• Northern England Labor debacle puts Starmer on the ropes

The Labor Party has managed to retain "in extremis" the symbolic seat of Batley & Spen once occupied by MP Jo Cox,

assassinated in the prelude to the EU referendum

in 2016. Her sister, Kim Leadbeater, will finally take her post after a disputed special election in which the conservative Ryan Stephenson aspired to achieve a new victory "Tory" in the "red" belt.


The victory of Jo Cox's sister, a

physical trainer with no political experience,

has been a

gas bottle

for the opposition leader

Keir Starmer

, who hours before the appointment with the polls had to face the growing speculation of a plot to find an alternate leader.

Jo Cox's sister prevailed in the end by

just 350 votes

and a point difference (35% to 34%) over her conservative rival.

Former Labor George Galloway came in third, got 21%.

"The people of Batley & Spen have voted

against division

and in favor of hope," declared Kim Leadbeater after their hard-fought victory.

In a short speech, he thanked the support received by his family and close friends: "Without them I would not have been able to get ahead the last five years, and even less these last five weeks."


Kim Leadbeater, 44, worked as a physical trainer, but decided to turn to running the Jo Cox Foundation.

Until a few months ago she was totally removed from politics, until she decided to become a Labor activist to compete for the seat vacated by Tracy Babin, who succeeded her sister after her murder.


The recent political setback suffered by

Boris Johnson

, due to the scandal that forced his Secretary of Health

Matt Hancock

to resign

, could contribute at the last minute to cause a turn in the polls. Johnson hoped to continue to gain ground from Labor in the "red" belt and mark the gap against the undervalued opposition leader, who has been sunk in the polls for more than six months.


The saber rattling within the Labor Party lasted until the very day of the election, when former Starmer number two Angela Rayner was forced to deny her involvement in an alleged plot to present an alternative candidacy for party leadership.

For Rayner it would have been enough with the support of 40 of Labor's 198 MPs to force a new contest, just over a year after

Jeremy Corbyn's

replacement as leader

.


Since his inauguration as leader of the opposition, in April 2020 and in the midst of a pandemic, Starmer has provoked the ire of the party hard wing for the revenge that culminated in the expulsion of Corbyn from the parliamentary group last November, in the middle of the investigation into outbreaks of anti-Semitism within the party.


From that moment began, curiously, the plummeting of Starmer, who came to go ahead of Johnson in the midst of the chaos of the second wave of Covid. His image as an incisive prosecutor worked for a few months, but began to deflate at the same time that the "premier" took advantage of the success of the vaccination campaign.


40% of Labor militants believe that their leader should have resigned in the event of losing the elections in Batley & Spen, less than two months after the debacle in the Hartlepool district and the modest results in the local elections.

The

criticism Starmer

have intensified lately also by the moderate wing of the party, who has his eye on the mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham.

"I have already indicated that if the time is right, I will be prepared to return," Burnham told The New Statesman.


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