George Galloway, the left-wing Firebrand, wins British seat in a blow to the Labor Party
A parliamentary district recently held by Britain’s main opposition party, Labor, has slipped from his control after a chaotic election campaign that became emblematic of the anger that has swept through British politics about the war in Gaza.
George Galloway, a left-wing firebrand, won the seat of Rochdale, north of Manchester, by 12,335 votes, according to official results announced early Friday. A vote was taken Thursday to replace Tony Lloyd, a Labor Party lawmaker 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 over his outspoken criticism of the Iraq war.
In his campaign in Rochdale, Mr Galloway appealed directly to the district’s Muslim population, which makes 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 Keir Starmer, leader of the Labor Party, as a “top supporter of Israel” and suggested his leadership could be weakened by the outcome 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 recent opinion polls suggest Mr Starmer is too more popular with voters than any other leading politician in Britain. But Galloway’s victory followed a chaotic campaign for Labour. The party was forced to disavow its own candidate, Azhar Ali, after a recording showed him claiming that 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 that he apologized “without reservation to the Jewish community for my comments, which were deeply offensive, ignorant and false.”
The debacle was particularly embarrassing for Mr Starmer, who has made great efforts to root out the anti-Semitism that plagued Labor under the leadership of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.
To make matters worse, by the time Mr Starmer stood down against Mr Ali, it was too late to replace him, and his name remained on the list. mood for Thursday’s elections.
Adding to the sense of chaos was Simon Danczuk winning Rochdale for Labor at the 2010 and 2015 general elections. He was suspended by the Labor Party in 2015 for sending explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl.
Mr Danczuk apologized at the time for “inappropriate” behavior and said he had been “stupid”, but he now dismisses the episode as “tabloid nonsense”. This time he stood as a candidate for Reform UK. The 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 mavericks of British politics. Known for his fierce and sometimes inflammatory political rhetoric – as well as the signature fedora he favors – he has a long history of outspoken comments and a knack for generating publicity.
In 2003, he called Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of Britain, and George W. Bush, then US President, “wolves” over the invasion of Iraq and urged British troops to defy military orders that he called illegal. Later that year he was forced to leave the Labor Party. Mr Galloway went on to win parliamentary seats in 2005 in Bethnal Green, east London, and in 2012 in Bradford West, for the Respect Party.
In 2006 he appeared on Famous big brother in Britain, where at one point he surprised viewers role play as a cat and licking another participant’s hands.
As he returns to Parliament, Mr Galloway is likely to do his best to be a thorn in Labor’s side and try to exploit internal tensions in the Middle East.
The only silver lining for Mr Starmer is that with the general election expected later this year, Mr Galloway will soon have to fight for re-election again if he wants to remain a lawmaker for more than a few months.