Labour has won Batley and Spen, just.
Am I relieved? Of course I am. Who wouldn't be?
More worrying was that over 20,000 people voted for far right parties. That, after all, is what both the Tories and George Galloway are.
The Tories are now a party using the state to feed their personal interests whilst displaying callous indifference to the people of this country, towards whose physical, emotional and economic wellbeing they are displaying considerable indifference so long as their corrupt gravy train can keep rolling on.
Galloway feeds and exploits every far-right trope available.
The suggestion was that Galloway would harm Labour. He might have done. But, I suspect he harmed the Tories almost as much. Without his presence there may have been a Tory victory, although I won't be offering him thanks for anything.
However, that is why Labour has little to celebrate. It is not delivering a narrative that beats either the Tories or the far right. Nor can it when it has a candidate who says she'd like to do something for nurses, students, the green new deal and much else but then denies that any of that is possible because there is no magic money tree.
There is a magic money tree.
Austerity is not necessary.
Labour could offer radical solutions.
If it chooses not to then people will sense its fear and chosen incapacity and not vote for it.
Batley and Spen has been won, just. But there won't be Galloways to split the right wing vote everywhere now. And in that case Labour needs to be worried.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Interesting.
Tim Snyder has my ear on this and looking at this using his ‘Road to Unfreedom’ lens all I see a population that has given up hope, that is becoming ‘salty’ and which is ripe for manipulation by self serving political and economic forces.
And as for Labour – who’d have thought that it would become a hinderance in the progressive cause – a sea anchor against the development of the very ideals it was formed to promote. The Liberal Democrats are in the same position.
Bad times – orthodox strangulation every where.
You are so divisive.. anyone who is not on your page (and there are a lot) are deemed right wing.. i am Labour Party but am dismayed by the hard left, many of whom wanted to Labour to fail in this election to put pressure on Kier Starmer..I really believe the far left is so divisive they should form their own party..f you went head to head with George Galloway btw he would tear you apart.
Please don’t call again then Roger
If someone as moderate as I am being this morning upsets you then you are clearly in the wrong place
No idea where “Galloway votes” came from……. just relieved Labour won!
BUT 8,000 votes for such an individual scares me.
And me
Whilst I would have reservations about George Galloway’s politics he in my view is no different to most politicians on the political right, meaning centrists et all.
So why are people so ready to use the language of immoderation against one man who is no different to any on the right of politics.
One thing you can say about him he is more intelligent than people of similar disposition such as Peter Mandelson etc.
Oh come on….that is ridiculous
Your thoughts chime with mine: when people were talking about Galloway disrupting the Labour vote I thought that Conservatives were at least as likely to fall for Galloway’s type of battiness. And that is the way it has turned out.
But how does he do it? Obviously anyone prepared to stump up a deposit and twist a few arms for signatures can stand for election – but he seems to have had a well-funded campaign. Someone is behind his efforts to interfere with normal democracy, is his contract with Russia Today media relevant here?
Morning Richard
Did Galloway split the right wing vote? Watching the BBC TV news last night it would appear from their report and the people they interviewed that Galloway was attracting voters who would normally vote Labour.
Good result in that Labour was widely expected to lose but I agree, Starmer needs to give us his vision for the country. At the moment there is nothing but (very weak) opposition
The Tories lost a lot of votes
Labour did too, but the claim Galloway only took Labour votes looks way wide of the mark
Surely Labour’s fortunes can be restored by Gordon Brown making a vow?
The vote shows that Galloway is offering something that voters want that Labour is not offering. Labour need to offer what the voters want instead of offering what the voters keep rejecting.
So what was that?
Possibly not being the Tory 2nd XI ?
An alledged 100,000+ have left (or been expelled from) Labour since Starmer became leader. That’s a lot of people who once saw Labour as a viable alternative (ie: under Corbyn) but no longer do.
Galloways’ homophobia and Trump-like veering towards fascism are very worrying, though the Tories are veering dangerously in that direction too.
I disagree that George Galloway and his workers’ party are on the “far right”. If they are “far right” then who would be on the “far left”? He had links with the Socialist Workers Party at one time so how would you classify them?
We can agree that a broadly centrist approach is politically the most desirable and have disagreements with both extremes.
I see very little difference between these called far left and fascists. Many supposed Marxists are working for Johnson now. Aren’t you aware of that? Ignore the labels. Deal with what they say. The extremes are very similar
So the Tories are both Marxist and far right now?! Incredible.
And to think you consider yourself to be a ‘moderate’, when it’s quite clear that you disagree with just about everything the two main parties stand for, which covers the vast majority of the electorate!
Just start reading…. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munira_Mirza
I look forward to your apology
You see, I do objectivity, You don’y
The argument that the two extremes share authoritarian tendencies is not a new one and one that I would agree with. However, if we are on the left, we should be wary of saying that anyone with whom we might disagree must be on the right and vice versa.
We see often this from US Libertarians. They like to claim the term “right” as their own and they don’t like the fascists to also be termed right wing. They pick out the word “sozialistische” from NSDAP and claim they were from the left too.
Agreed – there is a strand of deeply socially conservative voters who have appear to have ‘socialist’ views on spending, but would be quick to complain about benefits scroungers or health tourists, and can have pretty unpleasant views on gender, LGBT or race issues. They were there in the old unions of the 60s and 70s who were hardly bastions of progressive thinking.
They are just the people that the Tory/UKIP party are targeting, along with Galloway and a destructive element of the further left who seem to have a confused view of what ‘progressive’ means. Labour has to decide whether it is a genuinely progressive party and if so whether it can persuade some of these voters that their problems will not be solved by blaming ‘others’ but by getting rid of the current government and replacing it with one that has clear ideas on how to tackle their problems. If not they should target a younger, better educated, more progressive section of voters who reflect what should be Labour values, and not compromise those values.
Spiked anyone? Where the far left became the far right?
What about that quote by Andy Burnham, basically saying that people want homes and proper jobs that support a family.
Simple, sums it all up, but nobody seems to want to campaign for it in either the Conservative or Labour parties.
Agreed
Andy Burnham is right
People want hope
It’s not much to ask for
What’s needed I think is a unified opposition against the Tories, at least temporarily.
Deeply dismayed by the large percentage of votes going to Galloway, who, in my view is closer to the far-right than the far-left. But the big problem in this country at the moment is the split opposition. In the last election, Labour and the Liberal Democrats seemed to be spending as much time fighting each other as the true enemy, the Tories. A number of seats were lost to the Tories as a result. We’re in a frightening situation where the only seats in which the Tories comfortably lose in England are in university towns and large metro areas.
A unified opposition would help progressive gains from the Tories in a wider range of areas. Even in the 2019 election the combined Labour/Lib Dem vote was (just) above that of the Tories. The first-past-the-post system allows the Tories to get in time and time again, perhaps most starkly in 1983. Contrary to what people often have you believe, 1983 was actually not a victory for the cause of the right. The split Lab/Alliance vote gained around 52%, considerably more than Thatcher’s 43%; it was only a ‘landslide’ due to the first-past-the-post system. Most 1983 voters did not vote for Thatcher.
So clearly the long term aim must be to ditch FPTP but for the moment we have to work with it. The only way FPTP will deliver a non-Tory win in an election is organised collaboration between the opposition parties, ideally under a perhaps-temporary banner. An alliance that will stand against corruption and the seeming desire to indulge in a second cold war with our closest geographical and cultural allies.
But also Starmer needs to stand for something. I do agree is that he comes across rather weak. He should certainly for instance stand for closer ties with continental Europe and not just accepting the deal we have. While the UK may be seen as too much of a liability to be re-admitted to the EU, we should certainly work towards building bridges with our continental neighbours, for instance restoring the customs union and freedom of movement.
We need a progressive alliance
A few brave politicians are working for it
So is Compass
Absolutely, an intelligently worked progressive alliance, whether that be a formal or informal arrangement, is vital. It is pointless Labour and the LD’s fighting each other in seats where one of the other has the best chance of winning a seat.
Given how appalling Johnson’s administration is, the first priority for any progressive, or moderate Tory for that matter, should be to oppose them relentlessly while they’re in power, and wotk together to get them out. The idiotic factionalism within Labour also needs to rejected.
Some on the ‘hard’ left dislike Starmer so much it seems they wanted to lose in Batley & Spen as a way of getting rid of him. Crazy.
Fortunately, it seems a reasonable slice of the electorate are more sensible. The Tory loss in Amersham & Chesham, and Labour hold in Batley despite the odious Galloway’s efforts, suggest that quite a lot of the electorate now want ‘anyone but a Tory’ for an MP.
On a personal level, I’ve joined Compass which, as Richard says, is making a valiant effort to bring such an alliance about.
Another Compass member here. A Green New Deal and a sensible relationship with the EU should be a basis for agreement. That and saying out loud that the UKs problems are mostly home made, and confronting those who seek to blame ‘others’ for those problems. If they vote Tory, so be it.
Andy Burnham put it well.
I agree with John Boxall and it is likely a progressive anti Tory alliance will fail unless it offers the voters what they want, not what the members of the alliance agree what they want amongst themselves.
I agree too
What seems to be missing in these analyses is how the Israel/Palestine question affected the vote. Many who went on the 150,000 demo after the attack on Gaza where surprised by how many young Muslims
were on it. I suspect much of Galloways support was because Labour really failed them.
But the unanswered question is which direction Labour is going with the re-emergence of Peter Mandelson. Even if they win a general election, is a new Blair/Brown style government likely to make the necessary changes for the crisis ahead? Even, as many of us do now support proportional representation, when are radical ideas going to become policy?
I appreciate your shared level of distress, but without the least tincture of surprise. I am only at a loss to understand why anyone would fail to comprehend that such outcomes merely underscore the quite obvious fact that the political Union of the UK is close to collapse.
The Union was – always, of necessity and essentially – an imperium (this was its real USP, the glue that made it function): of course, we may not much care for what that says about our own shared past now; but it is what it is (and it always was, beneath the flummery and apologetics).
The Union was never fitted to survive an Anglo-British post-imperium (a political oxymoron neither envisaged or planned, or plannable and survivable); a post-imperium that made no sense of the UK’s own disparate, contended, internal history; indeed the only notable observation on the politics of Union (ever since the Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk in Singapore*, and sank the Empire with them), is that the Union has bumbled and fumbled along haplessly conjoined together in a meaningless non-imperium, looking for a role (in Fulbright’s cruelly sharp observation), for so long. Eveybody thought Fulbright’s point only applied to foreign policy: Brexit proved finally just how wrong you can be.
* Pearl Harbour, only days before the sudden Singapore coup de grâce of Empire, has always somehow distracted British historians from recognising adequately the deep and politically irrevocable consequences of that shattering and irreversible loss suffered in December, 1941.
At the risk of sounding like Bernard in Yes Minister, the Repulse and Prince of Wales were sunk off the coast of Malaya, not at Singapore.
It was Dean Acheson who said Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role.
In the spirit of fair debate, on Dean Acheson, you are right; a careless error of memory on my part, which I should have checked first; nevertheless, it does not alter the significance of the original quotation, or my point in the reference.
On where the ships were sunk, perhaps only typical of Bernard in its intention to deflect attention from the matter in hand. Allow me to quote Churchill in the third volume of his account of WWII: ‘The Grand Alliance’ (Book II, Ch.XXXII): “The ‘Prince of Wales’ and the ‘Repulse’ had arrived at Singapore. They had been sent to these waters to exercise that kind of vague menace which capital ships of the highest quality whose whereabouts is unknown can impose upon all hostile naval calculations. How should we use them now? Obviously they must go to sea and vanish among the innumerable islands. There was general agreement on that.” They vanished, but the matter at hand, and the geopolitical matter of substance was Singapore; and the inevitable outcome was the end of Empire.
Which leaves me Mr Stevenson, to wonder what on earth the point of your remark could be? I wil not say that it is more churlish than churchillian (that would be unfair), but it is perhaps the classic evasive maneouvre of a naval captain with a problem; make smoke and hope the difficulty disappears. Very Bernard, and very, very British.. Thank you for reinforcing my point.
Incidentally, “How should we use them now?” refers to Churchill’s reaction to the news of Pearl Harbour. The words Churchill uses here reveals the scale of the problem he faced and the weakness of Britain’s imperial position, that depended on battleships in the age of aircraft and aircraft carriers at sea. It was, ironically the British who had educated and trained the Japanese in the use of the new power of aircraft carriers in the 1920s and 1930s. If you are interested I suggest you follow the extraordinary story of Lord Sempill, aircraft pioneer and probably Britain’s leading expert on aircraft carriers; and follow Churchill’s apparent lack of action.
I was surprised to see Galloway lumped in with the “far right”. Really? I remember him as the guy who opposed the Iraq war, and has consistently stood up against Israeli politics re. the occupation of Palestine. Does that make him far right or just right… as in correct. As a previous commenter suggested, maybe the latest political atrocities in Gaza, the ongoing evictions of Arabs in east Jerusalem may well have led people to vote for him?
Galloway campaigns with Farage, Erdogan and Orban, but you think him left wing?
Who are you kidding? Yourself, I presume
I would say that anyone who denies the existence of concentration camps in Xinjiang is on the far right.
Can someone who believes that Galloway is far right, please give me an example of someone who they consider is far left?
I am nit aware there is a far left any more in the UK
If you define it as the promotion of full in socialism it hardly happens
But there are many advocating all the division the far right promotes
So, you want to know what happened to the ‘Far Left’ Phil and ‘Roger’?
Look at these:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/23/former-communist-claire-fox-standing-as-mep-for-farages-brexit-party
https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/08/16/revolutionary-communist-party-boris-johnson/
That’s right – they joined the Establishment. Why?
Well, as Tim Snyder points out in his book ‘The Road to Unfreedom’ Far Right and Far Left are essentially both the same – they are joined at the hip by fascist practices – claiming victimhood at the hands of imagined enemies, exploiting social problems rather than curing them. Both are driven by a lust for power and position for its own sake.
And as long as Labour keeps supping Neo-liberal lies and bullshit and not offering a real alternative, only what Snyder calls the ‘politics of inevitability’ (nothing can be done, the problems are too big’), this situation will not change.
90% of Labour politicians to my mind are a disgrace to the party that once had Clem Attlee as its leader.
PSR – you put your finger on a point not talked about enough:
‘claiming victimhood at the hands of imagined enemies, exploiting social problems rather than curing them’
At the heart of the Leave campaign and the UKIP party that has taken over the corpse of the Tories, is the argument that the UKs problems are caused by others. They include the EU, migrants to the UK (who amazingly steal all the jobs whilst living off benefits). It is the politics of division, always looking for new enemies be they age, geography or ethnicity based.
By equivocating over Brexit, Labour have gone along with those arguments and to a degree betrayed some of what should be their core values of internationalism and tolerance. Batley and Spen saw some of that spill onto the street with a depressing 2/3 of voters supporting candidates with those views. Kim Leadbeater’s win is good news but the problem has not gone away. Labour need to have the courage to challenge that Little Englander nationalism which is nothing to do with genuine patriotism. If they lose some voters to the authoritarian Right (and Left), so be it. The alternative is that they will lose a lot of the progressive vote that finds that Little Englander nationalism and the xenophobia that goes with it both offensive, and destructive of the interests of the UK. As we are seeing as the damage of Brexit becomes more apparent
By Richard Murphy’s definition, Corbyn would have been centre-right!
The trouble was that his economics was
George Galloway’s All For Unity party (!?) managed a whopping 0.9% of the vote in Scotland’s 2021 Scottish Parliamentary elections on 6 May. So he’s back down in England now, stirring the shit again, pardon my french.
That man is certainly a legend in his own mind.
I’m surprised so much thinking has gone into deciding whether Galloway is left or right. He’s the guy who debased himself on national TV, pretending to be a cat. He’s a “celebrity” who loves to be in the limelight. Political analysis is superfluous.
On the byelection itself there’s a much more important point to be made. What does it mean for Tory support? In my view it indicates that it’s volatile and potentially thin. This should give Labour encouragement. I believe the Tories are not loved. They are tolerated. If the opposition parties can provide a viable alternative that speaks to yearnings for something better than permanent division, they can be beaten.
Most of the mainstream media are currently urging Keir Starmer to continue the ongoing purge of the left and the eradication of socialist ideas, to make Labour more “electable” again. But it is surely not a binary issue of “socialist purity” versus “electability”, as the media seem to be implying.
For instance, polling showed that Labour’s socialist policies in 2019 were popular, and some have now even been adopted by the Tories. But the problem was three-fold:
1) Labour did not manage to convince enough people that the policies were economically feasible;
2) in contrast to the simple “Get Brexit done”, Labour fudged and vacillated;
3) the mainstream media managed to persuade most of the electorate that a government led by Boris Johnson would be preferable to one led by Jeremy Corbyn.
I really baulk at the idea that the only way for Labour to ever win again is to install a “Tory second eleven”, whose only virtues are likely to be negative ones: less incompetence, less cronyism and less corruption, but otherwise continuing the neoliberalism project initiated by Regan and Thatcher. This project has been disastrous for the majority of people worldwide, who have seen their standard of living either stalled or eroded and above all their planet ruined, possibly irreparably, while a relatively small number of people, their families and henchmen have become obscenely wealthy.
Think back to 1997: Labour was “allowed a turn” at government only on the basis of an explicit promise by Blair and Co. to continue Thatcherism.
When Labour won a landslide in 2001 (with a majority of 167!) the opportunity was surely there to turn the tide, for instance to renationalise the areas of the economy to which this is suited and to begin making serious inroads into the task of reducing inequality, taking it back to the much more reasonable levels of 1945-78. But no — the Blair government continued to implement the neoliberal project: globalisation, financialisaton of the economy, privatisation, PFI contracts etc.
So what is to be done? Labour is badly in need of a plan!
And in these increasingly “presidential” times, Labour needs a leader who is not merely competent, but who can restore hope – not only to the more than the 10 million people who still voted for Labour in 2019, but also to the disillusioned wider electorate who turned against Labour or stayed at home.
I really do think that when people talk in terms of far left they rarely know what they are talking about.
The far right are genuinely involved in right wing violence as opposed to democratic intervention, which can’t be said about those people call the far left.
The real political debate missed by those same people that refer to political extremes, forget it’s Neo-Liberal politicians that have inflicted poverty and misery on the population at large but never mentioned as often as those that talk of extremes.
They are the ones who divide and manipulate us but go unpunished.
Agreed