Sir Keir Starmer declared that “Labour is back” as the party won the by-election in Batley and Spen by a whisker.
A report in the Financial Times stated that Starmer’s team had been braced for an outbreak of civil war if it had lost the seat in West Yorkshire after a string of dismal electoral results in the spring. Instead, the Labour leadership has silenced its internal critics — for now — by winning the seat by a margin of just 323 votes, down from more than 3,000 at the 2019 general election.
Earlier the party was accused of using anti-muslim sentiment in a false light by propagating that India is an islamophobic country. The party campaigners wrongfully used Indian PM Narendra Modi’s photo with Boris Johnson at the G7 in their posters. Later on, Labour Friends of India condemned this move and put out a statement to clarify this move.
Frank Luntz, who spent nearly 30 years carrying out work for the Republican Party, came to London in May to join the Centre for Policy Studies to conduct the research, found that “wokeism” was a top-three cause of concern among voters, more than sexism or populism
“The problem with woke and with cancel culture is that it is never done. The conflict and divisions never end,” he said. “This is not what the people of the UK want but it’s coming anyway.” The term “woke” refers to someone very concerned about social issues such as race and trans rights.
Asked for his advice to Starmer, he said that Labour should place greater emphasis on issues of security and safety, which are a top priority for voters, and avoid calling for higher taxes on individuals or businesses because the public think they too will be affected. He stressed that racial inequality was the number one priority for Labour supporters but not one voter group, and that those most concerned with “woke” issues were Labour-supporting women in their late 20s and early 30s. He said age and political affiliation were the biggest dividing lines when it came to views on woke issues and the culture war.
A report in The Times stated: British Indians are the largest of the UK’s ethnic minority groups. Not so long ago they leaned Labour, but since David Cameron’s transformation of the Conservative Party, they have become a swing slice of the electorate. (A measure of the change that Cameron-era Conservatives brought about in the perceptions of minority voters of the two parties comes in a recent poll by the consultancy Number Cruncher Politics. It found that among British Indians, Cameron was perceived to have done the best job of all the recent prime ministers in tackling racial tensions in the UK.)
