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.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    46·
    9 months ago

    Who is George Galloway, the British politician who has won Rochdale?

    How has the man who appeared to defend Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and dressed as a cat on Celebrity Big Brother overturned a Labour Party stronghold?

    Galloway later claimed that he was saluting the people of Iraq, not Saddam Hussein himself. But his comments prompted the politician’s many political detractors to accuse him of supporting an oppressive Iraqi regime. It also heralded the arrival of “indefatigability” – a hitherto rarely used word – into the British public mainstream where, for many Britons of a certain age, it retains a somewhat comical link to Galloway.

    • gmtom@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Galloway later claimed that he was saluting the people of Iraq, not Saddam Hussein himself.

      “Nono, theyre saying boo-urns”

      • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        17·
        9 months ago

        Understanding Galloway means you need to have a basic comprehension about America wanting to invade Iraq to steal their oil. Which America then did after the Galloway speech which very much proves Galloway’s point. Something about WMD’s in Iraq.

        Remind me again, did they find those very dangerous WMD’s in Iraq?

        An understanding of Geopolitics means more than “israel bad” (though israel bad is a great starting point)

        • gmtom@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          9 months ago

          These responses have to be some knock-off chat GPT stuff right? Because theres no way an actual person would purposefully conflate the 2 invasions of Iraq, right?

          Because there was the first one in 1991 in response to the invasion of Kuwait, that is generally seen as justified (since Iraq was literally invading another independent nation). The one where Galloway justified the invasion of kuwait saying Kuwait was "clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion " and then when he met Saddam himself told him "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” (allegedly talking about the Iraqi people, but if you believe that then ive got a bridge to sell you).

          Then there was the second one in 2003, which was the one mostly seen as unjustified, where George Bush lied about WMDs as a pretext to invasion to secure western oil companies interests in the region.

          • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            13·
            9 months ago

            Oops my bad you are right I misread that one I thought it was 2003 because of the 2004 date

            In his 2004 book, I’m Not the Only One, Galloway appeared to defend Iraq

            I’m going to have to more look into the Kuwait invasion understand Galloway’s statement here. The Kuwait invasion is not one I have looked into deeply so I don’t understand where these statements come from.