George Galloway wins Rochdale seat by 12,335 votes after running on pro-Palestine campaign.

A left-wing United Kingdom politician has registered a landslide win in a parliamentary by-election on a platform promising to advocate for Gaza.

George Galloway won the seat in the northern English town of Rochdale after a fractious campaign, which saw the Labour Party withdraw support from its candidate over his anti-Israel comments.

Galloway won 12,335 votes compared with 6,638 for second-placed David Tully, an independent candidate. The former Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, came fourth after the opposition party pulled its support after he was recorded espousing conspiracy theories about Israel. Turnout was low at 39.7 percent.

“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” Galloway said on Friday, referring to the Labour leader who initially refused to call for a ceasefire in Gaza where more than 30,000 people have been killed in the past five months of Israeli bombardment.

Late on Friday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who supports Israel’s war, said the election of Galloway to a parliamentary seat was “beyond alarming” and accused him of dismissing Hamas’s October 7 attack.

  • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
    31·
    9 months ago

    I feel like you’re using “anti-imperialism” to describe what most would call a “tankie”. Which would mean we are in agreement but we just use the terms differently or disagree about their meaning.

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      34·
      9 months ago

      A tankie is someone who specifically condones and/or denies the Genocides (or extremely stupid economic policies) by Stalin or Mao, or apologizes for/denies every crime the CCP/Russia commits.

      Anti imperialsm and tankies are two entirely different things.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
        41·
        9 months ago

        I mean I agree with that all, though I’d say it also includes just includes simping for Russia, China these days. Especially supporting the invasion of Ukraine and so on. The OP’s description gave eerie tankie vibes.

        Until George Galloway’s Rochdale byelection win, few may have taken notice of the Workers party beyond those intrigued by the minutiae of the far left. Others may have flicked through some of its literature, such as “Ukraine and the origins of the special military operation”, a 44-page pamphlet using Vladimir Putin’s term for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and echoing Kremlin talking points on the conflict.

        On other foreign policy fronts, the party is starkly at odds with the UK political mainstream, and unafraid to publicise it. In the week that Galloway won in Rochdale, a Workers party delegation was taking part in the ‘World Festival of Youth’ in Russia.

        Their own site:

        The Russian intervention in Ukraine, depicted ludicrously by Boris Johnson as an unprovoked attack upon a democratic country, is in fact the very belated response to a slowly unfolding aggression against Russia which has been waged over three decades. The military challenge to this long erosion of Russian security has been a long time coming and is heartily welcome.’

        The whole article is, jeesh

        https://workerspartybritain.org/2022/03/10/nato-and-russia-a-brief-history/

        So yeah…

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          14·
          9 months ago

          He is not saying he supports Russia. He is saying that the 2008 statement to include Ukraine into Nato was very provocative. Especially since Nato previously guaranteed that Ukraine would not become a member.

          This is extremely difficult to understand for people who only consume liberal media where Imperialism is good and we were the good guys in Afghanistan. It does not equate saying “Russia good”. It means “Hey guys maybe there’s a reason why Russia is attacking Ukraine, maybe we can promise to not include them in Nato and then they will stop, because they have said multiple times before the attack that this Nato expansion is not something they’re comfortable with and we promised them in the past we would not do it”.

          In 2008, NATO began the same trick with Ukraine, grooming it for eventual membership, but by now alarm bells were ringing in Moscow. Already in 2007 Putin had spoken out bluntly in opposition to those who wanted to establish a unipolar world. He objected to NATO enlargement and its planting of ballistic missile defences in eastern Europe.

          If you want to understand that position here is a clear video about it

          • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
            31·
            9 months ago

            The whole of the article is word for word the Kremlin peddled nonsense that you’d expect from a tankie. Whether you agree with it or not isn’t really the point but rather that that’s literally what people call tankie stuff these days.

            where imperialism is good

            I’m against Russian invasion though

            • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              14·
              9 months ago

              Same. I’m also against Nato expanding though. Everyone creating their own giant war block is a recipe for ww3.

              • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
                31·
                9 months ago

                I’m not if it is by countries willfully joining it. Hell, I was for very long time against Finland joining NATO but Russia had to be Russia. Would you have been fine with Russia attacking us to prevent us from joining? Should be the country’s own decision, not decided by Russia (or the US).

                Tbh this is a bit off-topic, but I don’t mind

                • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                  15·
                  9 months ago

                  We promised Russia not to expand Nato eastward. Which gets very well explained with multiple examples in the video I linked earlier.

                  The reason Russia is invading is literally the Nato expansion, they directly cited that. They even offered to stop and retreat if a treaty would be signed that Ukraine would not enter into Nato. Boris Johnson then personally went to Ukraine and told Zelensky to refuse because they would rather throw Ukrainians into the meatgrinder so they can place ballistic missles on the border.

                  The problem is that you are still under the assumption that Nato never attacks. But it does, as we’ve seen in libya Nato is not a defensive organization they steal people’s oil and natural resources. Imperialism

                  Now we have Russia joining with China and Iran to create their own big war block. Just like how everyone got dragged into WW2.

                  • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
                    31·
                    9 months ago

                    If Ukraine wanted to join they should’ve been allowed to. It’s their choice, not Russia’s. What are they, some sort of Russian vassal or something? It’s insane to justify a foreign invasion on the grounds that a country isn’t following a foreign policy that you’d want them to.

                    I wonder why they wanted to join… And why Finland joined immediately after Russia attacked Ukraine.