British cheese… or gay dating website?

If you can vote in Rochdale, you have a choice of three candidates with Labour backgrounds in the coming by-election. There is George Galloway, the man who famously saluted Saddam Hussein’s ‘courage and indefatigability’. George used to be a Labour MP but is now the candidate of the Workers Party of Britain. Then there is Simon Danczuk. He too was a Labour MP, for Rochdale indeed. He was a scourge of paedophiles, peddling conspiracy theories about Dolphin Square, the innocent Leon Brittan etc, but – as so often with those who love hurling sexual allegations – he got tangled up himself, sending ‘inappropriate’ texts to a 17-year-old girl, and subsequently resigned. Simon says he is a reformed character, so he is standing for Reform. And there is Azhar Ali. He was Labour’s candidate until this week. Then it emerged that, at a party meeting not long after the 7 October Hamas massacres, he had declared that Israel had deliberately relaxed security so that the mass murder of Jews could provide the pretext to attack Gaza. For about a day, he was chided by Labour for this, but kept as the candidate. Then the party changed its mind and disowned him. It is too late, however, to renominate, so the ballot paper will say ‘Ali Azhar, The Labour Party’. Given the uncritical readiness to support anything with the word ‘Labour’ attached just now, perhaps this will be enough for him still to win. If, however, you want to support a Labour candidate for Rochdale whom Sir Keir Starmer endorses, you will not find one. I suppose you might want to vote Green instead, but be warned that Guy Otten, the Green candidate on the ballot paper, has also been repudiated by his own party. Admitting some disobliging social media posts about the Muslim faith ten years ago, Mr Otten says he has ‘decided to leave the stage’.