LONDON (AP) — A veteran British political disruptor has won a special election in a town in northern England with a big Muslim minority following a contest that was mired in chaos and controversy and dominated by the war in Gaza.
George Galloway, 69, swept to victory in Thursday’s contest, winning almost 40% of the vote in the parliamentary seat of Rochdale.
In his victory speech, the fedora-wearing Galloway took aim at Keir Starmer, the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, who according to opinion polls is likely to become Britain’s prime minister at the general election this year.
“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” he said. “You have paid, and you will pay, a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza Strip.”
Galloway, a former Labour member of parliament who was expelled from the party in 2003, also declared “Labour is on notice” and hailed what he called a “shifting of the tectonic plates.”
Labour said Galloway only won because the party pulled its support for its candidate, Azhar Ali, for suggesting Israel was complicit in Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, which saw militants kill around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the taking about 250 others hostage.
In the absence of Labour’s backing and with many of Rochdale’s Muslim voters dismayed at the party’s reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Ali ended up coming fourth.
“George Galloway is someone who stokes up division and fear,” said Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy national campaign coordinator. “This isn’t how we would have wanted this by-election to play out.”
Galloway’s victory means that from next week, Parliament will once again be home to one of the most eloquent orators from the left wing of U.K. politics, who will clearly use his position to raise his opposition to Israel’s operation in Gaza, which according to the Hamas-run health ministry has led to the death of more than 30,000 people.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, the largest Jewish community organization in the UK, said Galloway’s victory marks “a dark day” for the U.K.’s Jewish community.
“George Galloway is a demagogue and conspiracy theorist who has brought the politics of division and hate to every place he has ever stood for Parliament,” it said in a statement.
The constituency of Rochdale has traditionally been a Labour seat. Galloway said the Workers Party of Britain will contest similar seats, where there’s a sizeable Muslim minority, in the upcoming general election, which must take place within the next 11 months.
The governing Conservative Party, which has not historically performed well in Rochdale, came in third.
Galloway started out his political career half a century ago as a firebrand left-wing Labour MP for a constituency in Glasgow.
He has been a controversial figure for decades, and faced widespread opposition for meeting in 1994 the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and telling him: “Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.”
In 2004, he returned to Parliament as a lawmaker for the anti-war Respect Party after a special election in a heavily Muslim seat in east London, but was defeated at the general election the following year.
He was elected again at a special election in 2012 with a swing of 37% from Labour to Respect but lost his seat once more in the election of 2015.
In 2019 Galloway was fired from a talk-radio show for a social media post that the radio station judged antisemitic.
As well as being an eloquent advocate for his political views, which saw him take U.S. Senators to task in 2005, Galloway has also courted ridicule, most notably in 2006 when he impersonated a cat in the reality television show “Celebrity Big Brother.”