Was George Galloway's Batley and Spen by-election campaign a success or an unmitigated disaster?
Sign up to FREE email alerts from the Northern Agenda Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign Up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice  For most candidates parachuted in with just a few weeks' notice, gaining more than 20 per cent of the vote would probably be deemed a success. But George Galloway isn't your typical politician and his tactics are far from conventional. The controversial figure often veered off-topic on the campaign trail in the Batley and Spen by-election when he was asked what the Workers Party would do if elected. READ MORE: All the reaction as Labour win Batley and Spen by-election  Instead, he shone the focus squarely on Labour - and in particular Sir Keir Starmer. Huge posters were plastered on walls across the constituency with Mr Galloway adopting a boxing stance next to a simple message: 'Starmer out'. (Image: 2021 Getty Images)  Ahead of the election, he told YorkshireLive: "I want to beat Labour myself, but my second prize is that Labour under Keir Starmer lose." Mr Galloway made a number of other bold assertions, including the claim that Kirklees Council, which has a Labour leader, only stumped up 22 million for road improvements because he was standing in the by-election. "I'm claiming credit for that 22 million," he said. He also accused Labour of "taking voters for granted" and went after Asian voters, putting the rights of Palestinians front and centre of his campaign. In some areas, it appeared to have worked. 23-year-old Rashid Ahmed Khalifa and his entire family live in Batley East. They were impressed by Mr Galloway's policies. (Image: Kristian Johnson / Reach plc)  "We have blindly trusted Labour over here on Warwick Road for 20, maybe even 25 years," he said. "But we've changed. We're going with George Galloway." As the overnight count at the by-election inched past midnight, Mr Galloway's team were wildly confident. Not so much for their own success, but for the supposed downfall of Labour. "It would need to take a miracle in Spen for Labour to make anywhere near a comeback," said one party activist four hours before the results were announced. "This will be another Tory victory, another Hartlepool. The question now is who comes second. "Labour here is dead. Completely dead." When quizzed on whether he should have been using such inflammatory words in a constituency where former MP Jo Cox was murdered just five years ago, he replied: "Excuse the blunt language, but its political discourse." There is no doubt that Mr Galloway managed to sway a significant number of voters across the constituency. 8,264 to be exact. But by his own reckoning, he did not achieve his main goal - to deliver a hammer blow to the Labour leader. Kim Leadbeater's victory, albeit by the slender margin of just 323 votes, was a major boost for Mr Starmer and allows him a little more breathing space following suggestions that he might have been forced to step aside had Labour lost here. (Image: 2021 Getty Images)  Within minutes of the result being announced though, Mr Galloway said he would be mounting a legal challenge in a bid to have it overturned. "The result of this election cannot stand and we will take whatever legal measures are necessary to have that result set aside," he said. Enter your postcode to see local issues near you  Following his seven-minute rant, Mr Galloway then left and refused to answer any questions about his campaign. Some described his strategy as being like "a nasty circus", while others said he had turned Batley and Spen into "the Wild West". It wasn't just Labour who spoke out against his campaign either, with activists from a number of other parties also speaking out against the 66-year-old. Mr Galloway was so confident Labour would not emerge victorious in Batley and Spen that he pledged to eat his hat if Ms Leadbeater pulled off the "miracle" he could not foresee. Despite his appetite for a Labour capitulation, it will have been a difficult breakfast for Mr Galloway to stomach.