Full hazmat kit, please, for the Rochdale byelection, where the chaos and cast of grotesque characters says so much about the state of British politics. All of it bad. This is one of those byelection campaigns that makes you yearn to immerse yourself in sheep dip just from reading about it.
Assuming you’re now suited up, here’s a recap of where we are. This weekend, the Mail on Sunday revealed that the Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, had claimed the Israeli government deliberately permitted and enabled the slaughter of 1,139 of its people by Hamas terrorists on 7 October as cover for military action. It was too late to take Ali off the ballot. Yet his selection alone was now eye-catching, as was Keir Starmer’s clear inconsistency. For instead of immediately withdrawing support for him, the Labour leadership explained Ali had apologised, wasn’t antisemitic, and had just fallen for some repulsive conspiracy theory he had read online, which was wrong but the sort of thing it was evidently excusable for putative members of parliament to do. Senior Labour figures went out to defend this line.
