This headline is extraordinary. It came from the Politics Home email last night:
The desperation in that claim is quite extraordinary.
Three things stand out.
First, anyone who thinks George Galloway influences anyone much these days has really lost all their political sense. But maybe Keir Starmer never had one, and all we are seeing now is that no one is pulling the strings anymore.
Second, Starmer's desire to cast the Greens as extreme, when they are glaringly obviously not, is already making him look very stupid. If a plumber like Hannah Spencer is an extremist, Starmer needs serious help to work out the threats he thinks he faces, most of which are in his own party
Third, no wonder Labour MPs like Clive Lewis are openly saying Starmer is now an interim Prime Minister. They know he is a liability. He would do himself a favour by quitting.
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I have been following the by-election quite closely, and don’t recall seeing any comment from George Galloway.
Now that Starmer hasn’t got McSweeney to tell him what to do, he is going to have to think for himself. This isn’t going to end well for Labour. They need to replace Starmer as soon as possible.
But who is any better?
I’m old enough to remember when the Tories were so short of suitable candidates for PM that Alec Douglas-Home had to give up his earldom and join the Commons so that he could become PM. I wonder if Labour should be looking at the Lords in case there’s anyone there with suitable experience? (Who’d want to do it, though?)
Labour’s problem is that, despite being elected with a vast majority on a platform of “change” (and the electorate being desperate to be rid of the lying shambles of the Tories) they have been remarkably unambitious in actual progressive policy. There must be a collective responsibility for that, despite Starmer’s evident lack of boldness. We expected better, and it’s getting a bit late to turn things around.
Having said that, it’s still sickening how the right wing press and TV have been cynically and hypocritically (no surprise there) opportunistic in working people up against Starmer.
“he is going to have to think for himself”
See my comment below.
Keir Starmer’s reaction to GPUK’s Gorton and Denton by-election win is a self-own.
He is exposing that he is the extremist.
I have seen this quote going round with one person ascribing it to Galloway.
“Despite Matt Godwin’s concerns about minorities not sharing British values and not integrating it seems in Manchester Muslims and others are happy to vote for a white working class woman with a party leader who is gay and Jewish.”
So?
And that was after the event, I think.
That seems far too reasonable to have come from George Galloway.
Galloway is a shrewd political operator, and has an enormous ego.
He decided not to run in Gorton & Denton, presumably because it wouldn’t give HIM the right headlines.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y2lj3md8po
After that, he was irrelevant.
The haters of the right will always find a way of demonising – its what they do best. Minority communities that “integrate” are “taking over covertly”. If they don’t, then they are creating “no go areas” and being “radicalised”. If they have jobs, they are “stealing our jobs”. If they don’t, they are “sponging off hard-working British people”.
If a Muslim candidate stands, this is evidence of sectarianism. If instead, Muslims vote for a white woman from a party led by a gay Jewish man, they are still accused of falling for “sectarianism” & “bigotry”.
Haters hate.
The politics of hate does not have a “moderate” setting – the volume is always set to 11.
The best thing about Gorton & Denton is that it put Hannah Spencer and Matt Goodwin side by side on MSM.
The politics of care benefits from sunlight and exposure.
Hatred prefers darkness.
Darkness is always overcome by light.
Thanks
But Starmer is just the top piece in the McSweeny Zionist – funded entrist Labour Together jenga tower which is what the Labour Party now seems to be. Its the whole edifice that needs destroying and the party rebuilt by its members , not by foreign funded ‘donors’.
They have lost hundreds of thousands of members- so it seems the party is un rebuildable – Starmer and co , aided by the CIA/Mossad/Mandelson axis have actually destroyed the party. Even Blair understood he needed to retain at least the semblance of a ‘broad church’.
John McDonnell, Clive Lewis are still there – but……
I think Galloway’s contribution was for his party not to have a candidate in the by election. So reducing, by a tiny amount, the danger of a split progressive vote.
Among his few positive actions, George Galloway/ the Workers Party of Great Britain stood down and put out a statement saying ‘Labour and Reform must lose’. Which you could sort of call an endorsement, but isn’t really.
The Greens won a majority of 4,402 (11.2%).
The WPGB candidate in 2024 only received 3,766 votes (10.3%).
Turnout was roughly the same so the numbers are comparable. Still, even if you assume every WPGB voter went to the Greens, and so subtract this imaginary ‘galloway block’, the Greens would still have a majority of 636 votes – better than Wes Streeting.
Not that I think all WPGB voters went Green or even turned out. WPGB voters are probably anti-Labour but not necessarily anti-Reform, and reform’s vote share *did* increase.
Far more significant than a 10 point shift is the 25 point shift away from Labour. They lost half of their support in Gorton & Denton and they have nobody but themselves to blame.
“First, anyone who thinks George Galloway influences anyone much these days has really lost all their political sense.”
I think “lost all their political marbles” or “not playing with a full deck” is a more precise description as Keir Starmer has not been playing with a full deck since he assume the office of Prime Minister.
Maybe he never had a full deck to begin with. I wonder if Mandelson stole his marbles!
Richard wrote “First, anyone who thinks George Galloway influences anyone much these days has really lost all their political sense”. Seconded, and it matters little whether or not Galloway commented on the Gorton & Denton by-election. Given his past, it’s no surprise that he has little credibility across the UK and in particular in Scotland. He scarpered swiftly out of Scotland – where he held high office in both Labour-In-Scotland and local politics in Dundee (just Google “George Galloway’s role in Dundee Labour Party finances scandal”), select ‘AI Overview’ then into ‘AI Mode’ for more info) – when the going got hot and I think it’s safe to say he hasn’t been missed up here.