“Labour take note! The electorate is smarter & more tuned in than you think. Parliamentary democracy is not under threat from Islamic extremists, but from the behaviour of the Labour & Tory parties.”
Carol Turner
By Carol Turner
The Rochdale by-election result has sent shock waves across the political establishment, not just because Galloway won – which seems to have come as a complete surprise to Labour and Tory alike – but because the next highest vote went to an independent candidate, David Tully who ran on a platform of halting Rochdale’s decline and improving services.
The real shock, as the more astute commentators are already pointing out, was that neither Labour nor Conservative candidates got a look in.
Labour’s head in the clouds
As polling stations opened, LabourList published an article by a little-known think tank insisting: ‘If George Galloway wins it will be on the back of a low turnout vote. If Azhar Ali – the former Labour candidate – wins, it will likely be on the back of the strong brand of the Labour party logo next to his name rather than significant support for his views on the October 7th attacks.’
Days later, Labour is still insisting the result was a fluke, although the suggestion of a low turnout has now been dropped. Labour recently welcomed the results in Kingswood and Wellingborough, both on slightly lower turnouts (39.1% and 37.1% respectively), as big victories for the party.
- Keir Starmer: ‘Galloway only won because Labour didn’t stand a candidate’
- Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy campaign co-ordinator: Galloway wouldn’t have won if Labour had stood a candidate.
- LabourList chose to quote from More in Common think tank again: it was far more likely the lesson was about candidate selection and due diligence than public opinion’
- Rochdale Council leader Neil Emmott: Galloway ‘based his campaign on the terrible situation in Gaza, but we will take no lessons from him about it’.
There were, of course, a number of particular factors, one of which was Galloway himself, which mean no one should assume Rochester paints a picture of what’s in store at the General Election. Not only did Labour withdraw support from Azhar Ali, the Green Party also withdrew support from its candidate after the official list was published, and Reform’s candidate was Simon Danczuk, a former Labour MP for Rochdale (2010-2017) who was blocked from standing by the party after a scandal over explicit text messages to a 17-year-old young woman.
What the Rochdale result does do, is offer a very gloomy snapshot of the mood in Britain. It demonstrates how out of touch the Westminster establishment actually is.
On Friday, the Tories focussed on extremism again, and Rishi Sunak made what must be one of the strangest ever Prime Ministerial statement from the steps of No 10. It had no discernible practical purpose – no new policy, or even a few new measures to be taken. Sunak rambled on about how tolerant and multi-cultural the British people were and the threat to our way of life. His purpose, as most of the mainstream media acknowledged during the weekend, seems to have been to respond to Galloway’s election.
How should Rochdale results be interpreted?
Two factors have been seriously underplayed – should that be downplayed? – when analysing the by-election result.
First and most obviously, Rochdale demonstrates that both Labour and the Tories are out of touch on Israel’s war on Gaza. The result indicates a section of non-Muslim voters also felt concern about Gaza – as a growing number of opinion polls and the continued high mobilisation on Gaza demonstrations also confirm. In Rochdale this was magnified by the fact that Galloway turned it into the main story of the campaign. But we can expect it to be present, in different degrees perhaps, across the country.
Rochdale exaggerates the likely primacy of Gaza in the general election though. As many commentators have already pointed out, it will be a significant factor in constituencies with a high proportion of Muslim voters. By themselves, however, these constituencies are unlikely to derail Labour’s chance of winning the general election.
Second, and largely missing from analyses of Rochdale, is understanding that Galloway won by appealing to disaffected white voters as well as Muslims.
Galloway ran a predominantly pro-Palestinian campaign. But he also pitched to working class voters, as he’d done in Bethnal Green & Bow (2005) Bradford West (2012), and Batley and Spen (2021) which he narrowly lost to Labour.
He raisedlocal Rochdale issues such as calling for restoring local maternity and A&E services, bringing Primark and big store names to Rochdale, reopening the open-air market, and the local football team.
Galloway is a maverick who consistently appeals to backward sentiments on women and the LGBT community. But he is a talented maverick whose election win highlights the failure of Labour and Tories alike to address the real issues of most people’s everyday lives – high cost of living, low wages, poor health care, inadequate housing, lack of local authority funding, to name a few at the top of the list.
Finally, what Rochdale shows – and shows in spades – is the strength of dissatisfaction with Westminster parties. As John Curtis points out, Labour’s result is the worst ever for Labour in any post war by-election.
On Friday, when most of us were waking up to the by-election results, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) published another wake-up call: the results of their latest Levels of Trust in UK Institutions survey.
It is a depressing read, and one which should be compulsory for all Labour politicians. Political parties were the least trusted of any UK public institution – 68% of those surveyed said they distrusted political parties; only a tiny 12% of the UK public had trust in political parties.
Labour take note! The electorate is smarter and more tuned in than you think. Parliamentary democracy is not under threat from Islamic extremists, but from the behaviour of the Labour and Tory parties.
- Carol Turner is a member of Momentum’s NCG.
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