A parliamentary constituency recently held by Britain’s main opposition Labor Party has slipped out of its hands after a chaotic election campaign that has become emblematic of the furor that has swept British politics over the war in Gaza.
George Galloway, a left-wing firefighter, won the seat in Rochdale, north of Manchester, with 12,335 votes, according to official results announced early on Friday. The vote was held on Thursday to replace Tony Lloyd, the Labor MP who had represented the district but died of blood cancer in January.
Mr Galloway, founder of Britain’s far-left Labor Party, once represented Labor in Parliament but was forced out of the party in 2003 because of his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.
In his campaign in Rochdale, Mr Galloway appealed directly to the area’s Muslim voters, who make up around 30 per cent of the electorate. Many of them are angry about the war in Gaza and want Britain to push harder for an immediate ceasefire.
In his campaign literature, Mr Galloway described Labor leader Keir Starmer as “a leading supporter of Israel” and suggested his leadership could be weakened by the result of the vote. “Imagine — the people of Rochdale coming together to overthrow the hated Labor leader,” the leaflet added.
That prospect may be fanciful, as a recent poll shows Mr Starmer is more popular with voters than any other leading politician in Britain. But Mr Galloway’s victory followed a chaotic campaign for Labour. The party was forced to disavow its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after a recording revealed he had claimed Israel had “allowed” Hamas to go ahead with the October 7 attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza.
Mr Ali later issued a statement saying he had “unreservedly apologized to the Jewish community for my comments, which were deeply offensive, ignorant and false”.
The disaster was a particular embarrassment for Mr Starmer, who has made a major push to stamp out the anti-Semitism that plagued the Labor Party under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
To make matters worse, when Mr Starmer acted against Mr Ali it was too late to replace him and his name remained on the ballot for Thursday’s election, polling 2,402 votes.
Adding to the sense of chaos, one of the other candidates was Simon Danczuk, who won Rochdale for Labor in the 2010 and 2015 general elections. He was sacked from the Labor Party in 2015 for sending explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl.
Mr Danczuk apologized at the time for “inappropriate” behaviour, saying he was “silly”, but now dismisses the episode as “tabloid nonsense”. This time, he ran for Reform UK This hard-right party is a successor to the Brexit Party, which campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union and was once led by Nigel Farage.
The evening belonged to Mr. Galloway, one of the stalwarts of British politics. Known for his tough and sometimes incendiary political rhetoric — as well as his trademark Fedora hat of choice — he has a long history of outspoken commentary and a knack for generating publicity.
In 2003, he referred to Tony Blair, then British prime minister, and George W. Bush, then US president, as “wolves” for the invasion of Iraq, and urged British troops to ignore military orders he called illegal. He was forced out of the Labor Party later that year. Mr Galloway won parliamentary seats in 2005 in Bethnal Green in east London and in 2012 in Bradford West, for the Respect Party.
In 2006, he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in Britain, where he at one point surprised viewers by role-playing as a cat and licking another contestant’s hands.
Now back in Parliament, Mr Galloway is likely to do his best to become a thorn in Labour’s side and try to exploit domestic tensions in the Middle East.
The only bright spot for Mr Starmer is that with a general election due later this year, Mr Galloway will face another re-election battle soon if he is to remain an MP for more than a few months.
