Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Batley and Spen by-election result LIVE: Galloway demands recount and threatens court


He accused the Labour-controlled Kirklees Council of removing thousands of posters from his Workers Party of Britain from lamp posts throughout Batley and Spen.

Mr Galloway also claimed "Labour issued a leaflet that claimed our campaign was running out of steam" on the same day the posters were allegedly removed.

The Workers Party of Britain leader added: "I did help write the law that lays out very clearly the requirement for posters on lamp posts.

"This law was broken by Kirklees Council and they have preferred to implement what they said is their policy, which was applied to only our posters.




https://www.express.co.uk/news/polit...alloway-tories

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

The Labour Left will be rather disappointed this morning. They needed a Tory win here in order to build (oho!) momentum behind their get-rid-of-Keir campaign.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Keir gets a stay of execution.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Good result for Kier.. bad result for Labour.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

For the Torys both bad and good:

Bad they didn't win.

Good that loser Keir stays in "charge" of Labour.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

I’d say for the Tories it’s disappointing for them because they knew it was winnable, but politically it certainly isn’t bad. This is a safe, solid Labour seat, Cons have been in government since 2010. The standard by election script says they hadn’t a hope in hell of taking it. That it was even considered possible (and came within 400 votes of happening) shows just what a state Labour is in right now.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

The Express seems sufficiently rattled about this result to give space to The Workers Party of Britain which is pretty amusing.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

There was the Galloway factor here. He took 8000 votes that would usually have gone to Labour, thanks to lies/violence. People didn't flock to the Tories. It still wasn't enough. (Tbh I'd rather a Tory win than Galloways lies/violent backers, which would have been a disaster for everybody. ).
Tories are upset today because, like Galloway, they wanted rid of Sir Keir, and shift to the Corbyn left again. They aren't getting that.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Hardly.

George Galloway’s antics make good copy. It’s as simple as that really.

Though I can understand why you might feel the need to try to paint the Tories’ failure to win a safe Labour seat as leaving their supporters “rattled”.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Galloway "took 8000 votes that would usually have gone to Labour, thanks to lies/violence"

LMAO You need to cut back on that rhubarb Mr K, it has strange mind bending properties ;)

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Let's say for arguments sake that a large % of those were Muslim votes. That's who he was going for, that what won him Bradford several years ago.

Do you think the Islamic communities in the UK have conservative or liberal values?

How many muslim households would you suspect have had a "pride" flag in their window this past month?

How many muslims do you think advocate for trans rights?

I wouldn't be so sure that Labour would have got all those 8000 votes.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

Are you surprised by the result, Pierre? I seem to recall you confidently predicting a Conservative victory.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

They came within 400 votes of doing so, in a safe Labour seat, only a week after a grubby adulterous scandal involving a very high profile minister. Yes, the Tories could have won it, it’s disappointing that they didn’t, but attempting to paint it as some sort of Tory calamity is silly.

Labour has just about clung on in a seat that ought to have been beyond contest. And all I’m hearing in media commentary today is people asking whether this means Keir Starmer is safe, for now at least. So the win hasn’t even moved the needle towards any sort of “Labour on the up” narrative. All it’s done is move it fractionally away from the “Keir must go” narrative.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

I've not painted it as anything, I've just asked Pierre if he was surprised by the result.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

On the contrary … you chose to characterise the Daily Sexpest’s coverage of George Galloway as proof that the paper was “rattled” by the result. Quite plainly you started the day thinking you could paint this as a Tory tragedy. Perhaps Labour’s media rounds this morning have helped change your mind - even now they’re carefully not crowing about the win or trying to put the boot into Boris. All they want to talk about is the local nature of their campaign and the quality of the candidate, which is how they conducted the campaign in the constituency over the last month.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

The Daily Express seemed to be rattled by the result as it was unusually giving column space to a very left-wing party. That is a fair and justifiable stand-alone comment about the newspaper given its right-wing positioning.

To paint this as my thinking that this result is somehow a Tory tragedy requires a peculiarly big stretch of the imagination. Your unfettered loyalty to defend the Conservative Party from attacks is commendable, but I fear you're now defending it from non-existent attacks!

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

The result was always going to be the sister of Jo Cox.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

"Surprised?" No. I did think the Tories would win, and that would have been surprising.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spam by 323 votes
 

It is fun to watch them Twitter, they are having a bit of a meltdown. Having declared this a referendum on Starmer's - sorry 'Keith's' - leadership they're now belatedly trying to frame it in broader terms as being a poor result overall.

On paper this is a bad result but in the context the referendum took place it's a good one for Starmer.

It helps stop the narrative of decline/death that has been around the party since the New Year, it's a sign that the Tories' vaccine boost is wearing off (if you combine with the Aversham result) but most importantly they saw off a serious attempt to come at them from the left. The left you talk about have been trying to make a point that they can cost Labour an election if they're not given the prominence within the party they feel is their right, this is the most serious challenge they've had to test that theory and their candidate found votes from elsewhere to compensate.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

You should have put money on her - Ryan Stephenson (Conservative) was the bookies' favourite.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

I don't put money on anything, life's a big enough gamble as it is thanks :D

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

I really don’t think Tories wanted Kier gone. Like Corbyn, they’re pleased to keep seeing a weak leader at the helm, Tories will be forever in power due to the lefty morons and activists, making Labour an unelectable socialist culture gang.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

I think it's really hard to assess Sir Kier's political leadership qualities given the unusual times we're in. What makes him a weak or strong leader? He's faced down the Left in his party successfully and anti-semitism is no longer the dark cloud hanging over the party it once was so there's an argument to be made that he's a strong leader.

But will any of that translate into election-winning votes? That will become more apparent once the country returns to more normal times. There's still a lot of goodwill for Boris's government due to the vaccines. And the country is possibly more split along Remain-Leave lines than traditional Left-Right lines.

Interesting times.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

He's bland and doesn't stand for anything. You could stick a shop window dummy in his place and no one would notice.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

:tu:

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

That's about his public appeal, not his leadership skills though.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

In today’s world they’re one in the same. The public are not swayed by “ leadership skills”.

Unfortunately for Labour Eton educated privileged toff, Boris resonates more with the common people than Keir and any other Labour knob jockey, that is truly remarkable.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

The public are swayed by the impact of leadership skills though. If you have the right messages, the right team operating in a joined-up manner...these are all signs of good leadership. Whether you agree that any political leader has these is a different matter.

Boris has an exceptionally large personality and connects with many in the country. He has been astute in his messaging from his days as a liberal London mayor to his period as UKIP-lite in 2016.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

Eton educated toff that's related to two separate royal households and calls 250k a year chicken feed, I'm really sure the common man can relate to that. Imo labour have had a let off here, they need to use the time this result has bought to construct a clear and concise message that resonates or give up now

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

Giving up now sounds like a plan!

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

The Establishment successfully built the Bumbling Boris relatable image for Boris with Have I Got News for You appearances and TV presenters are more relatable than former Directors of Public Prosecutions. Add in some nationalism and the Tories are talking to some “common” people about what they care about on top of their existing base.

The fact they shouldn’t care about these things to the extent they do (in the eyes of Labour) is irrelevant. The message resonates and Labour don’t have a better one. Corbyn ironically did.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

One thing to bear in mind is that the Conservatives' track record in winning elections is far far better than Labour's. Since 1918, the Conservatives have won 19 times and Labour eight.

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

Yeah why don't you do that

Of course it helps when on average you need 38000 votes if your a perspective Conservative MP and 50000 odd to become a Labour MP and the rest need hundreds of thousands to return one, this much heralded democracy certain people keep banging on about isn't all that and certainly isn't reflective of the people

---------- Post added at 21:19 ---------- Previous post was at 21:15 ----------

Are you saying the public vote for him because "he's that funny bloke off the telly", quite a low opinion of them if so

Re: Labour hold Batley & Spen by 323 votes
 

Not all of the public (and not quite only because he’s the funny bloke off the telly) - elections aren’t won and lost across the whole population. They’re lost in the margins.

The BBC make people who went to Oxford and Cambridge relatable all the time with a public exposure/persona that a DPP does not get.