The former England cricketer Monty Panesar and a former Ukip MEP are among hundreds of candidates who will run under the banner of George Galloway’s Workers party at the general election. The party, which is seeking to capitalise on discontent over Labour’s handling of the Gaza conflict, also said it would support the former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Claudia Webbe if they ran again as independents. Galloway claimed on Tuesday he was in talks with three Labour MPs and a peer about defecting. Abbott was not among them, Galloway said, and Tahir Ali, the Labour MP for Birmingham, Hall Green, denied being one either. Galloway, who was joined in Parliament Square by dozens of the 500 candidates he said the party had ready, said: “We are here – now a national force. For Britain, for Gaza, for the working class.”
Galloway is hoping to replicate his victory in the Rochdale byelection when he won almost 40% of the vote after a contest that was dominated by the conflict in Gaza. Labour abandoned its candidate, Azhar Ali, over inflammatory comments he made about Israel. While the Workers party is not regarded as being in a position to win any other Westminster seats – and Galloway faces a battle to hold on to his own – it could peel vital support from Labour. Another Workers party candidate will be the former Labour MP for Derby North Chris Williamson, who lost a high court fight in 2019 to be reinstated into Labour after he was suspended in a row over antisemitism. The party also unveiled Khalil Ahmed, a Labour candidate from 2019, who is to stand in Wycombe; the former Ukip MEP Amjad Bashir, who defected to the Conservatives in 2015 and will stand in Pudsey; two former British ambassadors, Peter Ford and Craig Murray, and a number of Labour councillors who have defected; and Amrit Mann, a former Houslow mayor who will run for Feltham and Heston. Another former Ukip candidate now with the Workers party is Harry Boota, who was suspended as a Tory candidate in 2016 after suggesting homosexuality could be the result of being abused as a child. Some candidates have a background in fringe causes. The South Northamptonshire candidate, Mick Stott, is a former soldier who tried to recruit “common-law constables” to outnumber the police, who he believed were acting unlawfully during lockdown. Violent threats about the chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, were voiced on a Telegram channel for the group set up by Stott, who dissociated himself from the language and blamed “infiltrators”. Panesar said one of his priorities was a referendum on net zero emissions, which Galloway himself has described as a hoax. Galloway expressed frustration with the time being taken by Corbyn, who has yet to say whether he will stand again in Islington North. Other places where Workers party backing could make a difference include Bethnal Green and Stepney, where Labour faces a challenge from the independent candidate Mohammed Akunjee, a lawyer who has represented Shamima Begum, one of three girls who left the UK to join Islamic State and was later deprived of her UK citizenship.