With the highly honourable and notable exception of its last MP, Tony Lloyd, it’s fair to say that Rochdale has in recent decades not been served well by politicians. The failings of the Labour council during the grooming gangs scandal have been well documented, and governments of all parties have allowed the town, like others, to be “left behind”.
“Levelling up” remains, at best, a vague promise. Even Rochdale’s one-time national celebrity MP, the Liberal Cyril Smith, was eventually uncovered as a serial child abuser. Its last-but-one Labour MP, Simon Danczuk, was suspended from the Labour Party in 2015 after it emerged that he had exchanged explicit messages with a 17-year-old girl. He is now standing in the by-election as the candidate for Reform UK.
Now, Labour’s by-election candidate, Azhar Ali, has been disowned by Labour for some appallingly antisemitic remarks. Yet his name will appear on the ballot paper next to the words “Labour Party”, and he could still win. Labour has thus let the people of Rochdale down badly – but it is not the first time, and neither is it the first party to be guilty of this.
It may be – given the chaos this election has fallen into – that the even more dangerous figure of George Galloway could come to be the next MP for Rochdale, on behalf of his Workers Party of Britain, his latest personal political vehicle. A gifted opportunist, Mr Galloway has no previous connection with the area, and, far worse, seems set on exploiting divisions both at home and abroad. His own extremist views have landed him in trouble before, and it is difficult to see him doing more good than even the wretched Mr Ali if he is allowed to take a seat in the House of Commons.
It is worth mentioning, in this context, that the Green Party candidate has also withdrawn from campaigning because of some historical antisemitic activity on social media. As the election grows more and more random, and the old Labour vote splits, Rishi Sunak might find himself welcoming to the Commons the first Conservative member for Rochdale since 1957. As the fashionable phrase goes, Rochdale deserves better than this.
Labour’s job now is to find out precisely what went wrong in Rochdale, and who was responsible – and to implement suitable reforms such that the people of Rochdale are presented with a Labour candidate they can be proud of voting for at the general election, which is surely what they desire.
Some rather awkward questions arise. Was Mr Ali initially treated with some leniency by the party establishment because he was, for want of a better word, a Starmerite? Why was Mr Ali allowed to spout his offensive and racist opinions at a party meeting, apparently without challenge or consequence? Why did a man who had a record as an elected councillor fall prey to online conspiracy theories about the 7 October atrocities in Israel and supposed Jewish influence in the media? And how widespread are such views within the Rochdale constituency party and its neighbours?
The other unfortunate aspect of this affair is that it suggests Sir Keir Starmer still has much work to do if he wants to pull out the roots of antisemitism in the Labour Party. What was discovered about the culture that prevailed among certain elements of the party during the Corbyn era is still a cause for concern.
The latest revelations about another Labour candidate and former MP, Graham Jones, indicate that the basis for those concerns persists, even on the (presumably) carefully vetted official candidate list.
There have been expulsions and resignations. Many in the party have had cause to revisit their views on Israel – and how their passionate concern for the all-too-agonising plight of the Palestinian people can be properly directed. Yet it would also be naive to believe that all of those who connect Jewish people anywhere in the world with the acts of the Netanyahu government via some globalist conspiracy have simply ditched all their old habits of mind.
The other tragedy this mess highlights is the way that such events fuel the already rising tide of Islamophobia. There is a quip that the situation in Gaza has made many extremists on the far right wonder whether they hate Jews more than they hate Arabs; just as the conflicts in the Middle East have fuelled antisemitic hate, there is sadly no shortage of Islamophobic extremism either.
Gaza has become simply another culture war in British domestic politics, and one with an ugly ethno-racial dimension. Blameless Muslim people in Rochdale and elsewhere who feel emotional solidarity with the sufferings of the Palestinian people and want to demonstrate their anger are demonised as “terrorists” or “terrorist sympathisers” and “anti-British”. It is all senseless, hurtful and wrong; and it is worth repeating, once again, that all the Muslim people in this country wish to do is to build a better life for themselves and their families – the same as anybody else.
Surveying the wreckage of the Rochdale by-election, it is difficult to imagine anything good emerging from it. Yet the Labour Party does at least seem to be doing the right thing now – and should Mr Ali, or indeed Mr Galloway, manage to be elected, his tenure is likely to be brief.
Labour, like it or not, deserves the hammering it is getting now, which in time may help to ensure that it makes proper amends for its recent failings, not just in this by-election but in other sensitive areas as well. Rochdale – and all of its people – must not be left behind, patronised, or neglected again.
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