Labour beat the odds and win Batley and Spen by-election
Join thousands of others and get the latest Scottish politics news sent straight to your inbox.Labour has won against the odds in the Batley and Spen by-election race holding the seat by 323 votes.Kim Leadbeater, sister of murdered MP Jo Cox, hung on to the West Yorkshire seat for Keir Starmer’s party with 13,246 votes to Conservative Ryan Stephenson’s 12,973 in an astonishingly close-run contest.Former Labour MP George Galloway, who stood with an appeal to the area's Muslim community to defeat Keir Starmer, took 8,265 votes..The result comes as a massive relief for Starmer who hailed a “fantastic result” after a bitter contest.With Galloway dividing the Labour vote the Tories has been favourites for weeks.Victory will ease the pressure on