Labour Wins Batley & Spen By-Election After A Tight Battle To Hold Seat

2 min read14 min

Labour has won the Batley & Spen by-election, defying expectations and giving under-pressure Keir Starmer a huge boost.

Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater was announced the winner in the early hours of Friday morning.

The party clung on with a majority of just 323 votes. Labour took 13,296 votes, and Conservatives gained 12,973 votes. The Liberal Democrats had 1,254 votes.

George Galloway, who ran for the workers party and appeared set to eat into Labour’s vote the most significantly picked up 8,264 votes. 

Leadbeater is the sister of the seat’s former MP Jo Cox, who was murdered by a far-right terrorist in the constituency’s town of Birstall during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016.

The by-election for the Labour held seat was triggered when the seat’s former MP Tracy Babin resigned in May after being elected to serve as the new Mayor of West Yorkshire.

Despite being held by Labour since 1997, with Brabin winning a majority of 3,525 in the 2019 election, the seat was fiercely contested, and was by no means a guaranteed win for Labour.

Polls published in the run-up to Thursday’s vote had put Conservative candidate Ryan Stephenson in the lead, and a visit to the West Yorkshire seat by Boris Johnson suggested the party was confident of taking it from Labour.

There was also concern among Labour figures that controversial left-wing candidate George Galloway would help the Tories win by splitting the Labour vote.

However, Labour managed to keep hold of the seat and avoid another bruising defeat after it lost the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives in May.

Today’s victory will likely be a source of relief for Starmer, whose leadership looked under threat to challengers from within the party in the face of another by-election defeat. 

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