It was the arrival of George Galloway that Labour feared would cause the party the biggest headache in the Rochdale byelection at the end of the month. But in the end it was Labour’s own candidate, the Lancashire county councillor Azhar Ali, who has sabotaged what should have been a safe Labour seat (majority: 9,668) and made a Galloway victory a slightly more likely prospect on 29 February.
Starmer disowned Ali on Monday night, 36 hours after the Mail on Sunday reported leaked remarks in which Ali said the Israeli government deliberately allowed 1,139 of its citizens to be massacred on 7 October in order to give it the “green light” for military action. It initially looked like Ali might survive, with a Jewish Labour grandee, the former Liverpool Riverside MP Louise Ellman, lured out of retirement to say that he was an “ally” of the Jewish community. Starmer had stood by Ali throughout Monday until “further comments” made by Ali came to light, and the party withdrew its support. Thirty-six hours is a long time in politics for a leader who has rebuilt his party’s reputation by operating a zero-tolerance approach to anyone with even the vaguest whiff of antisemitism about them. No doubt Starmer’s judgment will now be questioned, though at least he now avoids being asked constantly why Ali was being allowed to stand between now and the vote on 29 February. So what happens next? Labour has made clear that even if Ali wins he will not be allowed to sit as a Labour MP. Instead, he would join other Labour outcasts including Kate Osamor and Andy McDonald in the odd-squad of independents and will no doubt disappear from parliament after the general election. But his name has already been printed on the postal ballots, alongside Labour’s red rose and party name. To make matters more farcical, last week the Green party candidate withdrew from the Rochdale race after the resurfacing of what he described as his “regrettable” social media remarks about Gaza and Muslims, and yet he too will be listed on the voting slip. Thousands of people will probably still vote for Ali, not out of any personal loyalty – or adherence to the same conspiracy theory that suggested Israel was “in” on the 7 October attacks – but because most people do not pay much attention to any political news. If they vote, they often do so for a party and not an individual. During a two-day visit Rochdale last week, the Guardian encountered just as many constituents who were unaware there was a byelection as those with a view about the contest. This is nothing against the people of Rochdale. Outside Westminster, most people no longer listen devotedly to Radio 4’s Today programme or buy a daily newspaper. With so much streaming entertainment they aren’t glued to the nightly news. So what of Galloway’s chances? He, naturally, senses blood, saying that Labour has “again brought disgrace to Rochdale as they have done so many other times before”. In a video on Monday night he vowed to fight for “every vote, in every part of the community”. But a Galloway victory is not a foregone conclusion. Until now, he has concentrated his campaign solely on Rochdale’s Muslim community, who make up 30% of the local population. Though he is undoubtedly picking up support, at a rally outside a mosque on Friday his campaign team had to encourage the audience to move nearer to the front so that it didn’t look so sparsely attended. Meanwhile Simon Danczuk, Rochdale’s Labour MP between 2010 and 2017, thinks he now is in better stead to win back his old seat for his new party, Reform. “It’s now a fight between Galloway, who will prioritise Palestine, and me, who will prioritise Rochdale,” he said on Monday night. It is true there are significant numbers of voters in Rochdale for whom Gaza is not the main issue. Many remain disgusted at the town’s grooming scandal, with some even saying they were turned off by the thought of voting Labour when they realised a candidate of Pakistani Muslim heritage might be their new MP. Ultimately the vote will probably decided on turnout. The Labour machine is normally peerless on voting day when it comes to getting out the vote, deploying armies of door-knockers right until 10pm, cajoling people out of the house with offers of lifts to the polling station. With that gone, could Galloway prevail? In the early hours of 1 March, all will be revealed.