After being soundly beaten by the Tories in Hartlepool and winning a paltry 1.6 per cent of the vote share in Chesham and Amersham, Labour have managed to cling on in the Batley and Spen by-election by 323 votes.
While the result gives the party’s under-pressure leader Sir Keir Starmer some breathing space – and will give his party some confidence – holding on to a seat in a by-election with a significantly reduced majority should not be cause for major celebration either. The fact that the left-wing, ‘anti-woke’ firebrand George Galloway won an impressive 22 per cent of the vote in this election should concern Labour’s campaigns team as well. The party still finds itself at the very heart of the British left’s own culture war. After years of appeasing various interest groups with diametrically opposed ideological beliefs and political objectives, Labour is being pulled in all kinds of directions – and it is bursting at the seams.
It is likely that George Galloway performed particularly well with British Muslim voters in Batley – a reflection of the reality that Labour cannot be both the political arm of Stonewall and the natural party of British Muslim traditionalists.
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