Punters confident that the Tories will win the July 1st Batley and Spen by-election
The Betdata.io chart of the Betfair market has shown very little real movement since the former LAB MP quit the seat after becoming the May of West Yorkshire. Given how poorly Labour is doing at the moment you would have thought that the party would have done everything in its power to stop by-elections from happening. Not so – the former MP was allowed to run for the mayoralty and now Starmer has another problem on his hands.
Things have undoubtedly been made more difficult for him and the party by the decision of George Galloway to run for the seat on an anti-Starmer platform. Galloway is the former rebel LAB MP who in 2012 ran in the nearby Bradford West seat beating the official LAB candidate in a by-election – an outcome that was tipped on PB when he was 33/1.
Nine years on he is nothing like the political force that he was and the main consequence of Galloway’s action is to make it more likely that this will be another by-election gain for the Tories – something that no doubt will be used repeatedly against him.
The LAB candidate is the sister of Jo Cox, the former MP who was murdered in the street ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum.