — whom Labour appears to have been at greater pains to delegitimise than they were the Tories.

There were some very unpleasant incidents during the Batley and Spen by-election campaign, including reported violence against Labour canvassers, now being investigated by the police.

Whether any candidate was responsible is less clear. But the line being spun by numerous Labour MPs and Starmer himself in an email to members — that the party has triumphed over “intimidation and hatred” — carries serious risks.

Just as Labour’s disgraceful insinuation during the campaign that Muslim voters disliked Starmer because he was tough on anti-semitism could have no effect but to drive them away from the party, the dismissal of 8,000 mostly ex-Labour voters (and potentially a great many more in other parts of the country) as having backed “intimidation and hatred” — though the terms might fairly be applied to the Conservatives, it is clear that Labour is referring to Galloway — turns a deaf ear to the reasons it has lost these voters and implies their concerns are illegitimate.

So much for Starmer’s pledge to spend the summer listening to people who don’t vote Labour.

The Labour right see this result as a reprieve for Starmer; they will redouble efforts to crack down on the left and to organise for the summer’s most important labour movement contest, the Unite general secretary election, where senior figures such as Peter Mandelson and Tom Watson are already working hard to secure a win for rightwinger Gerard Coyne.

Mandelson is quite open about his view that dethroning the left in Unite is the path to re-establishing undisputed Blairism in Labour.

The left must return fire. This result does not spell an end to Labour’s decline — and the party’s current response could even accelerate it. 

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