George Galloway’s victory in the Rochdale byelection has been greeted with a shrug of complacency by most commentators. After all, Galloway has a habit of pulling off shock byelection wins only to disappear quickly afterwards, and his success this time owed much to happenstance. Perhaps if Labour had not been forced to suspend its candidate after he was recorded at a public meeting claiming that Israel had planned the 7 October attacks, Galloway would not have won. Perhaps the whole episode tells us little about the outcome of the forthcoming general election, let alone the future of British politics. Then again, perhaps not.
Things would be more straightforward if we could take Galloway, and the Workers’ Party of Britain (WPB) that he leads, at face value. They claim to be a leftwing outfit that won Rochdale on a surge of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the wake of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. But the truth is murkier. During this campaign, Galloway’s team sent out more than one set of correspondence. One, addressed to Muslims in the constituency, urged voters to “use your vote to send Keir Starmer and the Labour party a message – stop supporting genocide, stop supporting Israeli aggression, and stand with Palestine”.
