Despite the Tories being the favourite with the bookies and many political commentators to win the Batley and Spen byelection, this was not to be. Many of us would have liked to see Labour take another electoral kicking but although Kim Leadbetter has won the seat the consolation prize is that her majority in this seat is wafer thin. It is less than four hundred votes more than the Tories.

There has been a massive shrinking of the gap between Tories and Labour in this seat since the 2017 General Election with Labour’s majority falling from approximately 9000 down to a very small one. Labour have held this by the skin of their teeth and because of that the result will not make life easier for Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer, whose leadership is under threat from the Labour Left. A more resounding victory might have made Sir Keir more comfortable but this result doesn’t exactly scream massive public confidence in Labour and I don’t think it will end the challenges to Sir Keir’s authority within the Labour Party. It’s also quite possible that Kim Leadbetter picked up some of the sympathy vote from those disgusted by how she has been bullied in the street.

It looks as if George Galloway did some impressive damage to the Labour vote, his Leftist / Islamic vehicle, the Workers Party, took over 8000 votes in a constituency that has a 20% Muslim voter bloc. I suspect that the vast majority of votes that Galloway got were from those who might have previously voted Labour. I’ll need to see a demographic breakdown of voting patterns if this is released at some point in the future, but Galloway’s nakedly sectarian pro-Islam campaign must have taken a lot of Islamic votes, especially from Muslims who might be more inclined to be, lets put this kindly, ‘religiously conservative’.

The Lib Dems have dropped to fourth place behind Galloway’s party in third place with 1254 votes. As they’ve garnered less then 5% of the vote the Lib Dems have lost their deposit. Also losing their deposits were the plethora of minor parties including the Yorkshire Party, UKIP, For Britain, Heritage and the Monster Raving Loony Party. It will be somewhat galling for local Tories to realise that if the 800+ votes that the Yorkshire Party got had gone to them, the seat would have been theirs. For Britain and the Heritage Party did spectacularly badly, coming behind the Monster Raving Loony Party with 93 and 35 votes respectively. Whilst I concur that the First Past The Post system is hard on minor parties, I would not be at all surprised if For Britain’s ultra secularism and and the identification of the Heritage Party’s leader with anti-vaccination lunacy, had a big impact here.

It looks very much like Labout lost a large chunk of its Islamic voting bloc to George Galloway. Come the next General Election it will be interesting to see whether this pattern continues and Muslims again vote for Galloway or someone like him or whether these votes will return to Labour? It’s not at all impossible a scenario to consider that Labour might have lost these votes for good. This might bode well for the Tories next time, provided the economy recovers and they can promote themselves as an alternative to the sectarians and the culture warriors of the Left.

Although this is a win for Labour it is somewhat of a hollow one. Labour have turned a massive majority into a hanging on by their fingernails marginal. That’s what I see is the big ticket thing to take away from this byelection.