Batley and Spen: the by-election that could finish Starmer

Most people would struggle to pinpoint Batley and Spen on a map. But the constituency, comprising a number of small towns and villages in the rolling Pennines of West Yorkshire, has made front page news twice in recent years for unmistakably grim reasons. 

In June 2019, Jo Cox, Batley and Spen’s Labour MP was shot and stabbed to death by a far-right extremist outside a library in Birstall, a small market town within her constituency. Her killer, a local resident, shouted “Britain first” as he launched his attack. Cox, 41, was the first sitting MP to be murdered since an IRA bomb killed Ian Gow in 1990. An ambitious and popular politician, described as “a beacon for the Labour party’s future”, her death sent shockwaves through the nation. 

More recently, Batley – the seat’s largest town – has resurfaced in the national consciousness. In late March, a teacher from Batley Grammar School was moved into police protection in the face of protests and death threats against him after he showed his class an image of the Prophet Muhammad during a religious education lesson. The teacher and his family are still in hiding and he has refused to return to work over fears for his life. 

Now, a few months on, and shortly after the fifth anniversary of Jo Cox’s death, Batley and Spen is about to make news again.

On Thursday, a by-election is taking place in the Labour stronghold, because the current MP, Tracy Brabin, is stepping down after she was voted in as West Yorkshire’s first regional mayor. 

One reason the impending by-election has garnered so much attention is that Kim Leadbeater, the Labour candidate contesting the seat, is Jo Cox’s sister.

More generally, the stakes are extremely high for Sir Keir Starmer. 

Less than two months on from his crushing defeat in the former Labour heartland of Hartlepool – and on the back of Labour racking up just 1.6 per cent of the vote in last week’s Chesham and Amersham by-election – another loss would expose the extent of Labour’s predicament. 

Starmer has reason to be worried. Last week, a Survation poll showed the Tories on course to win the seat, with Labour trailing six points behind. 

Strictly speaking, Batley and Spen isn’t part of the “Red Wall”; the Conservative Party has been competitive there within living memory. But Labour has held the seat since 1997 – with Jeremy Corbyn clinging onto it in 2019 (albeit with a much slimmer majority of just over 3,500 votes compared to around 8,900 votes in 2017.)

Labour is now defending a similar majority to that in Hartlepool and it faces a similar challenge: 6,500 people voted for an independent Brexit-supporting candidate in 2019. These voters could well defect to the Tories. 

Starmer has certainly tried to learn from recent mistakes. After facing criticism for not choosing a local candidate in Hartlepool, he could hardly have picked a contender for the next by-election with a deeper connection to the area. 

Leadbeater has lived in Batley and Span all her life, she is the only one of the 16 runners who lives in the constituency, and she has put her local roots at the heart of her election bid. 

The charismatic 45-year-old, who has won awards for her extensive voluntary work within Batley, insists she has “a deep understanding of the area, its people and some of the challenges it faces” – all of which help to make her the “best candidate to build bridges” and fight division in the area. There is also the more obvious emotional appeal of a candidate hoping to honour her sister’s legacy. Leadbeater has described Cox’s murder as a collective trauma for the area, compounded by the fact it happened “right here on our doorstep.”

All in all, Leadbeater is a strong candidate. Why, then, does it look as though she is still on course to lose the seat? 

The challenges facing Labour are manifold – from the giant headache George Galloway is causing Starmer by running in the seat, to the haemorrhaging of Labour votes among Batley and Spen’s large Muslim community to a Conservative Party with a levelling up agenda that worked in Hartlepool. 

Ryan Stephenson, a councillor from Leeds, is the Conservative candidate predicted to pip Leadbeater to the post. Yet, ironically, it’s another candidate – himself a former Labour MP – who is arguably doing a better job of sabotaging any hopes she has of becoming an MP. 

George Galloway, one of the country’s most divisive politicians, is contesting the seat with his own Workers Party of Britain. And he has made it his mission to topple Starmer. 

The town of Batley is plastered with posters of the firebrand Scot, many of which feature Galloway in a black trilby with his fist clenched, and big letters reading “Starmer OUT.”

The controversial 66-year-old, famed for his fierce opposition to Western wars such as Iraq and his stance on Palestine, was expelled from Labour in 2003. He has since defeated his former party in the east London seat of Bethnal Green in 2005, before delivering a shock defeat in Batley’s nearby seat of Bradford West in 2012. 

While some consider him an opportunist and shameless self-publicist, his energy appeals to others. And his election campaign is quirky. He recently promised to take matters into his own hands to sort out the terrible state of the roads in Batley, enthusiastically declaring that he will get on his “hands and knees with a brand brush” to paint over the dangerously faded zebra crossings. 

Crucially, just as he did in Bradford West in 2012, Galloway seems intent on hoovering up Muslim votes. And, in Batley and Spen, this demographic has a lot of power to sway the election result. 

One in five of the constituency’s population is of Asian heritage, many of whom are Pakistani Muslims. This is three times the UK average. According to analysis conducted by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) using ONS data, Batley and Spen is one of the top 15 seats in the UK where Muslim voters have a high impact. The MCB estimates that about 8,600 voters on 1 July will be Muslim – a hefty number given that Labour is defending a majority of just 3,525. 

In 2019, 86 per cent of the Muslim community across the country voted for the Labour party. But many of those canvassing in Batley and Spen report hearing Muslim voters saying they will place votes elsewhere for the first time. 

The need to court the Muslim vote has meant that the troubling case of the school teacher still in hiding, and refusing to return to work for fear of his life, is receiving remarkably little attention from any of the major candidates. It’s a glaring omission that smaller parties such as the SDP and Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party are choosing to focus on. Fox recently defied a local Labour council ban on speaking out in defence of the teacher. He said: “We can’t have an education policy dictated by intimidation, bullying and death threats. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean that we condone the opinions of those we disagree with. I stand with the teacher.” 

Galloway, meanwhile, is proving popular with many Muslims in the area – in particular, those who feel angry about Labour’s stance on foreign policy issues such as Palestine and Kashmir, and believe anti-Semitism is taken more seriously than Islamophobia in the Party. 

Galloway, who has lined his campaign quarters with Palestinian flags, says Starmer has turned away from Palestine. Critics are accusing him of weaponising local anger over Israel’s bombing of Gaza to suggest Starmer doesn’t care about Muslim priorities. 

Galloway’s popularity is a reminder that Leadbeater might be leading a strong local campaign but voters are influenced by larger issues, both national and global. 

If Muslim voters are defecting from Labour it is not just down to George Galloway. He may be capitalising on their discontent, but unhappiness with the party is a much wider issue. 

It’s the familiar story we keep on hearing – be it from Conservative converts in the former “Red Wall” or, more recently, from ex-Tories in home counties, of core voters who feel taken for granted. 

Last week, five Muslim organisations across Batley and Spen wrote to Starmer, expressing their discontent with his efforts to address the situation in Palestine and to stem what they described as the rising tide of Islamophobia within Britain. “Our community has been amongst the most steadfast Labour voters anywhere in the country,” the organisations wrote, but “we are now in serious doubt over whether we can continue with our support.” The letter continued: “It seems that while we have been proud to support the Labour Party, for a long time the Labour Party has not been proud of our support.”

This reflects a wider picture across the country, according to the Labour Muslim Network. A recent poll conducted with Survation revealed that Labour is losing the support of Muslim communities nationally – and 55 per cent of Muslim voters do not “trust the leadership of the Labour party to tackle Islamophobia effectively”. 

In Batley and Spen, Galloway certainly hasn’t managed to win over all disillusioned Muslim Labour voters. Some are predicted to defect to the Conservatives. This may seem surprising given the concerns raised – the Party doesn’t exactly have a stronger history of championing Palestinian rights, or a cleaner record when it comes to allegations of Islamophobia. 

Nevertheless, for both Muslims and other locals in the area, there appear to be other incentives to vote Tory – ones involving Johnson’s buzzword: “levelling up”. 

Over the last five years, the local council in Batley and Spen has had to cut almost £200m from its budget. This Labour-led council complains about being blamed for the effects of these cuts, despite taking place under a Conservative government. But, just like in Hartlepool, many locals believe a Tory MP will be better at bringing much-needed investment into the area. 

Ryan Stephenson, the Conservative candidate, has promised to ensure opportunity is “available to all” by securing funding for the area through the town fund, the levelling up fund “and the many other funds that we have available”.

Some locals who plan to vote for Stephenson, such as Bashir Karolia, the owner of Mehrab Bakery in Batley, have pointed to the Neighbouring West Yorkshire constituency of Deswbury. Dewsbury voted in a Conservative MP in 2019 and has just received £24.8m from the government’s town fund. “If we have a Labour MP,” he says, “we’re not going to get anything – and Batley needs reviving.”

Stephenson has also been boosted by Reform UK, the Reclaim Party and the Heavy Woollen District Independents all choosing not to contest the seat. Reform UK explicitly stated that it would step aside in a bid to increase the Conservative party’s chances of taking the seat. Meanwhile, Galloway is determined to win over Labour voters. It’s unlikely that he will win the seat – recent polls predict he’ll get just 6 per cent of the vote. But it looks increasingly plausible that he’ll take enough votes to make a real difference to the outcome. 

“Let me break it to you gently, Labour are coming third in this by-election,” the ever-confident Galloway told journalist and Labour activist Owen Jones on his recent trip to the area. Even if it comes a close second, a Labour loss will likely be enough to help Galloway achieve his primary aim – that is, triggering a left-wing bid to oust Starmer from the party. 

According to Ipsos MORI, Starmer’s net approval rating has sunk to the same low as Jeremy Corbyn’s at the equivalent stage of his leadership.

Labour’s defeat in Hartlepool contravened the so-called rule of British politics that governing parties don’t gain seats in by-elections. And a repeat would send a very stark message. 

Pundits believe the Batley and Spen by-election is more unpredictable than Hartlepool. The constituency is ethnically mixed, comprising several towns and villages, with significant disparities in wealth – all of which make the outcome difficult to gauge. 

Nevertheless, the last time a governing party made two by-election gains in a single term was in 1929. If Starmer loses the seat, his leadership will start to look very wobbly indeed.