What should we make of the Batley and Spen by-election, won by Labour with a majority of just 323 votes? The victory, slim though it may be, is a credit to Kim Leadbeater who – with a gutsy campaign – has proved her doubters wrong and done her sister, the late Jo Cox, proud.
This was by no means an easy campaign to fight. During the most toxic by-election for many years, Leadbeater became a target for two hostile and overlapping groups: aggressive self-proclaimed Muslim ‘leaders’, who with George Galloway tried to prise the constituency’s large Muslim population away from Labour, and the far-left in the party, who tried to use the by-election to breathe life back into Corbynism.
Galloway did win some support in the end – 8,264 votes is not nothing. But his boast that Labour would be pushed into third place, and that he would eat his hat if that didn’t happen, means he looks daft now.
Overall, Batley and Spen’s voters said a firm ‘no’ to divisive identity politics.
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