Batley and Spen: Labour hold seat in by-election

[T_i_B]

5. Tories managed to pull defeat from the jaws of victory

The trend in Yorkshire has been very much against Labour for a while and many thought this was exactly the sort of "red wall" seat that the Tories have been having great success with recently.

Why? Well I think I've spotted a few reasons

1) Too much emphasis from the right on "culture wars" bollocks, which is irrelevant at best to most voters
2) George Galloway - He might have hoped to split the Labour vote but did far more to split the anti Labour vote. Plus the antics of him and his supporters will if anything have driven more people back to Labour
3) The effect of Matt Hancock and Tory sleaze will have been to drive off some potential Tory voters