This is the best summary I could come up with:
The veteran political agitator George Galloway declared “a shifting of the tectonic plates” away from Labour after claiming a stunning victory in the Rochdale byelection.
Addressing Starmer from the podium, Galloway said: “This is going to spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates, a score of parliamentary constituencies, beginning here in the north-west, in the West Midlands, in London, from Ilford to Bethnal Green & Bow.
Another heckler, who gave her name as Jane Twill, was removed by security after interrupting the victory speech by accusing Galloway of failing to address the climate emergency.
So confident was Galloway’s team that they briefed reporters within an hour of the polls closing that he had won “comfortably” and announced plans for a “mass rally” immediately after the declaration at his election headquarters, a former Suzuki showroom.
Labour, defending a near-10,000-vote majority and riding high in the polls, had expected a straightforward contest to replace the sitting MP, Tony Lloyd, who died on 17 January from leukaemia.
His team, backed by an army of volunteers from across the country, managed to capture the vote of a significant number of Muslim people, who make up about 30% of the town’s population, with many angry about Labour’s position on Gaza.
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An actual leftist British political party? Idk man, sounds antisemitic to me.
Who wants to bet on whether Corbyn will join? Idealistic and conciliatory as he was, at least Gaza was one of the good wedge issues he never seemed to back away from. He also got a lot of flak for his “Stop the War Coalition” thing for ending Ukraine’s War.
I read recently that Ukraine currently stands to lose more ground from a Ceasefire Agreement now than if Zelenskyy would’ve just agreed to Russia’s terms from the beginning lmfao Enormous L for Ukraine
Yep, so many lives ruined for being imperial pawns. It’s disgusting.
The Worker’s Party has been around for a while now and Corbyn hasn’t joined. I think Corbyn is done with party participation at this point. He’s too near the end of his career and he’s pretty much guaranteed to win his Islington seat for as long as he wants it, so party membership offers nothing that would be worth compromising his individual convictions in favour of party policy for.
But Corbyn and Galloway have been speaking up for Palestine before the current farce of Western Left decided it was fashionable. Before most of the Western left was even born. Galloway got ousted from Labour for opposing the war in Iraq and he’s since been constantly smeared and demonized the same way Corbyn has.
The prevailing attitudes toward Galloway and Corbyn don’t surprise me at all. Modern Western leftists constantly deride and dismiss both of them for having ideas and mentality of the kind you expect from people who were born in the 40s and 50s. But when either of them travel to South Africa or South America or the Middle East, actual leftists and retired resistance fighters are there greeting them as comrades.
What you mentioned is the biggest rift between comrades in the global south vs those in the global north. We have different sets of values in the global south that the global north doesn’t agree with. Religion being a big one.
For now we can agree on anti-imperialism as a uniting cause but I can see us breaking off from there if that goal is ever achieved
Well said. I’d leave issues regarding such values to be discussed by those actually living in that society, rather than impose my own differing ones on them and judge them that way. Chauvinist liberals love calling out Iran as “Islamist fundamentalists” or whatever when all that does is distract the fact that they do broadly represent the values of the people they lead and their actions are primarily weakening the empire, it’s sort of the same thing but going the other way.
I read that Galloway will be introduced to the House of Commons by Corbyn. (This is just a formality; Galloway has been an MP before and knows the drill.)
He’s now got the record for the most different parliamentary seats held. He was previously tied with Churchill at 4, Rochdale is his 5th.
This guy is a British patsoc and he’s doing little more than playing electoralism. His constitution is tiny by British standards, and he’s a known transphobe. He sent two different letters in the leading to election day, one to his white constituents and one to Muslims. In the second one he only talks about Palestine. In the first one he begins by saying he “has no difficulty defining what a woman is” and does not mention Palestine even once.
He also opposes Scottish independence and is proud of it.
Edit: he received 12000 votes and the UK adult population is 45 million. 0.01% of the country voted for him.
He’s not a communist and frankly by his superficial opinions it seems he’s not a Marxist either, at least I hope he doesn’t call himself one. He’s just playing politician.
Lol we really can’t have anything good can we
British
transphobe
No need to be redundant.
Thanks for that, I was starting to get hopeful for Britain. Only hope for that island is as a future Atlantis.
Yeah the first thing is a problem, but do we support Scottish independence?
Hell, I also support Welsh, Manx, Cornish, occupied northern Irish, occupied Malvinas, Chagossian, Jersey and Guernsey, the remaining British Caribbean, and occupied Gibraltar independence. And if it were possible I’d be entirely down with England proper getting balkanized into a dozen or more squabbling statelets as well. In reference to the famous quote about partitioning Germany- I “love” England so much, I want there to be several of them…
Under an imperialist UK independence of the constituent nations can only be beneficial. Mind you Scotland has happily participated in that imperialism in the past, but they also got crossed with brexit during the independence referendums. In this way I can only see a supposedly communist figure denying this independence to be an opportunist. Now, a socialist Scotland could certainly be part of a socialist Britain with a socialist England. But this is something they can renegotiate once they become socialist.
Scotland has happily participated in that imperialism in the past,
Id be wary of espousing this point too much, yes Scotlands upper class particpated in this, but for reference I am scottish and my ancsetors did not benefit from this trade, they where enslaved in coal mines in Scotland.
As this Scottish historian says, the colour of slavery was not black, it was green.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Yes, of course…
accurate and true post but
who must go?
Yeah this guy sucks ass
It doesn’t surprise me at all. Both the Tories and Labour governments have been fucking over Rochdale for years. The town is a shadow of what it once was.
Galloway’s main appeal to people in Rochdale was pointing out that you can’t be born in Rochdale unless it’s in an ambulance on the way to Oldham, you can’t be educated in Rochdale if you have any special educational needs, and you can’t die in Rochdale unless it’s in an ambulance on the way to Oldham.
In the past couple decades they’ve had their hospitals, aged care and education all cut to save costs.
He was telling Rochdale folk in a town hall debate that even if they disagree with his beliefs (i.e. Catholic views on gender and sex), he’s the only one with a stake in actually doing anything for them, and Rochdale apparently agrees.
Listening to what Galloway has been saying in regards to pretty much every single imperialist aggression over the past few decades you cannot disagree that he’s been consistently anti-imperialist throughout. If anything his more conservative cultural views are largely irrelevant as someone in the global south, since first and foremost what matters to us out here when looking at a politician in the core is their foreign policy, and so far Galloway has not missed. I feel here we are being too quick to discard someone purely for their cultural views, when anti-imperialism is supposed to be a unifier across all cultural lines.
I have nothing useful to contribute other than to say that the guy dresses as a mid 20th century politician with the hat and all
Bring back the Kim Il-Sung look:
George Galloway pretended to be a cat on live television and was endorsed by literal fascist nick griffin
