George Galloway has done it again. As an expert in riding waves of fury among Muslim voters about happenings in the Middle East, from the Iraq War to the Gaza conflict, Galloway has turned into a skilled tormentor of successive Labour leaders.
The biggest short-term risk by far that Galloway’s win in Rochdale poses to Keir Starmer is that it will force an over-correction in Middle East policy from the Leader of the Opposition. Were Starmer to become detectably more anti-Israel and pro-Palestine over the coming weeks as a result of pressure from a perceived Muslim block vote, it would certainly shore up Labour’s position in a couple of dozen urban seats. But such a move would come at a grave cost to the party’s overall standing in the eyes of millions of mainstream centre-right voters who are currently sufficiently relaxed about the idea of Starmer taking over in Downing Street that they have withdrawn their support from the Conservatives.
The political shockwaves emanating from the Gaza conflict have made the floor more slippery
If Starmer’s Labour becomes ‘unsafe’ in the eyes of these voters then it could well presage a mass decision among such voters to hold their noses and put their crosses in the Tory box on the ballot paper yet again. That would completely change the electoral calculus, severely damaging Labour’s prospects in literally hundreds of constituencies that pollsters say they are presently on target to win.
It may not always be true, but for now by far the best strategy for Labour is to be seen to stand up to pressure from Galloway and his fellow travellers. Doing so will mean the general election becomes a particularly unpleasant experience for Labour MPs defending inner-city seats. Perhaps a handful will even lose to Galloway’s latest vehicle, the Workers’ Party of Britain, though the first-past-the-post system will assist Labour in consolidating its own vote in general election conditions.
While many left-wing voters share the concerns of British Muslims about Israel’s protracted military assault on Gaza, it is ultimately very hard to envisage them passing up their best opportunity in many years to be rid of the Tories as a governing party. To get the Conservatives out, they know they must vote Labour.
Roy Jenkins famously likened Tony Blair in the run-up to the 1997 election to a museum curator carrying a Ming vase across a highly-polished floor, determined not to drop it. If anything, Starmer has adopted an even more risk-averse approach to his own period transporting the priceless porcelain.
The political shockwaves emanating from the Gaza conflict have made the floor more slippery. But they also give him a heightened opportunity to show naturally conservative-leaning sections of the electorate that he won’t turn Britain into a leftist madhouse if he gets to lead the nation.
Given the peculiar conditions that prevailed, it is hard to draw many more lessons for the other parties from this by-election. The Tories were knocked into third place by an impressive local independent, yet could have done even worse. Reform bombed and will by now surely be regretting having chosen the former Labour MP for the constituency Simon Danczuk as its candidate. His mission was to use his profile to hoover up the white working class vote and he simply proved unable to do so. Even the Lib Dems beat him, though a seven per cent vote share shows that party is not going to be a big part of the politics of working class northern constituencies for the foreseeable future.
A similar vote share for the candidate Labour abandoned, Azhar Ali, will probably have come as a relief to some in Starmer’s circle. Their boss effectively urged Labour voters not to back Ali when he withdrew official backing for him and they largely followed that recommendation.
‘Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,’ said Galloway in his victory speech. He added that the result meant Starmer waking up to his ‘worst nightmare’. But that will only be true if the Labour leader goes on to fold in the face of the pressure he will now face from Muslim voters and his party’s left-wing.
Oscar Wilde once joked that he could resist everything apart from temptation. If Starmer shows in coming weeks that he can resist everything apart from pressure then all bets are off.
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