WI Labour lost Batley & Spen as predicted?

[RobinCarmody]

I know we shouldn't really be talking about things that happened only last year, but *still* ...

Had Labour lost the summer 2021 Batley & Spen by-election - as they were widely expected to do, were very close to doing, and probably would have done had the Tories run a stronger campaign and not relied on Galloway to split the vote - would Keir Starmer, whose position was still perceived as weak and vulnerable at that point, have resigned or been toppled? Would there have been a return to Corbynism and would Labour now be on the fringes, with Johnson still triumphant especially in the North & Midlands?

Johnson's misfiring intervention in the Owen Paterson case is also relevant here, of course.

Again, apologies if this is inappropriate as it is dealing with things happening now, but it is relevant as the turning point after which Labour first went into a narrow lead, then an ever greater one. Would Labour now be seen as a "government in waiting" had it gone very slightly differently?

 

[OwenM]

If Starmer was toppled - and given this is the Labour Party that's very far from a given - it would almost certainly be Rayner as the new leader (though Nandy would have a chance).

 

[Gary Oswald]

I don't think it's remotely inappropriate to look at recent pods, in fact this very question was asked here two months ago so you might see some ideas there.

I think there would be a leadership challenge and that would probably be Rayner, though I don't know if she would win.

Be very interesting to see if you still see the huge poll leads and tory chaos with labour also changing leader, of course if you do that's Starmer buried by history.

 

[Sideways]

If Starmer went, that's an election over Summer leading to likely Nandy/Rayner - though I wouldn't rule out Miliband/Streeting. Whoever won would likely get a lot of coverage conference season.

If this goes badly you wipe out Labours slow rise pre-partygate - this accounted for about 5% and without this Boris would be winning opinion polls narrowly in 2022. This would mean probably Boris would still be around - it was never about Pincher, it was about losing

otoh, if the new leader gets the boost plus a honeymoon period and lots of media coverage then we could be looking at Boris being couped shortly after January. if we still get Truss, then we get Truss just before a local election. She'll likely last a bit longer just so they can pin that on her. Weirdly, that means whoever the new leader is comes in before the Queens death and the cost of living crisis and would likely get a true honeymoon period

 

[Elektronaut]

Brown, Milliband and even literally Corbyn couldn't be couped, so honestly there's no chance whatsoever it happens with Starmer over a couple of (certainly extraordinarily bad) by election results. You'd get a summer of briefing and plotting and navel-gazing and that's it. Maybe a formal challenge, but maybe not.

The only way I see it happening is if Starmer actually decides he's had enough of The Politics, doesn't like the feeling of a bad hand, the rancour etc, and throws in the towel broadly of his own volition. To date we've never really seen Starmer's leadership under serious strain so we don't know how plausible that is, but we do know that he doesn't like politics very much.

Be very interesting to see if you still see the huge poll leads and tory chaos with labour also changing leader, of course if you do that's Starmer buried by history.

If events happen in the Tories as they did IOTL then yeah you'd get big poll leads, but there's an enormous amount of hostility to Rayner from voters I've spoken to, and that's in this TL and she's you know, not even a particularly prominent or longstanding member of the frontbench. So I wouldn't bank on her converting those leads and winning an election.

 

[AH Layard]

Yeah agree, Starmer is not going to be couped after a few bad by-election results, especially after he’s only been in two years with a party recovering from a landslide election defeat. I suspect though there would be a lot of counterbriefing and like the Hartlepool election Starmer would see this as evidence that the party hasn’t reformed enough and brief some more right-wing policies.

I like Rayner a lot, but sadly I think she is the target of a lot of sexism and classism about her accent.

 

[Lilitou]

I think everything said so far is a pretty good read of the situation. If Starmer goes, it's of his own volition most likely - and I don't think that's as unlikely as we might think now we have Night Keith, it's very clear that he's not "Into" politics and I could see a horrible summer of briefing pushing him over the edge. I think a Rayner coronation is likely, if not assured, which probably adds to negative connotations of Rayner's leadership. If there is a contest, I would still bet on Rayner, as much as I like Nandy I don't think she has the support to win; the party right would choose their own goon (Streeves), and the left imo breaks for Rayner over her. The party centre/soft left not being particularly relevant in organisational terms except if its close. I think Rayner could handle the scandals well if they pan out similarly to OTL. I think she's well placed to deal with those.

Personally, I ultimately think (boringly) that the most likely outcome is that Starmer does stay on, even after a summer of hell, and we wind up in a broadly similar situation to where we are now, except that Starmer tries even harder to exert his control over the party through e.g. selections and maybe swinging even closer to the "centre" on... certain issues. He's probably more "vindicated" when the polls swing heavily toward Labour, with the commentariat using the changes to the party platform as the truth behind the swing alongside Tory woes.