George Galloway: left-wing populist out for Rochdale by-election upset

Labour's decision to withdraw its backing for Azhar Ali in today's Rochdale by-election has opened the door for controversial former MP George Galloway to make a sensational return to Parliament.

Galloway, standing for the Workers Party of Britain in protest against Keir Starmer's Gaza stance, will be "purring" at his chances, reported Politico Playbook, a reference to his infamous 2006 appearance on "Celebrity Big Brother", pretending to be a cat, which was voted the cringiest reality TV moment of all time.

"With his populism, political trademark props (hat, beard), overheated rhetoric and taste for hard combat, Galloway is a sort of mirror-image hard left version of Nigel Farage, but with more electoral success," said Sean O'Grady in The Independent. "Labour should not underestimate him."

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From Glasgow to Rochdale (via Bethnal Green and Bradford)

Like his campaigning style, Galloway's political career has been far from orthodox. He served as Labour's MP in the since-abolished seat of Glasgow Kelvin from 1987 until 2003, when he was expelled from the party after being convicted of bringing the party into disrepute. An outspoken critic of the Iraq War, he caused outrage by calling on British troops to defy orders while praising the insurgents fighting them. Anger within his party was compounded when he congratulated an anti-war candidate who defeated Labour in Preston, and threatened to stand as an opposition candidate himself in European elections.

Following his expulsion, Galloway joined the left-wing Respect Party, which was "born out of the anti-war movement" and emphasised "a need for unity among Britain's working-class communities", said the BBC. He went on to win the Bethnal Green and Bow seat for Respect in 2005, with a 26% swing from Labour.

He served only one term as MP for the east London constituency but ran again on the Respect ticket in 2012, in the Bradford West by-election. Galloway secured a landslide victory – polling more votes than the other seven candidates put together – which he dubbed the "Bradford Spring", a reference to the pro-democracy uprisings that spread across much of the Arab world in 2010.

Galloway lost the seat in 2015, however, after fighting "an ill-tempered and divisive campaign" against Labour candidate and mental health campaigner Naz Shah, which "backfired spectacularly", The Guardian's North of England editor Helen Pidd reported at the time. Galloway had accused Shah of lying about having been "emotionally blackmailed" into marrying a cousin in Pakistan when she was only 15, and even produced what he claimed was her Islamic wedding certificate as alleged proof that she was 16 at the time of the ceremony.

Subsequent attempts at re-election, in the London mayoral race in 2016, in the Manchester Gorton by-election in 2017, and in West Bromwich East during the 2019 general election were met with defeat.

What are his chances in Rochdale?

Galloway is now gearing up to take on Labour on behalf of the Workers Party of Britain, which he founded in 2019 with a pledge to "defend the achievements of the USSR, China, Cuba" and to remain "unequivocally committed to class politics", The Times reported.

The pro-Palestinian campaigner will hope to capitalise on the war in Gaza and disillusionment with Labour to win over Muslims, who make up around 30% of voters in the constituency.

Galloway’s announcement that he would join the fight in Rochdale must have "terrified Labour organisers", said Michael Crick in UnHerd. He is, after all, "the most effective constituency campaigner of modern times".

"The last thing Rochdale needs is the division and chaos and intimidation that comes with George Galloway's self-serving, one-man circus," a Labour spokesperson said earlier this month, but were he to return to the House of Commons, "it would dent Labour's political momentum and further inflame its divisions over the war in Gaza", predicted George Eaton in the New Statesman.

A Galloway victory is "not a foregone conclusion", said Pidd in The Guardian, but with Labour's "normally peerless" get-out-the-vote machine now gone, the veteran campaigner is in "pole position".