Is it tomorrow? Thank God as it’s such a toxic by election. I hope Brett Butler you win and although I can find huge faults with Labour under Starmer’s leadership still better than the Tories and a huge shame if Galloway gifts it to the Tories as he seems to be just another Laurence Fox bigot going on about woke (including horrible transphobic views). I’m warming to Kim Leadbeater, hope she gets a sympathy vote for the shit she’s put up with.

 

But if Labour do lose badly then Starmer should go, no ifs no buts.

If I lived there I would absolutely vote for Kim Leadbeater.. but the complete lack of vision from the Labour Party would make it difficult to be motivated enough to actually go out and vote tbh.

 

Anyway, we'll see what happens. I'm about 90% confident that the Tories will win this unfortunately but you never know!

Based on how the last couple of major by-elections have gone I have a feeling this isn't even going to be close. Mind, I still don't know who will win. Just have a feeling that whoever it is will be by a surprisingly large margin.

The odds are shortening in Labour’s favour! :o

 

Apparently there IS a sympathy vote for Leadbeter according to Labour activists.

 

Tories favourite still at this point though. Recent opinion polls have shown a lowering of the Tory lead. Possibly due to the Hancock affair.

I do hope Labour win. I think it would boost them in the polls and give them some momentum. Over the last month Labour have started to trend upwards again in the polls and the conservatives down. Hopefully that is a trend that will continue.

Edited July 1, 20214 yr by Envoirment

70% turnout which is insane for a by election, even greater than 2019 GE. Result not expected until between 4-5 though.

70% turnout means that either the result will be less clean-cut than expected, or that one particular group of voters have managed to get more fired up than usual and the winner will get well over 50% of the vote. Either way, with that sort of turnout, at least Batley & Spen will at least get a representative that large swathes of the population actually want.

70% turnout which is insane for a by election, even greater than 2019 GE. Result not expected until between 4-5 though.

That might just be the % of postal votes requested that have been returned which is perfectly normal.

Yeah, 70% really sounded out of normality's sphere if it's whole turnout, makes sense for it to be postal votes, official turnout now out:

 

@1410761797284548609

 

Feeling it's going to be fairly even between Tory and Labour IMO.

@1410816426462560257

 

Labour HOLD!

 

Good stuff, Leadbeater should be a good MP for the area, Labour get to look like winners for a short while, but that is quite close.

 

IMO I think Galloway was eating into both votes - certainly sounds like he was doing far more campaigning than the Conservative.

 

 

Oh wow :o I genuinely wasn't expecting this at all. Hooray!

Given that Galloway got 22% of the vote, this is a good result for Labour. He very nearly achieved his aim of costing them the seat. As the Tories have continued their habit of keeping their candidate out of the spotlight - not giving interviews, not turning up to hustings - it’s good to see a seemingly very good candidate win.

Truly abhorrent to see that man get such a high percentage of the vote

Congratulations to Kim Leadbeater for coming through in the end. As discussed, the fact the Tories' candidate barely campaigned in person during the campaign cost him a fairly decent chance of a victory, whilst George Galloway once again showed his ability to build up support of a large amount of a electoral population in a short length of time. Of course, the biggest winner of all is me, given I've won £80 from the various bets I made on this income.

 

Now looking forward to hearing from those who would have demanded Keir Starmer to resign if Labour didn't win this election to claim that this victory was due to Kim Leadbeater and Kim Leadbeater alone.

Now looking forward to hearing from those who would have demanded Keir Starmer to resign if Labour didn't win this election to claim that this victory was due to Kim Leadbeater and Kim Leadbeater alone.

 

Well, clearly there was a big Labour effort to retain the seat, and that the result is so close in a place that has voted Labour for years and was far more comfortably red in all of the contests in the last 10 years is still cause for concern. It shouldn't have been a problem to hold this one, it isn't normally for any opposition. Labour should use the chance of positive news to turn some headlines in their favour, but Starmer has a lot of work to do before he's looking electable on a national scale. I also don't think a leadership contest should be out of the question if his numbers don't improve, but this'll stay any move on that part for a while at least.

 

Galloway may even have stopped enough of the 'disaffected social conservatives' from going Tory, in fact the result is so close I'm going to say that's exactly what he did do. There's definitely enough of an anti-system vote in the constituency based on previous results that could easily have defaulted to Johnsonite Toryism without him standing.

 

also it's laughable to see him start taking on the new bad loser populist trick of claiming electoral fraud.

Wow, I didn't expect Labour to hold on here especially seeing how many votes Galloway took (gross). Hopefully the Chesham and Batley results will put an end to the 'Tories are invincible' narrative now.

The Tory candidates in the last three English byelections have kept a very low profile. The obvious assumption is that they have all been weak candidates.

 

The initial SDP response to the embarrassment who was Tony Cook was to have a proper system of vetting candidates. Johnson's Tory party has decided that "hide them away and hope nobody notices" will work. If that approach continues and the Tories get away with it, we can expect to see future ministers even more incompetent than the current lot.

Really pleased that Labour and Leadbeter won and congratulations on the win Brett Butler!

 

I don't think Starmer should claim any credit - it should have been an easy win based on our godawful government. Let's see if he can capitalise on this and whenever the next electoral test comes he does better.

 

I hope that the sleaze factor is sticking to the Tories and people are seeing them for what they are. There was an extremely encouraging article in the Guardian saying that contrary to Johnson's narrative it was HS2 that lost the recent byelection, the Chesham and Amersham voters were certainly unimpressed with the Tories adoption of populist policies and rejection of previous "One Nation" (not that I would have called it that) conservatism. That and the failure of GB News is giving small grains of comfort over the last few weeks.

Edited July 2, 20214 yr by Smint

I do wonder if the Tory candidates kept a low profile because of how toxic the battle here seemingly became too. It’s disheartening to see Galloway get so many bloody votes, I do agree he probably ate in to the Tory vote a little bit but he went far bigger into Labour’s vote.

 

While yes there is still lots to be cautious about, I think this is a fairly good hold for Labour. I’d like to hope this helps propel the Labour Leadership now going forward seeing as the covid vaccine bounce will wear off in the future/ is already wearing off. Be interesting to see the doom and gloom mongers opinions on Twitter today.

I do wonder if the Tory candidates kept a low profile because of how toxic the battle here seemingly became too. It’s disheartening to see Galloway get so many bloody votes, I do agree he probably ate in to the Tory vote a little bit but he went far bigger into Labour’s vote.

 

While yes there is still lots to be cautious about, I think this is a fairly good hold for Labour. I’d like to hope this helps propel the Labour Leadership now going forward seeing as the covid vaccine bounce will wear off in the future/ is already wearing off. Be interesting to see the doom and gloom mongers opinions on Twitter today.

If it had only happened in Batley & Spen, that would have been a possible reason but their candidates in Hartlepool and Chesham & Amersham did the same.