Batley by-election, double votes, and Starmer Out?
The Batley and Spen by-election is coming, with some saying a vote split could lead to a Tory win. Should Labour care, and what can they do about it?
We all remember where we were when Jo Cox died. Batley and Spen therefore is a very significant constituency for many in politics.
It was thus rewarding to see Labour cling on to the seat(Labour since ’97). However this will likely go up in smoke due to various factors.
Not least because the seat should already be Tory (as it was prior to Blair) based on very many factors and also because of the unique circumstances of this election — vaccines, unusual campaigning, and George Galloway.
The vaccine bounce is a beautiful illustration of why ‘hot takes’ are both incredibly dateable but also totally useless long-term. The Conservatives are thriving because they’re in charge of the world’s fastest roll-out of life-saving medicine which prevents a virus which killed in excess of 150,000.
Hardly a winning endorsement of Conservative values — which is why Tories are nervously pressing the ‘culture war but not too scary please’ button at the moment — or a long-term strategy.
Yet the election is happening now, within that vaccine bounce context. As some have noted, it was a stupid thing to have allowed a by-election to have occurred in Batley with that in mind.
Covid has also prevented any deep campaigning. The well-oiled machine of the Lib Dems similarly showed up the Tories lack of ‘working a road’ in the Chesham and Amersham by-election.
Everyone knows that when an hopeful candidate is running a good campaign they know exactly where their votes are, and where they are not. The Tories did this in Hartlepool, the Libs in Chesham, and Labour have done it in the past (a lot of London seats are very well worked).
The roll-out of Labour’s Dialogue (their phonebanking app) has not made up for the loss of door-to-door data gathering which is a key part of working a road/ward/constituency.
(Some have suggested this is due to either a lack of enthusiasm for Sir Keir’s Party, or the loss of grassroots activists. Both are stupid — people have been slightly busy due to Covid not hiding out of factional spats.)
Thus, the ball was well-and-truly dropped. So much so that Galloway (a man who has carpet-bagged his way around the country being a ‘cunt’ to quote a senior journalist) has been able to wangle the conversation to his turf and Sir Keir was forced to ‘go on’ Israel at PMQs — putting the ball firmly in Galloway’s court.
This surely could have been predicted: Batley’s large British Pakistani voter base, the legacy of the MP-but-one (Mike Wood, who took the seat for Labour in the 1997 landslide, was a fierce critic of the Iraq War), and the unique context of this byelection (yes, British Pakistani voters obviously also rejoiced at the success of the vaccine roll out and we know there is no difference now in BAME vaccine hesitancy compared with White people).
Yet should Labour care about losing voters to Galloway?
If you are planning on voting for that man then you are clearly ignorant of his many, many, many political missteps or you are okay with it. Because it is highly likely that the majority of voters in Batley who are plumping for Galloway are ignorant of his (truly awful) views (and actions), shouldn’t the Party be telling them about them?
Yet what if Labour tells them and they still vote for him? Do you want to trust your election chances on people you probably wouldn’t want to share a cup of tea with?
And this is the point made by a source to the Mail: “We are haemorrhaging votes among Muslim voters… and the reason for that is what Keir has been doing on antisemitism…. there’s been a backlash among certain sections of the community.”
Now, the Labour Muslim Network said this was “vile, Islamophobic” language which needed to be “challenged urgently.”
The comment was certainly problematic. But then, how can we explain what is going on in Batley?
We know support among ethnic minorities (which patently include British Muslims) remains very strong (in October 2020 Labour were polling at 60 per cent, and by June 2021 maintained a 23 point lead over the Tories).
So, what would be different about voters in Batley? Could it possibly be that Galloway is repeatedly using his “clout” on Israel which for some bizarre reason sets voters’ hearts alight?
Now, why would they have this reaction to Galloway’s views on the only Jewish state? It can’t be an international solidarity thing — Galloway’s views on the Muslim Uyghur genocide is to put it mildly, incorrect. There is such a thing as antisemitism amongst British Muslims, it’s regrettable and in no way the majority of this voter bloc, but it’s still there.
So, does Labour want these (very possibly) antisemitic voters? Well, obviously not, but at the same time that split will probably hand the seat to the Tories (who, by the way, have just avoided being dubbed an institutionally Islamophobic Party).
What people fail to understand is that going a bit hard on Israel, and maybe dog whistling antisemitism, is both morally bankrupt but also an electoral disaster in the making. And that’s because Labour-to-Tory switchers count double. Voters in Batley who split to Galloway only count once (but annoyingly enough to prevent a Labour victory).
When a voter votes for the Tories in a Labour-Tory seat they’re not only not voting for Labour, they’re also voting for the only Party that can beat Labour. Thus, their vote is double. You want to either win them back or prevent them voting.
And what we know, is that Corbyn’s antisemitism scared enough voters than instead of ‘risking’ their vote on Lib Dems or even a moderate Labour MP, they opted for the Tories. Dabbling in antisemitism to win over a handful of voters in Batley sucks because (it is morally wrong and) you turn off a whole bunch of voters who then vote ‘twice’ rather than just voting for some idiot in a trilby.
This is why it’s fine to watch Remainer-Centrist-Dads voting for the Lib Dems in the South because (1) they’re not voting Tory which is great (2) they’re not voting against Labour (3) the Party doesn’t have to attract them over while risking Brexit minded voters turning off Labour and voting for the Tories again with their ‘double’ vote.
The trouble is, all of this is known to Labour types because it is self-evident but they all love to take lumps out of one another instead of winning elections.
So when Labour loses to the Tories expect a lot of chatter about how awful Sir Keir is and (literally this is beyond me) why he needs to pivot to the Left. But… who would they replace him with?
One of the lies that has been told is that Sir Keir was only able to win because he wore a sensible suit, was a lawyer, but advocated the same policies as Corbyn.
This (and I spoke to hundreds of voters during the leadership election) is total rubbish. The suit-wearing-Lefty was Long-Bailey who was a disaster from even before her campaign was launched. This laughable leadership video was uploaded during the 2019 election and she still crashed in the membership vote.
So, the policies don’t need to go to the Left because that option was on the table for Labour members (and the churn, as anyone involved in their local Party can attest has been immense in the membership make-up) and was rejected in 2020.
Maybe the leader needs to be more Northern? More Rayner or Burnham-esque? Well, as discussed, voters have just given a thumping majority to an Etonian and a man who is married to a billionaire, so it can’t be that.
Until the Left, or any other critic of Sir Keir, can even bother to find an alternative leader then surely they should put up or shut up?
After all, even the Centre managed to find Owen Smith in 2016, can things really be that bad for Labour’s Left?
