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
    11·
    8 months ago

    I’ve seen the people who claim to support anti-imperialism supporting Russian and Chinese territorial ambitions.

    It’s like when Americans talk about being for freedom. Do you take them on their word on that or look at what they are actually supporting?

    • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      The second of course. So did you take a look at what George Galloway’s positions are on that?

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        8 months ago

        No, I commented based on the above reply, if that wasn’t immediately clear.

        • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          8 months ago

          My understanding of your comment is that you implied that Galloway is “supporting Russian and Chinese territorial ambitions.” As the above user called it a “tankie party”.

          Did I not understand that correctly?

          • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
            4·
            8 months ago

            I said it sounds like a tankie party based on the description from the OP of this chain. Then you (as I understand it) said it couldn’t be because it is anti-imperialist and I replied how it sometimes it’s a term tankies use without actually meaning it.

            • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              1·
              8 months ago

              I said that anti-imperialism does not equate being a Tankie. Which seems to be the new favorite slander word for liberals to paint anyone who is critical of American imperialism for.

              • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
                3·
                8 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
                  3·
                  8 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
                    4·
                    8 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…