The Good, the Bad and the Ugly [Lessons from Batley and Spen]
Like many, I was expecting the Conservatives to win in Batley and Spen. This had been treated as a foregone conclusion by some self-proclaimed left-wing commentators. Many of these had been building up this by-election as a referendum on Starmer’s leadership and suddenly found themselves writing articles containing two obvious lessons:
- This was not a resounding victory, so Starmer shouldn’t get carried away
- It doesn’t solve the wider electoral problems Labour has at the moment.
Sound patronising? That’s because everybody knows this. I know this, you know this, Starmer knows this.
There are other important takeaways that many are suspiciously choosing to omit.
- The Good — Labour should have all-local shortlists for every seat
Now this might come as a shock to George Galloway, but Keir Starmer was not on the ballot paper. Instead, he faced a candidate who was everything he is not: local, high-calibre, unifying, dignified and likeable.
Galloway wasn’t alone though. Many of Kim’s rival candidates were not from the constituency. Whilst this is not necessarily a barrier to electoral success (look at Claudia Webbe for example) I doubt that a parachute candidate could have won for Labour given the tight margin.
Let’s make local candidates who understand the issues facing local people, not career politicians parachuted in from central office, a central tenet of the Labour Party; something which various leaders of Labour have done before.
2. Also The Good — The right voted less tactically than the left.
About 1,200 Lib Dem voters in 2019 decided to vote elsewhere this election and they had to go somewhere (or not turn out). Given who they have tended to vote for in the past, this bloc may have won it for Labour. Likewise, the Greens (who didn’t have a candidate after withdrawing theirs for offensive statements) had to go somewhere as well and I can’t imagine them rushing to the Tories or to Galloway.
Meanwhile, the right didn’t vote nearly as tactically. The vote for the English Democrats and UKIP combined was greater than Labour’s margin for victory. The combined result for the Heritage Party, Christian People’s Alliance, For Britain and Jayda Fransen was 282. This is entertaining in it’s own right, but consider that had only these voters backed the Tories then Labour’s majority would have been reduced to 31. We’re well into recount territory there.
There’s no doubt that some would have blamed Lib Dem voters had the Tories squeaked it, so we should be grateful that they returned the favour to Labour after Chesham and Amersham. It isn’t a progressive alliance, but it’s promising if we want to see an end to Tory hegemony.
3. The Bad — Popular left-wing alternative media gave Galloway a suspiciously easy ride
A Galloway victory, or enough of a vote to pave the way for Tory victory, would have reinforced the narrative for many about Starmer’s leadership: that he is to blame for Labour’s problems at the moment.
The prime function of an independent political media is to hold all politicians to account. This should have been easy when it came to Galloway. After all, he has more [public] skeletons in his closet than most. Besides, even putting these aside, he could have been attacked for parachuting himself in as a candidate. Did he know the challenges facing local people? How far away does he live? What are the local education/health/crime/public transport issues? Why does he believe he is better than having a local Workers’ Party candidate challenge the seat? All easy questions that any of them could have asked but chose not to.
Instead, we saw journalists fawning over Galloway. Far from being challenged, we saw his narrative being broadcasted even more; that this by-election was about Starmer’s leadership after all, and that foreign policy positions by Labour are the key things that he would challenge.
We saw what happened when the BBC asked Galloway a simple question about why voters should back him over a local candidate: he became overly defensive and passive-aggressive before exploding into an anti-BBC rant. Whilst this was shared by his fanatics, I don’t think others see this as quite the win they do. It wasn’t the Senate floor, it was a journalist asking why he’s better than a local candidate. How would he have responded to questions about his job for the Russian state TV channel, RT? Most of us saw an angry man in a silly hat who didn’t even attempt to answer a fair question.
This, I suspect, is partially why the alternative left media didn’t dare ask even the simple questions to Galloway: they have self-censored because they were worried about this kind of explosive response that he’s famous for.
These are intelligent journalists and they knew what they were doing: aiding Galloway and damaging Labour — thereby increasing the likelihood of a Tory win under FPTP. Some of them have turned around now to say that they secretly hoped Labour would win all along.
I’m not buying it.
Also, it’s been telling that since the result their retrospective analyses on the by-election have shifted.
Labour lose = Starmer’s entirely at fault
Labour win = Nothing whatsoever to do with Starmer, everything to do with people in the party except for him.
I’m not buying that either.
4. The Ugly — We should have challenged Galloway more
By this, I don’t mean intimidation and hounding that we saw in this campaign directed against Labour canvassers. I mean that we should have made the public aware of Galloway’s record.
Galloway is a charlatan who confuses pomposity for eloquence and anger for passion.
Here was a man who denounces concentration camps for the Uighur as imperialist propaganda, denies that Iran kills gay people, praised brutal dictators in the past and referenced the fact that the SNP’s Humza Yousaf is ‘not a Celt’ in a tweet attacking him — in possibly the least subtle dog-whistle tweet I’ve ever seen. He has said far more than we usually tolerate for politicians.
Perhaps more importantly for local people, he was a candidate who knew nothing of the challenges facing Batley and Spen. Here was a candidate who has stood all around the UK in a bid to get reelected. Here was a candidate who claims to be on the left whilst having openly voted for the Tories and the Brexit Party in the last Scottish and European elections respectively. Here is a man who claims to be patriotic yet is on the payroll of Russian state media and Iranian state media; two countries that have been linked to various cyber-attacks, extra-judicial murders and aggression against the UK.
No wonder Galloway wanted to fight an election against Starmer, Blair and Mandelson; he doesn’t have an answer for any of the criticism above.
The next time, and there will be a next time for Galloway, Labour shouldn’t be afraid to challenge him. Nor should the press, especially those who beg readers for donations based on being independent.
Then, the public will see him for who Galloway truly is: a thin-skinned, snowflake carpet-bagger whose self-importance is only matched by his self-interest.
In the meantime, apart from crying foul, Galloway has been encouraging Twitter pile-ons by screenshotting accounts by Labour supporting teenage girls. How pathetic. Thank goodness Batley and Spen rejected him, just like voters have done in the 7 elections previously, and just like they’ll do in the next one.