Those who felt listened to under Jeremy Corbyn feel sidelined – or, like Scottish voters before them, simply used
In the streets of the West Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen, voters are uttering phrases that have in the past chilled the bones of Labour canvassers in the party’s fallen heartlands of Scotland and the so-called red wall. “Labour have abandoned us,” say some; “we are going to teach them a lesson,” say others. They are disproportionately – but not exclusively – Muslims in a constituency in which a fifth of voters are of Asian heritage, and their disillusionment has an angry edge.
Ahead of the byelection on 1 July, the Labour hierarchy appears to be stuck in the patterns of remote complacency that we have seen before. The mistakes that saw its historic loss of Hartlepool in the May bylection, and the collapse of core parts of its support over the course of a generation, risk being repeated again.
