George Galloway has won the Rochdale by-election after a divisive campaign. Standing for the Workers Party of Britain, Galloway secured 12,335 votes, a majority of 5,697.
Coming in second was the Independent candidate David Tully with 6,638 votes, who was followed by Conservative Paul Ellison with 3,731.
In fourth place was Azhar Ali the Labour candidate the party removed support for after his antisemitic comments that Israel had allowed Hamas’ October 7 attacks on in order to retaliate.
In his victory speech, Galloway said: “Keir Starmer – this is for Gaza. And you will pay a high price, in enabling, encouraging and covering for, the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza strip.”
“This is going to spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates in scores of parliamentary constituencies. Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside and they both got well and truly spanked tonight.”
The turnout in the by-election was 39.7 per cent, a small improvement on the recent Wellingborough and Kingswood by-election.
Given that Galloway ran his campaign almost solely on the Israel-Palestine issue (even going as far as to reference the “ummah”, meaning the worldwide Islamic community, in his letter to constituents) Sky News asked Galloway if Israel has a right to exist. He replied: “Well, no state has a right to exist. Not the Soviet Union, not Czechoslovakia, not the Zionist apartheid state of Israel.”
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