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George Galloway stood as a pro-Palestinian candidate and won the Rochdale seat by 12,335 votes.
A left-wing British politician has won a landslide victory in a parliamentary by-election after pledging to support Gaza.
George Galloway won the seat in the northern English town of Rochdale after a tough election campaign in which the Labor Party withdrew its support from the candidate over his anti-Israel comments.
Mr Galloway received 12,335 votes, while second-place finisher David Tully (an independent candidate) received 6,638 votes. Former Labor candidate Azhar Ali came fourth after the opposition withdrew its support after he was recorded as supporting conspiracy theories about Israel. Voter turnout was low at 39.7%.
“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” Mr Galloway said on Friday, a Labor leader who had initially rejected calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, where more than 30,000 people have been killed in Israeli shelling over the past five months. He mentioned this and said:
“You have paid and will continue to pay a high price for your role in enabling, encouraging and covering the catastrophe currently unfolding in the Gaza Strip. ” he said.
Mr Galloway, head of the British Labor Party, accused both Labor and the Conservative Party of supporting Israel as they run pro-Palestinian campaigns in constituencies with large Muslim populations.
Israel’s devastating war on Gaza was a key issue in elections where local concerns typically dominate.
Opinions are divided over Israel’s war in Gaza
Galloway, a seven-time British MP, has been critical of his former Labor Party before being expelled for criticizing then-Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq War.
His victory highlights the divisions in Britain over Israel’s war in Gaza, which has brought demonstrators on both sides to the streets of Britain.
This will be the first time that Galloway’s left-wing British Labor Party will serve as a member of parliament.
For some residents of Rochdale, a former cotton mill town near Manchester, they are determined to help their town finish high in the by-election triggered by the death of Labor MP Tony Lloyd last month. It was not possible to clearly choose a person. In 2019, 5% of UK local authorities suffered the most poverty.
Mr Galloway also campaigned for the restoration of maternity services in Rochdale, but it was his message in Gaza that resonated most loudly.
He vowed to speak out on Gaza in parliament, challenging Labor, which initially gave full support to Israel after the October 7 attack led by the Palestinian organization Hamas. Labor has since shifted its stance to calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
Mr Galloway will seek to exploit the divisions in the Labor Party.
“The first thing I want to say to Mr Starmer is that the plates changed tonight,” he said. “This will cause landslides, the movement of tectonic plates.”
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