Batley and Spen by-election to be held on 1 July
Labour PartyThe Batley and Spen by-election will be held on 1 July, it has been confirmed.
It was triggered after the previous MP Tracy Brabin had to stand down when she was elected as West Yorkshire's mayor.
Labour has selected Kim Leadbeater, sister of Jo Cox, who represented the seat before her murder by a right-wing extremist, as the party's candidate.
The Conservatives have selected Ryan Stephenson, a Leeds councillor, as their candidate.
Ms Brabin held Batley and Spen for Labour with a reduced majority in the general election of 2019 - down to 3,525 from 8,961 in 2017.
The Conservative Party's candidate came second.
The Yorkshire Party, which came third in the West Yorkshire mayoral contest, has confirmed its candidate in the by-election will be Corey Robinson, who is a senior medical research engineer.
Expect a lot of journalists to be googling Batley this morning. This by-election is going to cause a fuss.
First and foremost, the people of Batley and Spen need a new MP to represent them down at Westminster.
However, the national narrative will be about how the result reflects on the direction and popularity of both the Labour and Conservative parties.
Expect to hear lots of references to the "red wall" and to what happened in the recent Hartlepool by-election.
But we know that Batley and Spen is a different place to Hartlepool, with different local concerns.
It's been Conservative before, right up until 1997, and Labour's majority of 3,525 means the battle will be fast and fierce.
The by-election will be seen as a test for Labour after it lost the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives on 6 May.
Campaigning in the constituency will be made more difficult due to coronavirus as it is within the Kirklees district of West Yorkshire.
Kirklees is one of the areas where people have been encouraged to "minimise travel" due to the spread of the Indian variant.
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