George Galloway has been removed from parliament after a four-month stint as the MP for Rochdale, losing his seat to Labour by 1,400 votes. Galloway, who took the seat for his Workers party in a February byelection dominated by the conflict in Gaza, did not attend the announcement, at which it was announced that the former political journalist Paul Waugh had won the seat for Labour. Waugh won 13,000 votes, almost half the total won by the late Labour MP Tony Lloyd in 2019. Lloyd’s death prompted the byelection that Galloway won. Galloway took 11,600 votes, with Reform UK beating the Conservatives into fourth.
Waugh began his victory speech by saying, with some apparent irony: “I’d like to thank George Galloway for his service.” This was followed by shouts and heckles from the crowd. “Are we going to be allowed to speak? Is this a democracy?” Waugh then said. The new MP went on to thank local voters, saying they had made Rochdale “part of a national wave of change”. In a post on X, Galloway thanked the people in the constituency who “gave me 54 sitting days in the last parliament as their MP”. He added: “We took the government party to within 1,500 votes and serve notice on Labour that we are here to stay in Rochdale.” Despite the relatively narrow margin of victory, Labour will be delighted to have seen off Galloway, who again fought an often highly personal campaign, and one aimed mainly at winning over Muslim voters with a heavy focus on Gaza. Galloway’s February win, the third time he had beaten Labour in byelections, saw him take almost 40% of the vote in a contest beset by chaos and controversy. In the byelection, Labour abandoned its candidate, Azhar Ali, who had pipped Waugh to the party’s nomination, and finished fourth. At the time of his win, Galloway declared what he called “a shifting of the tectonic plates” away from Labour. “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” he said. “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 Gaza, in the Gaza Strip.” Galloway, who started his career as a Labour MP in Glasgow but was expelled over his opposition to the Iraq war, subsequently served one term as MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, and then three years as MP for Bradford West.