Politics after George Galloway's Victory

Following George Galloway's emphatic win in Rochdale on Thursday, a lot of excuses have got thrown into circulation. There were the unique set of circumstances after Labour disowned its candidate. There was the strong local independent. Reform had toured the town's gutters and dredged up the late career of mobile phone sex pest Simon Danczuk. The Greens disowned their candidate too, and the Galloway circus had rolled into town. We're led to believe that had Azhar Ali not made his ill-judged comments, the Labour campaign machine would have steamrollered the opposition and another by-election victory chalked up by Keir Starmer would have been the assured result.

This is fanciful nonsense. As Galloway noted in his victory speech, this is the first time since the war that neither of the dominant parties made it into the top two positions. Labour's vote fell by a record amount, and the Tories also saw a new record set for the largest vote share fall in a Labour-held constituency. A history maker all-round then. There was some faint hope in Labour circles that their erstwhile candidate would sneak through because his suspension came after the postal votes dropped, and he would still be appearing on the ballot with the party name. Hopes that were shredded like so many unread Labour leaflets. With Galloway now sitting on a cushion of 6,000 votes, or an effective majority of 10,000 if you take Labour's hopes of winning it back at the general election into account, there is a distinct possibility he could be around to annoy Starmer for the next five years.

Starmer has seen the polls and been told in no uncertain terms that there would be political consequences for supporting the massacre in Gaza. Indeed, the alarm went off loudly and clearly early last month when Survation reported a collapse in Muslim support. But Starmer has brushed it off. Toeing the US line on Israel is more important to him than responding to loyal supporters that have put him on the doorstep of Number 10. And given his entire project represents the take over of the state by the state, this shouldn't come as much of a shocker.

But what, if anything, does Galloway's galloping victory mean for politics? In the first instance, there will be some fretful Labour MPs out there. The chances of independent left challenges with a similar pro-Gaza, anti-genocide message can't be discounted. Nor can the window of opportunity for the Greens. It could help them secure the retirement of Thangam Debbonaire, and perhaps scoop up Sheffield Central as well. But while it's squeaky bum time for Labour MPs in "exposed" seats, Starmer is determined to press on as is. The reasoning is as straightforward as it is pigheaded. The polls show Labour is on for a thumping majority, therefore dropping a handful of seats at best to the Greens, Galloway, and the odd independent left is something Starmer can live with. For every Rochdale, there are three, four, many Wellingboroughs and Kingswoods.

The business-as-usual approach was reasserted this evening. In what looked like a panicky press conference, Rishi Sunak got out the Downing Street lectern to denounce division and hate in Britain. No, he wasn't talking about his own party but those evil protesters who refuse to quieten down about Britain's complicity in an ongoing massacre. It's a feeble attempt to try and cohere Tory unity around an enemy all wings of his fractured party hate - the Palestinian solidarity movement. Thus Galloway is invoked as a divisive bogeyman, a symbol of the non-existent no-go areas and the nudge, nudge, wink, wink Islamist wave the Tories cynically pretend is sweeping Britain. The protests have to stop. They are a threat to democracy.

Actually, what these complaints about the protests signal are deep anxieties among some sections of the establishment that they represent an unforeseen and unwelcome outbreak of mass political volatility, of which Galloway's election is a symptom. And Starmer agrees with this. As cabinet member after cabinet member have been talking up the threats of terrorism and the "intimidation" of MPs this last week, he's said Labour would back government measures to crank the handle of authoritarianism some more. As if we hadn't had enough from Boris Johnson. But here we encounter a potential problem for Starmer. His own MPs see this as a feeble overreach by Sunak, and so do some of his supporters among the centrist commentariat. In other words, he's badly misread the politics of the moment and runs the risk of damaging his standing among those who are his natural base. Which isn't good when it was looking a touch shaky even before he gave his blessings to Israel.

Going back to Galloway's victory speech, he talked about his victory being the beginning of a movement that could shake up politics. In this he's wrong. What happened in Rochdale is a moment in the shifting plates political struggle whose latest episode began in October. With both party leaders demonstrating their weakness by recourse to authoritarian laws and tone deafedness with regard to the message the protests and the electorate have sent, this is a process that has a long road to run yet.

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