A by-election held in Batley and Spen, in West Yorkshire on Thursday, saw the Labour Party hold onto the seat by a small margin. Labour beat its nearest rival by just over 300 votes, out of nearly 40 000 cast.
Labour has held the seat since 1997 and is considered part of the party’s ‘Red Wall’.
The by-election was made necessary because the seat’s previous Member of Parliament (MP), Tracy Brabin, had been elected as the Mayor of West Yorkshire in May.
Labour’s candidate was Kim Leadbetter. She is the sister of Jo Cox, who was elected as the constituency’s MP in 2015, but was killed the following year by a right-wing extremist.
In Thursday’s by-election Labour managed 35.2% of the vote (down from the over 40% they’d received in the 2019 general election). The governing Conservative Party were a close second with 34.3% (down just under two percentage points from the corresponding general election).
The big winner on the day was the controversial Scottish-born politician, George Galloway. Running on the ticket of the Workers Party of Great Britain the colourful Galloway won over 20% of the vote, likely drawing most of his support from the constituency’s South Asian community.
No other party received more than five percent of the vote.
The Labour victory will be a relief for embattled party leader, Keir Starmer, who has been under pressure for some time.