British ‘disruptor’ wins seat in Parliament

LONDON — A veteran leftwing British political disruptor has won a special election in a town in northern England with a big Muslim minority following a contest that was mired in chaos and controversy and dominated by the Israel-Hamas war.

George Galloway’s victory was described as “beyond alarming” by Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who used a Friday evening address to the nation to warn that British democracy was being targeted by extremists.

Galloway, 69, swept to victory in Thursday’s contest, winning almost 40% of the vote in the parliamentary seat of Rochdale.

In his victory speech, the fedora-wearing Galloway took aim at Keir Starmer, the leader of the main opposition Labour Party, who according to opinion polls is likely to become the United Kingdom’s prime minister in the general election this year.

“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” he said. “You have paid, and 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 Palestine in the Gaza Strip.”

Galloway, a former Labour member of Parliament who was expelled from the party in 2003, also declared “Labour is on notice” and hailed what he called a “shifting of the tectonic plates.”

Labour said that Galloway only won because the party pulled its support for its candidate, Azhar Ali, for suggesting that Israel was complicit in Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, which saw militants kill around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and take about 250 others hostage.

In the absence of Labour’s backing and with many of Rochdale’s Muslim voters dismayed at the party’s reluctance to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Ali ended up coming in fourth.

“Galloway only won because Labour didn’t stand a candidate,” Starmer said. “Obviously we will put up a first-class candidate, a unifier, before the voters in Rochdale at the general election.”

Galloway’s victory means that from next week, Parliament will once again be home to one of the most eloquent orators from the left wing of U.K. politics, who will clearly use his position to raise his opposition to Israel’s operation in Gaza, which, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, has led to the deaths of more than 30,000 people.