LONDON – Who is he? George Galloway, the controversial and inflammatory protagonist of this story? And why are we going to talk about a seemingly insignificant British by-election in Rochdale, just outside Manchester?
The Rochdale elections
Because this vote has a lot more weight and meaning than you might think. Because it is a vehement mix of anti-Semitism, poverty, multiculturalism and the anger of many British Muslims towards Gaza. And then there is that histrionic and provocative spoilsport, the Scottish populist and radical Palestinian activist George Galloway. Who handily won the Rochdale by-election on Thursday and will once again become a member of the glorious Westminster Parliament, for the fourth time with three parties and in three different cities, equaling Winston Churchill's record.
But this is also a big problem for Keir Starmerthe leader of the Labor Party, is increasingly caught in a bottleneck between reaching out to the Jewish community after Corbyn's disasters and the Islamic community, which in the past voted Labor en masse in the UK, but now always does so because of the Fast-Starmer party Israel is getting angrier overall.
Sunak's concern
Last night even British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had to intervene. In an impromptu and restless speech outside No. 10 Downing Street on the eve of another major pro-Palestine demonstration in London today, Sunak attacked the “extremists who want to destroy our democracy”, citing Islamic and far-right forces.
But the British leader also took Galloway to task, directly citing his explosive and divisive rhetoric: “His victory is beyond alarming,” Sunak declared, as “we are talking about a character who has downplayed the horrors of the Hamas attack on Israel.” on October 7” and “glorified Hezbollah,” the Shiite extremist “Party of God” in Lebanon. Today, Galloway responded in kind, resorting to his explosive rhetoric: “Gaza is the moral center of the world right now. Either you are on the side of the murdered mothers and children or their murderers. The Prime Minister hesitates like a dwarf thief (allusion to Macbeth, editor's note), and Starmer is his accomplice.”
Who is?
Galloway, 69 years old with 6 children (the last was born in 2020), has regularly penetrated British politics with his unbridled populism for decades and is now more than ever ensuring that he has been married for a long time with his pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist campaigns . In Rochdale his angry slogan was “For Gaza”, he displayed the Palestinian flag everywhere and with his “Labour Party” he won with a landslide of 40% of the vote, thanks to the single vote, taking Sir Tony's seat Lloyd, Labor MP, who died of cancer two months ago.
Rochdale, whose population is 30% Muslim, has always been a Labor stronghold. The victory of Galloway, a self-described “socialist” who was expelled from the Labor Party in 2003 over his heated criticism of the war in Iraq, is bad news for him Keir Starmer. The Labor leader has worked every day since his first days at the helm to win back the Jewish community that felt threatened by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and by accusations of anti-Semitism.
Positions on Gaza
But now the war in Gaza is tearing Labor apart: the left-wing and openly pro-Palestinian currents are increasingly worried about the leader's pro-Israel line. It is no coincidence that a month ago Starmer experienced his party's biggest riot in Westminster when over 60 MPs mutinied in a vote on Israel. Rochdale is just the latest chapter in this worrying trend. Local Labor candidate Azhar Ali was disavowed at the last minute by Starmer because of the resurfacing of his old comments from October 7, which were seen as conspiracy and anti-Semitism and in which he suggested an “inside job” by the Israelis.
In gray and increasingly run-down Rochdale, where a gigantic round of sexual violence against underage girls by dozens of men from the Pakistani community was uncovered last year and where Liberal Democrat MP Cyril Smith abused hundreds of children at the end of the last century, Galloway also won because Labor virtually had no candidate and the Conservatives haven't won here since the 1950s. But the triumph of this ruthless populist is a wake-up call for everyone, because the divisions in British society have been created by devastating and brutal rhetoric like his, particularly on a sensitive issue like Gaza. Sunak also pointed this out in his speech last night.
Pro-Russian positions
Because Galloway, born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1954, wears a ubiquitous fedora hat and fashionable sunglasses and knows how to humiliate and destroy his opponents, be they politicians or journalists. In his post-victory speech, he called Sunak and Starmer “two asses with the same bum and we gave them a good spanking!” During the election campaign, he terrorized the Jewish community with his anti-Zionist statements. And when Sky asked him for comment on Sunak's words last night, he replied: “I despise the Prime Minister. I won at Rochdale by a landslide. Respect democracy.”
In his questionable political career, Galloway praised Saddam Hussein, with whom he was friends, attended a Big Brother event in which he impersonated a cat in a red suit, defended Assad by denying his use of chemical weapons in Syria, sat down advocated for Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and questioned him about the Novichock poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, criticized NATO for “provoking the war in Ukraine” and worked in recent years also for Russian propaganda channels such as Russia Today and Sputnik that he quickly became a star in Moscow and the rest of the country. So how did he manage to win the Rochdale election in a landslide? Perhaps because Galloway, as offensive as he is personally, is a symptom of something bigger and more worrying happening in the UK.