Labour party has managed to retain Batley East through a landslide victory by Ebrahim Dockrat who won 73% of the total votes cast in the elections held on Thursday, 31 August. The results were made official in early hours of Friday.
The constituency went into polls after former councillor, Fazila Loonat, also from the Labour party was jailed for perverting the course of justice to avoid a speeding penalty.
Turnout of the elections had a turnout of 3069 votes being cast in an electorate of 13,179.
Ebrahim Dockrat managed to sweep through the elections winning 2248 votes, having a vote share of 73%. Beverly Smith of the Conservative party came a distant second with 413 votes, while the Green’s Simon Duffy was the second runner-up with 145 votes.
The victory is noteworthy and phenomenal in many senses. If we are to take a look into the past five elections. In 2018, Cllr Mahmood Akhtar, won with 3283 votes and a thumping vote share of 75%. In 2019, Labour strongly retained the seat with Habiban Zaman wining the seat with a slightly reduced majority vote share of 70%.
Ever since, the party’s vote share has steadily declined coming to an almost 0% margin in May 2023.
Mr Dockrat’ s victory margin brings back Labour to 2019 level, and further strengthens the party’s hold in the constituency.
Speaking to Asian Standard shortly after his victory, Mr Dockrat said: “Delighted and humbled at the same time.
“Delighted to win the by-election for Batley East and to represent the community for Batley East. It’s been a pleasure to work with my colleagues, my family, my friends, my campaign team. They have been really supportive of me throughout. I thank all the people that came out and voted for me. I want to serve them to the best of my ability. Hopefully, we can bring about some change for Batley East. Batley residents have been suffering from 13 years of Tory cuts and hopefully my election would bring about a fresh start.
“I want to work for Batley with my fellow councillors. Hopefully I can strengthen, what is already a very strong team. A lot of exciting new things is happening in Batley, particularly the town centre regeneration, we want to focus on that making sure it brings maximum benefits. We want to make sure that we minimise any disruption faced by our community, in terms of steps taken by the National Government”.
Mr Dockrat refuted allegations that people have been let down and disappointed by how former Cllr Loonat’s tenure ended.
“To be honest with you, I have been walking the streets for the last four weeks, not one person has mentioned that they have been disappointed with what happened. It is unfortunate whatever has happened, but as I mentioned is that I want to look forward to work for the community and support them in their needs.”
