Hours after George Galloway won Rochdale’s March byelection, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak gave a foreboding speech in the dark outside 10 Downing Street. He accused the left-wing firebrand of “glorifying” Islamists and also alleged Muslim “extremists” were driving protests over Gaza.
Swinging nonchalantly in his office chair at his constituency office on Wednesday, Galloway peers out from beneath his fedora and says he subsequently bumped into Sunak in a corridor.
“I bearded him over that ridiculous stunt he pulled,” says the Scot in his distinctive gravelly burr. “But I can’t tell you verbatim what we discussed.”
Yet Galloway’s clear inference is that Sunak somehow suggested that each time he associates Muslims [who strongly backed Galloway] “with dark forces”, it drives another wedge between that community, traditionally Labour voters, and Labour leader Keir Starmer, a strong backer of Israel.
The more Starmer “vacates his base” of Muslim voters, Galloway suggests, the more some turn to his Workers Party of Britain, which is targeting Labour constituencies in the general election on July 4th.
“Sunak’s point of view would be: ‘I actually did you a favour’,” according to Galloway’s summing-up of their private encounter.
Muslim anger at Starmer over Israel and his initial refusal to call for a Gaza ceasefire damaged Labour in local elections in March. It threatens to do the same again next month. BBC research suggests Labour’s vote share in areas with big Muslim populations fell by more than a fifth in May’s locals.
LabourList, a political website that is supportive of the party but independent of it, claims an intranet system for Labour campaigners now indicates at least 16 seats in next month’s general election in areas with large blocs of Muslim voters have recently switched from “safe” to “battleground” status.
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, whose seat is one of Galloway’s targets, was last week filmed on a mobile phone pleading with a roomful of Muslim men to vote for her because they “got me over the line” last time.
Labour’s breach with British Muslims may not cost it the election such is its lead over the Tories. But it’s still a headache for Starmer that he struggles to contain. Rochdale, a working-class town in Greater Manchester with a large Muslim population, is a bear-pit example of Labour’s problem.
It is barely a 15-minute train ride from central Manchester but a world away from the gilded bubble of Westminster.
Research from Loughborough University suggests the local borough is the 15th most deprived in England. Child poverty in the constituency touches 45 per cent. One in five of its voters are Muslim.
Among the first things visible to anyone arriving to Rochdale by train is Galloway’s face on the background of a Palestinian flag staring down from a huge election poster on the wall of a Muslim-owned business, Haji’s Cash & Carry.
The community west of the station around Tweedale Street is heavily Muslim. There are at least 25 mosques in Rochdale, Google maps suggests. One, the Christia mosque, sits next door to the Coronation Inn pub in a neat illustration of how different communities here live cheek by jowl.
Closer to its centre the social pressures facing the town are on view in the long lunchtime queue for the Rochdale Soup Kitchen. Most of those waiting appear to be homeless white men.
In addition to his support for Palestinians, Galloway is often criticised for the vehemence of his anti-Israel rhetoric. He romped home in the byelection on the back of Muslim anger at Labour. The campaign of its candidate Anzhar Ali, a Muslim councillor, imploded when he lost the party’s support for promoting conspiracy theories about the October 7th attacks.
Galloway is confident he will win again, but acknowledges that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could run him close. Labour’s candidate, former Westminster journalist Ian Waugh, did not respond to a request for comment.
Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain, whose candidates include cricket star Monty Panesar, is “notionally” fighting 326 constituencies. Galloway claims he will be disappointed if it doesn’t win 10 seats, although that seems a tall order under Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system.
Is it a single issue party over Gaza?
“We’re not – we stand for working-class communities. But if we were, Gaza would be the mother of all single issues. It’s not like the single issue is the plight of badgers in the countryside, it is the moral centre of the world right now,” says Galloway.
Galloway’s personal ire for Starmer seems acute. “Starmer is Blairism without the laughs, the polish or the pizazz. If it comes to pass that Labour’s breach with the Muslims is permanent, then we will be the beneficiaries of that.”
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