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Paul Mason

29 Jun, 12 tweets, 2 min read

In the Batley & Spen by-election, Labour is having to do something it's not used to: fight for votes rather than "get them out". It's showing up weaknesses left, right and centre (THREAD) 1/...

2/ Labour is facing the fragmentation of its voter coalition in two directions: to the Tories and to George Galloway - driven by a mixture of justified frustration and social conservatism in both directions...

3/ But win or lose, the fightback on the ground is taking effect. Galloway's strategy of tension has led to intimidation, homophobic abuse and physical attacks by his supporters...

4/ This, plus the outing of a key Galloway campaigner as a Holocaust denier, has made Muslim community leaders edgy about the effect on their town. There's a marked dampening of top-down support for Galloway...

5/ The penny's starting to drop that, while Galloway can't win, he can undo decades of cross community confidence building and reputationally damage the town...

6/ But Galloway only needs to take a couple of thousand votes to put the seat in jeopardy. Though the campaign and candidate are good, the decision to allow Tracy Brabin to run for mayor, taken in Starmer's office, looks flawed...

7/ The fact is, Labour could have had Jeremy Corbyn campaigning on the doorstep if it hadn't stupidly and unjustly excluded him from the PLP...

8/ However, win or lose, Labour is doing the right thing in Batley. Standing up for principles. Standing up against homophobic abuse and intimidation - and of course the 5x far right candidates...

9/ The far left needs to stop apologising for reactionary attitudes: there's a class struggle inside every minority community and we're always on the side of the oppressed...

@hopenothate

10/ Finally a shoutout once again to @hopenothate - whose work in the constituency shows it's possible to call out Galloway's divisiveness and fight Islamophobia at the same time

11/ The Tories know Batley/Spen is not in the bag, whatever the telephone polling says; there is an anti-Labour backlash among some Muslim young people over Gaza/Al-Aqsa - but Galloway is now struggling reputationally...

12/ ... and that's what is behind the increased tempo of intimidation tactics from people who swallowed Galloway's bullshit, but now find that Labour is a mass party, with support from people just like them.

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