With reports from Morning Star
Left-wing firebrand and Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway won a massive and resounding victory in the UK by-election in Rochdale early Friday morning (March 1), a result sure to send a message to Labour MPs under the leadership of rightist Keir Starmer.
While the leadership of the Labour Party -- which has refused to condemn Israel's genocide in Gaza and has reversed virtually all the progressive planks that Starmer promised to run on when he conned his way to becoming Labour leader in 2020 -- is trying to minimize the implications of the result claiming it was due to it having to disown its own candidate, the scale of Galloway's victory belies that.
Galloway won with 40% of the vote and nearly 6,000 votes over the runner-up, independent businessman David Tully. Labour received a dismal 8% while the Conservatives took only 12%. Labour's vote was a drop of 44% versus the previous election, which one expert said was the single largest vote drop for a party between elections since WWII.
Galloway was clear in what his triumph meant. “Keir Starmer — this is for Gaza,”
You have paid and you will pay a high price for the role you have played 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 shifting of the tectonic plates in scores of parliamentary constituencies.
Labour is on notice that they have lost the confidence of millions of their voters who loyally and traditionally voted for them, generation after generation.
Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside and they both got well and truly spanked tonight.
According to UK leftist paper Morning Star Galloway promised "his Workers Party had “59 parliamentary candidates ready to go and we will stand in therefore three-score Labour seats and either defeat them ourselves or cause their defeat,” he said, adding that he would also support independent candidates backing the Palestinian cause."