The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory, Galloway received the endorsement of none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party (BNP).

Rochdale raises a question about how Labour will deal with the obsessions of a large section of the left once in power

To use an overused label correctly for once, the BNP is genuinely neo-fascist. And yet Griffin had no qualms in recommending that his followers ‘get out and vote for George Galloway’ and ‘stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies’. Like cocktails before a dinner party, obsessions about Jews bring all the extremists together.

What better illustration could you have of the horseshoe theory? Admirers of dictators admire each other. Galloway ‘saluted’ Saddam Hussein, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Muslims. He praised Bashar al-Assad, as the Syrian president’s forces slaughtered the country’s Sunni Muslim population, for maintaining the ‘fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs’ – the grandiosity of Galloway’s pompous language was in inverse proportion to the misery Assad inflicted.

None of this concerned Muslim voters in Rochdale. Opposition to Israel was all that mattered.

There’s an argument doing the rounds this morning that Labour’s disastrous performance was just a blip. Galloway is a narcissist, it runs, who won’t last long. Muslim voters responded to his anti-Iraq war campaign and gave him victory in Bethnal Green in the 2005 general election.

QOSHE - George Galloway’s Rochdale win should trouble Labour - Nick Cohen
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George Galloway’s Rochdale win should trouble Labour

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01.03.2024

The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory,........

© The Spectator


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