He’s back! The left-wing firebrand and Celtic FC fanatic George Galloway has now scored a hat-trick of election victories over Labour, the party he represented in parliament for 16 years.
After ousting Oona King in Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005 and winning a spectacular by-election in Bradford West in 2012, he has now done the treble with a stunning and controversial triumph in Rochdale.
His majority over an independent candidate, David Tully, was a comfortable 5,697, with the Conservatives third, Liberal Democrats fourth and the disowned Labour candidate Azhar Ali fifth.
Politics latest: George Galloway celebrates victory
The polls had been closed for less than an hour when the Galloway team claimed victory here. “We’ve won – comfortably,” a source close to his campaign told Sky News before 11pm. How right they were. It was indeed comfortable.
In a rousing victory speech, he denounced Labour and the Conservatives as “two cheeks of the same backside” and claimed he had put Sir Keir Starmer on notice.
He declared with characteristic Galloway passion: “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 currently going on in occupied Palestine in the Gaza Strip.”
He relentlessly targeted his former party during the campaign. One leaflet, showing a pugilistic Mr Galloway in his trademark fedora with raised fists and a glum-looking Labour leader, said: “It’s George Galloway or Keir Starmer’s Labour in Rochdale.”
Another was headlined: “For Rochdale, for…
