Expecting the unexpected has become part of the brief when covering British politics, and Labour candidate Kim Leadbeater’s win in the Batley and Spen byelection was no exception.
One of the factors in these surprise results is the volatility of an electorate that has, since 2010, been willing to cast their votes for a wider range of parties. It is impossible to understand British electoral politics over the past decade without paying close attention to the “smaller” parties. In Batley and Spen, the Liberal Democrats won 17.2% in 2010, and Ukip 18% in 2015. In 2019, this role was filled by the local Heavy Woollen District Independents, who have their roots in Ukip and won 12.2% of the vote. With this group standing down for the byelection, it was widely assumed that its votes would largely transfer to the Conservatives. With the addition of George Galloway to the mix with the intent of splitting the left vote, it seemed that holding the seat would prove impossible for Labour. But, despite Galloway getting more than 8,000 votes, Labour did hold on – albeit with a wafer-thin majority.
Some had trailed the contest as a further brick to be knocked out of the so-called red wall of Labour seats in the north of England, where the Conservatives made gains in the 2019 general election. Batley and Spen has a much higher number of voters from minority ethnic groups than is typical of the seats won from Labour in 2019. This might have been seen as a protective factor for Labour given previous strength of support among minority ethnic groups, but the presence of Galloway, explicitly targeting Muslim voters, revealed further weaknesses in the Labour voter coalition.
Just as Brexit revealed the divisions within the Labour coalition around issues of immigration and national identity, and the broader divide between the “liberal-left” and other parts of the left, so this election has revealed tensions relating to religious beliefs. Good data on the political attitudes, values and behaviour of minority groups in Britain are sadly lacking. But for Labour it is an indication of a further set of voters who feel the party hasn’t listened enough to their concerns.
Too much can be read into individual byelections. The dynamics of voter flows are impossible to glean from election results alone, even more so in a single seat contest where turnout is often considerably lower than at general elections. Who stays at home can be as important as voters switching party. Reports from the campaign in Batley and Spen suggest that Labour was especially effective in getting its vote out, and with tight margins that can make all the difference.
In Batley and Spen there are also challenging local factors. The murder of Jo Cox, the fifth anniversary of which, 16 June, fell during the campaign, can never be far from people’s minds when thinking about this constituency. That it was her sister who contested, and won, the seat for Labour adds another dimension of poignancy and depth. But they are not the only local factors. Tensions within the community were seen more recently over an incident at Batley grammar school, and the constituency has a history of far-right activity (the BNP won 7% of the vote in 2010).
Nonetheless, this election was painted as a test of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the party, and even a narrow win in this context buys him time. He still has the chance of a first big conference speech in the autumn to make an impact with an electorate with whom there is still space for a critical first impression, and perhaps, more importantly, to prevent Labour turning inwards on itself just at the moment the country emerges from the pandemic and begins to grasp the scale of the challenges ahead.
Paula Surridge is deputy director at UK in a Changing Europe and a senior lecturer in political sociology at the University of Bristol
