Could Gaza and the shadow of George Galloway prompt Rishi into a snap election?
It’s taken eight years to clear their name. Now they want revenge...
THE Tory MP leapt up and did a jig of joy around the House of Commons Strangers’ Bar. ‘Really? That’s been confirmed?’ he asked. ‘Is George Galloway standing in Rochdale?’ He is. The fiery, fedora-clad leader of the Workers Party Of Britain has announced he will contest this month’s by-election in the Lancashire seat with the express intention of ‘teaching Starmer and Labour a lesson’.
And if Galloway succeeds, Conservative backbenchers will urge Rishi Sunak to take the biggest gamble of his political career – by calling a snap ‘Gaza Election’.
‘Labour is haemorrhaging votes in its Muslim areas,’ one Tory backbencher explained to me. ‘The Israel/Palestine stuff is destroying them. It’s the first issue in a long time that has really got Labour on the back foot.’
A Labour MP despondently agreed. ‘It’s not just the Muslim areas. Look at the protest marches. Starmer’s Israel/Gaza policy is hurting us with our white liberal voters as well. People are pointing to Galloway but wait and see what starts to happen with the Greens and the Lib Dems. They’re looking at the pictures coming out of Gaza and can’t understand why we’re not speaking out against it.’
The extent to which Sir Keir Starmer and his aides are becoming concerned about the issue was exposed by the haste with which they moved the writ to have the Rochdale by-election contested. Triggered by the sudden death of well-respected former Minister Sir Tony Lloyd, with a putative Labour majority of 10,000 and against a backdrop of a series of 20-point poll leads, the campaign should represent a political walk in the park. But some Labour MPs are genuinely concerned their party could face defeat.
‘You should see what it’s like around my constituency,’ said one Labour MP who represents an East London seat. ‘There are Palestinian flags everywhere. They’re hanging off every lamp post. When Keir was elected leader, there was a bit of suspicion within the Muslim community because of his security and prosecutorial background. But his stance on Gaza is the straw that’s broken the camel’s back.’
To date, there has been precious little sign that Starmer’s steady backing of Israel and refusal to call for a ceasefire has unduly harmed his electoral chances.
BUT a large number of both Tory and Labour MPs now believe that below the surface a major shift of opinion is under way. One that could significantly impact – if not completely derail – Labour’s election drive.
‘If you look at the numbers, there are between 30 and 35 seats where the Gaza issue could have a serious bearing on the result,’ one Minister told me. ‘That’s probably not going to be enough to deny Starmer a Commons majority but it could be enough to make the difference between a win and a complete landslide. It could keep us in the game over the next five years.’
And, as a result, it could have a major bearing on the timing of the General Election.
The first thing Tory strategists will be eyeing is what happens to the share of the Labour vote in Rochdale on February 29. Unlike some of Starmer’s more pessimistic MPs, they don’t believe Labour will lose the seat. That’s because they think their own vote could come under pressure from Reform (previously Ukip), which has former local Labour MP Simon Danczuk as its candidate.
But they also believe Galloway – with his unique brand of rabblerousing Left-wing populism – could make serious inroads into the Labour vote.
‘If you consider the Batley and Spen by-election in 2021, Galloway came from nowhere and got 22 per cent,’ one adviser explained. ‘But that was without the backdrop of Gaza. That’s now bound to have an impact. The only question is how well Galloway exploits it.’ He intends to exploit it the full. The Workers Party is said to be preparing to stand up to 50 candidates in seats across the country at the General Election. But crucially, it is set to have a raft of candidates in May’s council elections.
This could create another serious political problem for Starmer, given he has already been hit by a significant number of Gaza-related resignations by councillors across the country, including in Bradford, Oxford and Burnley. ‘That will be the moment Rishi will make the decision,’ one Sunak ally told me.
‘He’ll want to see what happens in Rochdale, and then analyse the local election results to see if a national picture is emerging. And if it is, I think that would be the moment a snap election gets called.’
But some other Tory MPs want the PM to pull the election trigger sooner.
‘If we wait until after May, the picture might change,’ one told me. ‘Joe Biden is coming under his own pressure from his base in the States over Gaza. If he cracks and calls for a ceasefire, Starmer will just move in behind him. And the heat will go out of the issue.’
Some Labour MPs are becoming so desperate they want their leader to move without the cover of the US President. Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy is hosting regular Zoom calls to try to reassure worried Labour backbenchers. And many are using them as the opportunity to urge him and Starmer to shift their stance.
‘I understand Keir has to look strong,’ one told me, ‘and he wants to appear statesmanlike. But we need something more now.
‘I think the area where there could be some policy movement is on the issue of formal recognition of Palestinian statehood. Whatever it is, it has to come quickly because it’s a very, very difficult situation for a lot of colleagues.’
Tory officials are only too aware of those difficulties. But they’re acutely conscious they have to be very careful about how they seek to capitalise on them.
In particular, they recognise they can’t be seen to be driving a wedge between the Muslim community and the rest of the electorate.
‘It’s not going to be about how dependent Labour is on Muslims. It’s going to be about how dependent Labour still is on the hard-Left,’ one Minister argued.
‘When voters see Galloway and all these white, middle-class pro-Palestinian activists jumping up and down, and then see Starmer doing another of his U-turns to try to placate them, we’re going to be able to say, “He said Labour has changed. But has it really?”’
Of course, there are a number of factors that could derail the new Tory masterplan.
AN ISRAEL/Gaza ceasefire or other diplomatic initiative could finally bring a measure of much-needed calm to the Middle East, cooling passions here at home. In Batley & Spen, Galloway had confidently predicted he’d drive Labour into third place. But ultimately his campaign faltered.
And then there is Sunak’s instinctive middle-manager’s caution. As one Cabinet Minister said to me: ‘A snap election is the political equivalent of a cheese-rolling race. It’s a crazy gamble. You hurl yourself down a hill knowing that someone will get a broken leg.
‘But if it could save us 30 seats, it’s a gamble worth taking.’
Sunak may view things differently. While a dramatic snap poll could stave off total Tory annihilation, it would be unlikely to save his premiership.
But in the end, he may not have much say in the matter.
‘The whole party is going to be looking at Rochdale,’ one Red Wall MP asserted, ‘and if it shows enough Tory MPs that they have even half a sniff of saving their seats, there’ll be off to Buckingham Palace demanding an election themselves.’
Conservative MPs have been desperate for something to change their political fortunes. A ‘Gaza Election’ could be their best hope. And their last.
HELEN and Alexandra Veevers once had a vague notion that by the time they reached their mid-30s they would be secure in their careers and married with children. Instead, as they watched their friends settle down, the sisters were forced to set aside their modest ambitions and spend more than a decade defending themselves against an extraordinary claim – patricide.
Helen, now 36, and Alexandra, 34, along with their mother, were accused of poisoning their property tycoon father Harry Veevers for his £7million fortune.
It was, they say, a wicked lie, a fantasy concocted by their older half-brothers Richard, 47, and Philip, 45, from their father’s first marriage, to deny them their inheritance. The two sisters, from Manchester, insisted their 64year-old father’s heart attack on Valentine’s Day 2013 in Kenya was due to natural causes alone. Yet the Kenyan authorities entertained the brothers’ claims of foul play and exhumed Mr Veevers 11 months later.
Analysis of tissue and soil samples produced conflicting results. It would be left to an inquest in the coastal city of Mombasa to decide if he had been poisoned.
To the sisters’ huge distress, the allegations were reported round the world. And the story of feuding and murder among wealthy Kenyan expats has drawn inevitable comparisons with the White Mischief case of 1941, dramatised in a novel and Hollywood movie.
At stake was more than Mr Veevers’ estate. Helen and Alexandra, and their mother Azra Parvin Din, 75, were warned that if the ruling went against them they could face criminal charges – and the terrifying possibility of a jail sentence in a country where prison conditions are said to be among the worst in the world.
Beset by delays due to a backlog of cases and reasons not immediately clear, the inquest dragged interminably. One hearing was abandoned when Helen received intimidating texts from a man who turned out to be the court clerk.
The Mail on Sunday can reveal that only now, eight years after it opened in a blaze of publicity, has the inquest reached a conclusion.
Oddly, the verdict caught both sides’ legal teams by surprise – they were expecting a routine case management hearing. By chance, Alexandra was in court that morning because she and her sister were desperate to find out when a ruling was expected.
Suddenly magistrate Charles Ndegwa began reading from a sheet of paper containing his entire assessment of the long-running case.
Alexandra felt ‘my heart beat out of my chest’. Mr Ndegwa told the court: ‘Lastly, and most importantly, no concrete evidence has been adduced to show that anyone was criminally responsible for the death of the deceased. In the circumstances, I direct the court file be closed.’
To the sisters, though relieved, ‘it felt a bit of an anti-climax’. Mr Ndegwa’s statement failed to even hint at the case’s twisting complexities, far-reaching consequences and the scorched trail it left behind.
And the feud is far from over. Senior assistant director of public prosecutions Alexander Muteti is expected to decide if brothers Richard, a martial arts instructor, and Philip, a former Army medic, should be investigated for fraud and attempting to pervert the course of justice. ‘We will push for the police and prosecutors to investigate,’ says Helen.
Then there is the unresolved question of the Rochdale businessman’s estate. Mr Veevers died without leaving a will. A letter he wrote purportedly outlining his final wishes went missing from a Barclays bank safety deposit box. Promising to be as rancorous as the inquest, the inheritance battle is on the horizon.
For now, the sisters are numb and struggle to make sense of the case that, says Helen, put their ‘lives on hold’ for more than ten years. Actually, she adds, ‘it’s worse than that – our lives were ruined by the most ridiculous, wicked, horrible lie’.
Alexandra says: ‘The emotional and psychological impact has been enormous. For all these years we have had to live with the awful fear of being jailed in Kenya for something we haven’t done. It’s hard to imagine much worse than being wrongly accused of murdering our father, a man we all loved dearly.
‘The same goes for our mother. It’s been horrendous for her. There has also been the knock-on effects and the “no smoke without fire” thing. I haven’t dated anybody since Dad died. I call myself Alesha when I meet someone, because I know if I give my real name they will read the lies about me on the internet.
‘And I don’t get parcels delivered to my home as I don’t want neighbours to see my name.’
Like her sister, Helen is single. Both live in rented accommodation. ‘We can’t get mortgages as all our money
Our lives were ruined by the most ridiculous, horrible lie
It’s horrendous – the “no smoke without fire” thing
has gone into fighting to clear our names,’ she says.
Helen adds that the case ruined friendships and relationships. She had to give up her job as an estate agent, instead taking a much lower profile role with a security company.
When their grandmother died, a relative warned them not to attend the funeral. ‘It was crazy,’ she says. ‘Of course we went, but it’s an example of the suspicions this has sown.’
Toxic in more ways than one, the case featured lies, fraud and corruption. At its heart was the question of whether or not Mr Veevers was poisoned. Kenyan scientists claimed to have found traces of the insecticide cyhalothrin after exhuming his body. But in 2018 a British forensic scientist, Dr Alexander Allan, told the inquest that a re-analysis of soil and soft-tissue samples, using a highly sensitive technique, had found no such trace of the toxic compound.
In his report, seen by The Mail on Sunday, Dr Allan, who worked for the Home Office for 20 years, noted intriguingly: ‘From the circumstances supplied to me it appears that the most likely scenario for the origin of any confirmed cyhalothrin would have been post-mortem addition.’
Mr Veevers’s remains have been stored at Mombasa hospital since exhumation, but the sisters and their mother now hope to rebury him with dignity. The exhumation, they say, was an emotional attack.
Helen fears her brothers now want him cremated in England. ‘This would be against his religion,’ she says.
Her father married his first wife very young, and divorced her in 1980 after having three children, Alison, Richard and Philip. He later met Azra, a woman of Indian heritage who was born in Uganda before moving to Britain and settling in Rochdale.
They married in an Islamic ceremony and raised Helen and Alexandra as liberal Muslims. Harry later converted. The Veevers often visited
Kenya during Helen and Alexandra’s childhood. Eventually the couple moved to Mombasa, where they built three houses next to one another, living in one while the others stayed empty as investments. Helen and Alexandra, by then adults, remained living in Britain.
Harry later suffered high blood pressure, angina and an inner ear problem. On the day he died he complained of chest pains, dying as doctor arrived at his home.
Helen told the inquest of the moment she informed Richard, known as ‘Dragon Rik’ because of a dragon tattoo the length of his body. ‘I could tell the news made him happy. He said he’d been waiting for this day. He said we could start by sharing the contents of my father’s UK bank account, which had £500,000 in it. He was excited.’
Following the death, Richard, Philip, Alexandra and Helen flew to Kenya together, though it was later claimed, wrongly, that the sisters were in Kenya when he died.
On landing, the first sign of division emerged. The brothers said Harry was buried without their knowledge; the sisters say the brothers took part in the funeral.
The brothers claimed there were strange marks on the body and they were advised that they indicated poisoning; Helen says they have failed to present any evidence.
She accused Richard of seizing control of the family properties and Harry’s car without agreement, and renting out Harry and Azra’s house without consent. Alexandra told the inquest she saw Richard and Philip in the mortuary with their father’s body, wearing latex gloves and ‘holding some sort of instrument’.
Although their father did not leave a will, Helen told the inquest that it was known ‘throughout the family’ that there was a letter in a safety deposit box at Barclays bank in Mombasa to be opened in the event of his death. Harry’s brother Chris, who had been granted access, found the box empty.
Helen told the court she believed the letter might have disinherited Richard and he ‘did a deal’ with a bank employee to get rid of it.
‘My uncle Chris agreed my father was very shrewd with money and would never have paid for a bank box that was empty,’ she said.
‘My uncle warned me that Richard was trying to set us up, accusing us of poisoning my father to get his money. He said, “You girls need to be careful.’’’
It was also claimed that Mr Veevers had threatened to leave Azra, now living in Hampshire, for another woman – but the sisters insist the supposed ‘affair’ is another twisted fabrication.
All sides are considering their next moves. ‘We will come to court and testify,’ says Helen. ‘We were really scared all the way through. Some days I was so anxious I would wake up with my nails imprinted into the palm of my hand from clenching my fists during the night. But we’re not giving up.’
Neither are their brothers. Richard and Philip, who deny their sisters’ allegations, intend challenging the inquest ruling in Kenya’s High Court. Their lawyer Francis Kinyua said: ‘They are upset but their position hasn’t changed.’
When father died, I could tell it made my brother happy