Sir Keir Starmer should be very, very worried after Galloway win
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
Don’t miss analysis of the Rochdale result this afternoon from Beth Rigby, Jess Phillips and Ruth Davidson in a new weekly podcast from Sky News
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 Gaza.” It went on: “The people of Gaza don’t have a vote in this election – you do.”
And it concluded: “This election is a straight choice between George who will fight for Palestine and the people of Rochdale – and Keir Starmer, who will fight for Israel.”
Mr Galloway campaigned extensively on the issue of Gaza. Pic: PA
But of course, strictly speaking, it wasn’t Sir Keir’s Labour Party he was fighting. The Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, was disowned by his party on 13 February after comments he made about the Hamas attacks on Israel at a meeting in Lancashire.
“The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel 10 days earlier… Americans warned them a day before… there’s something happening,” the Mail on Sunday reported him saying.
“They deliberately took the security off, they allowed… that massacre gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want.”
This was dismissed by the Labour leadership as a wild and antisemitic conspiracy theory – Mr Ali apologised and was dumped a few days later. But it was too late for Sir Keir to repair the damage.
Nominations had closed, which meant he was still the candidate and his name – beginning, fortuitously for him, with the letter A – remained at the top of the ballot paper.
Fat lot of good it did him, as he was pushed into fifth place, behind Mr Galloway, political virgin Mr Tully, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
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Labour withdraws support for Rochdale by-election candidate
Mr Galloway beat Oona King in 2005. Pic: PA
For Reform UK, also, it was a night to forget, with the former Labour MP for Rochdale Simon Danczuk coming a humiliating sixth, after recent good performances in by-elections that gave Rishi Sunak and the Tories the jitters.
There will be relief in the Tory high command at Reform UK’s poor showing here. For once, after a by-election, Mr Sunak will be relieved and Sir Keir horrified.
Before the result was declared, Reform UK’s leader Richard Tice launched a blistering attack live on Sky News on Mr Danczuk’s opponents. Though he didn’t name names, he appeared to be accusing Mr Galloway’s supporters and those of Mr Ali.
He said Mr Danczuk had faced “vile racist abuse and death threats”. His party’s staff had been intimidated, and they’d had to hire security guards. Business supporters had been threatened with being firebombed and there had been intimidation at polling stations, he claimed.
But in an interview with Sky News immediately after his victory speech, Mr Galloway denied any wrongdoing and said it was his supporters who had faced intimidation during the campaign.
Mr Tice also challenged the legitimacy of the very high number of postal votes cast, a claim his friend and predecessor Nigel Farage has been making in by-elections for years.
For Labour, meanwhile, when it holds its inquest into the debacle of this by-election, it will reflect on how what should have been a routine by-election win in a relatively safe seat turned into Sir Keir’s worst nightmare – a win for George Galloway.
If the Labour leader thinks he gets a hard time now from the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn and the Corbynite Labour left over the Israel-Hamas ceasefire row, wait until the ferocious Galloway starts tearing into him in the Commons chamber.
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‘Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza’ – Galloway
Top of the agenda for the Labour inquest will be to identify which idiot decided to hold the by-election in such an unseemly rush after the death of veteran MP and party stalwart Sir Tony Lloyd.
There used to be a convention that a party waited until after the funeral of an MP who’d died before starting moves to select a candidate or plan for the by-election.
Yet here Labour threw convention out of the window and moved with indecent haste. Sir Tony died on 17 January and Mr Ali was selected, defeating political journalist Paul Waugh, just 10 days later, on 27 January.
Sir Tony’s funeral, however, was not until 16 February, three days after Sir Keir had been forced to jettison Mr Ali after allegations from opponents that the Labour leader dithered over how to respond to the Mail on Sunday’s initial report.
It’s not as if Labour hasn’t made this blunder before. In Hartlepool in 2021, Labour MP Mike Hill resigned on 18 March after sexual harassment allegations and Labour raced ahead with the by-election on 6 May, the same day as the local elections.
Then, Labour’s would-be candidates were only given one day to submit their applications and there were allegations of a stitch-up. The by-election was a disaster, with the Tories’ Jill Mortimer winning in a “red wall” triumph for the Conservatives.
Sir Keir responded then by sacking chief whip Nick Brown and attempting to sideline his deputy, Angela Rayner, in a clumsy reshuffle, perhaps forgetting that she was elected to her position by the party and couldn’t be sacked.
There will, surely, be more recriminations after Rochdale, which for the maverick known as “Gorgeous George”, this morning is indeed a beautiful new dawn.
There’s a real risk now that Mr Galloway will carry out his threat to stand up to 50 pro-ceasefire, anti-Israel candidates against Labour in the general election.
Chris Williamson, a Corbynite Labour ex-MP who was here at the Rochdale count supporting Mr Galloway, has told Sky News he hopes to be selected to fight the retiring grandee Margaret Beckett’s Derby South seat at the general election.
George Galloway at a celebration rally. Pic: PA
So it’s not just an election hat-trick that Mr Galloway is celebrating. He hopes to score more victories over his former party later this year, as he also declared in his victory speech.
But amid all the controversy of this campaign, Mr Galloway also claims to have made history in an even more grand manner with his victory here in Rochdale.
In his Sky News interview, he said it was his seventh parliamentary election victory in four different cities, which equals the record of Winston Churchill.
On level terms with Churchill? Modesty has never been Mr Galloway’s style, of course.
But after this hat-trick of election victories for the controversial left-wing firebrand, Sir Keir Starmer should be very, very worried indeed.
It’s like The Godfather, one reformed drug trafficker tells me.
The mythical gangster film centred on an organised crime dynasty locked in a transfer of power.
Communities in Scotland currently have a front row seat to a new war of violence, torture, and taunts as feuding drug lords and notorious families grapple for control of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
There have been more than a dozen brutal attacks over the past six weeks – ranging from fire bombings to attacks on children and gun violence.
A firebomb attack in Scotland
Victims left for dead, businesses up in flames
Gangsters have filmed themselves setting fire to buildings and homes connected to the associates and relatives of their bitter rivals.
The main aim, they boast, is to “exterminate” the opposition.
The taunting footage, accompanied by the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group, has been plastered over social media as part of a deliberate game of goading.
A 12-year-old boy and 72-year-old woman were left for dead when teenagers wearing balaclavas burst into a home in north Glasgow.
Garages and businesses have gone up in flames. Shots were fired at an Edinburgh house.
Signals are being sent of who wants control of Scotland’s dark criminal underworld.
A firebomb attack that saw a man throw an incendiary device through a building window
The fire attack set to the song Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group
What’s caused the gang war?
The former director of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, Graeme Pearson, explains how a “vacuum of leadership” is playing a part.
Last October, Glasgow-based cocaine kingpin Jamie Stevenson, known as The Iceman, was jailed after orchestrating a £100m cocaine shipment stashed in banana boxes from South America.
The mob leader was one of Britain’s most wanted, running his business like another on-screen criminal enterprise: The Sopranos.
The 59-year-old fugitive went on the run before eventually being hunted and apprehended by police while out jogging in the Netherlands.
Jamie Stevenson. Pic: Police Scotland
Pic: Crown Office
‘Old scores to settle’
But paranoia was running rife about how this notorious gangster could be brought down. Was there a grass? Was it one of their own?
It further fuelled divisions and forced new alliances to be forged across Scotland’s organised criminal networks.
It wasn’t until The Iceman case came to court that it was revealed an encrypted messaging platform, known as EncroChat, had been infiltrated by law enforcement.
It ultimately led to Stevenson pleading guilty.
Ex-senior drug enforcement officer Mr Pearson told Sky News: “It is a complex picture because you have got people who are in prison who still want to have influence outside and look after what was their business.
“On the outside you’ve got wannabes who are coming forward, and they think this is an opportunity for them, and you have got others have old scores to settle that they could not settle when crime bosses were around.”
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Graeme Pearson
Mr Pearson describes a toxic mix swirling to create outbursts of violence unfolding in Scotland.
He concluded: “All that mixes together – and the greed for the money that comes from drugs, and from the kudos that comes from being a ‘main man’, and you end up with competition, violence, and the kind of incidents we have seen over the past four to six weeks.”
New wave of violence ‘barbaric’
Glasgow man Mark Dempster is a former addict, dealer, and drug smuggler who is now an author and respected counsellor helping people quit drinking and drugs.
He describes the “jostle for power” as not a new concept among Glasgow’s high profile gangland families.
Mark Dempster
“There is always going to be someone new who wants to control the markets. It is like The Godfather. There is no difference between Scotland, Albania, or India,” he said.
Mr Dempster suggests a shift in tactics in Glasgow and Edinburgh in recent weeks, with 12-year-olds being viciously attacked in the middle of the night.
“It is barbaric. When young people, children, get pulled into the cross fire. It takes it to a different level.
“At least with the old mafiosa they had an unwritten rule that no children, no other family members. You would deal directly with the main people that were your opposition.”
Police Scotland is racing to get control of the situation, but declined to speak to Sky News about its ongoing operation.
It has been suggested 100 officers are working on this case, with “arrests imminent”.
But this is at the very sharp end of sophisticated criminal empires where the police are not feared, there are fierce vendettas and, clearly, power is up for grabs.
UK
Laws may need to be bolstered to crack down on exploitation of child ‘influencers’, senior MP suggests
Laws may need to be strengthened to crack down on the exploitation of child “influencers”, a senior Labour MP has warned.
Chi Onwurah, chair of the science, technology and innovation committee, said parts of the Online Safety Act – passed in October 2023 – may already be “obsolete or inadequate”.
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Experts have raised concerns that there is a lack of provision in industry laws for children who earn money through brand collaborations on social media when compared to child actors and models.
This has led to some children advertising in their underwear on social media, one expert has claimed.
Those working in more traditional entertainment fields are safeguarded by performance laws, which strictly govern the hours a minor can work, the money they earn and who they are accompanied by.
The Child Influencer Project, which has curated the world’s first industry guidelines for the group, has warned of a “large gap in UK law” which is not sufficiently filled by new online safety legislation.
Official portrait of Chi Onwurah.
Pic: UK Parlimeant
The group’s research found that child influencers could be exposed to as many as 20 different risks of harm, including to dignity, identity, family life, education, and their health and safety.
Ms Onwurah told Sky News there needs to be a “much clearer understanding of the nature of child influencers ‘work’ and the legal and regulatory framework around it”.
She said: “The safety and welfare of children are at the heart of the Online Safety Act and rightly so.
“However, as we know in a number of areas the act may already be obsolete or inadequate due to the lack of foresight and rigour of the last government.”
Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, agreed that regulations “need to keep pace with the times”, with child influencers on social media “protected in the same way” as child actors or models.
“Liberal Democrats would welcome steps to strengthen the Online Safety Act on this front,” she added.
‘Something has to be done’
MPs warned in 2022 that the government should “urgently address the gap in UK child labour and performance regulation that is leaving child influencers without protection”.
They asked for new laws on working hours and conditions, a mandate for the protection of the child’s earnings, a right to erasure and to bring child labour arrangements under the oversight of local authorities.
However, Dr Francis Rees, the principal investigator for the Child Influencer Project, told Sky News that even after the implementation of the Online Safety Act, “there’s still a lot wanting”.
“Something has to be done to make brands more aware of their own duty of care towards kids in this arena,” she said.
Dr Rees added that achieving performances from children on social media “can involve extremely coercive and disruptive practices”.
“We simply have to do more to protect these children who have very little say or understanding of what is really happening. Most are left without a voice and without a choice.”
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The researcher pointed to one particular instance, in which children were advertising an underwear brand on social media.
She said: “The kids in the company’s own marketing material or their own media campaigns are either pulling up the band of the underwear underneath their clothing, or they’re holding the underwear up while they’re fully clothed.
“But whenever you look at any of the sponsored content produced by families with children – mum, dad, and child are in their underwear.”
Dr Rees said it is “night and day” in terms of how companies are behaving when they have responsibility for the material, versus “the lack of responsibility once they hand it over to parents with kids”.
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