Who is George Galloway, the new MP for Rochdale?

Published

1 year ago

March 1, 2024

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George Galloway has now been elected to the House of Commons for a third political party.

Having previously held seats for Labour and Respect, he is now the MP for Rochdale, representing his own Workers Party of Britain.

He has been on a long journey having joined Labour in his teenage years, with appearances on Big Brother and working for Iranian state-funded television as well as his career in politics.

There have been allegations of antisemitism, but Mr Galloway has always denied these.

So who is “Gorgeous George” – and what has his career looked like up to now?

Labour years

George Galloway was born in 1954 and raised in Dundee, Scotland.

He was active in the Labour Party as a teen, and by the age of 26 he was the chairman of the party in Scotland.

In the 1987 general, he first won his way to the Commons, taking the Glasgow Hillhead seat for Labour.

In doing so, he beat the Social Democratic Party incumbent Roy Jenkins, who had previously been the Labour home secretary under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.

Shortly after getting elected, he was asked about a conference in Mykonos, Greece, which he had attended.

He said: “I travelled and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me.

“I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece.”

It was this response that earned him the moniker “Gorgeous George”.

He existed on the left of the Labour Party, leaning more towards the likes of Michael Foot or Tony Benn, and rebelling numerous times against the party when Tony Blair was prime minister.

By 1997 his seat had changed to Glasgow Kelvin, but he still controlled it.

He fell out with Mr Blair over the UK’s intervention in Iraq, and was expelled from the party in 2003 over his comments on the issue.

After Labour

Following his expulsion from Labour, Mr Galloway was an independent MP before he joined the Respect Party, which focused on opposing the war in Iraq.

His seat was abolished ahead of the 2005 general election, and so Mr Galloway left Scotland to contest the east London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow.

He managed to win the seat off Labour’s Oona King by just over 800 votes – although Ms King later said the election was the “one of the dirtiest campaigns we have ever seen in British politics”, saying she faced antisemitic abuse during the campaigning.

The election in the seat was run largely on the Iraq War, which as a Blair supporter, Ms King backed.

In 2006, and while still an MP, Mr Galloway was a contestant on reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, during which he pretended to be a cat and dressed up in a leotard.

In 2010, Mr Galloway stood for election in the Poplar and Limehouse constituency, neighbouring Bethnal Green and Bow.

But his electoral luck ran out and he finished third.

It was just two years before Mr Galloway took another crack at Westminster, and in 2012 he won the Bradford West by-election.

At the next general election, however, he lost his seat.

In 2016, he stood for Respect in the London mayoral election, but only won 1.4% of the vote.

He then stood in the 2017 and 2019 general elections as an independent, but was unsuccessful both times in Manchester Gorton and West Bromwich East.

Come 2021, he contested the Batley and Spen by-election for his own Workers Party of Britain, but finished in third place.

It is for this party that he is standing in Rochdale.

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Middle East

Mr Galloway has long been outspoken about issues in the Middle East, going as far back as campaigning for Dundee to be twinned with Nablus, a city in the West Bank, in the 1970s.

He says that in 1977, after returning from a trip to Lebanon, he pledged to devote his life “to the Palestinian and Arab cause”.

While he opposed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the 1980s, he later backed the Ba’athist movement after the Americans withdrew their support in Iraq. He says he was not a supporter of Hussein.

In 1991, he opposed the first Gulf War, where Western forces were deployed to the nation after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded. He later described Kuwait as “clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion”.

His book also compared the Iraqi leader to Joseph Stalin: “Just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq’s own Great Leap Forward.”

In 1994 Mr Galloway met Mr Hussein, and said: “I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” The then-Labour MP later said he was saluting the Iraqi people as a whole.

After this, he was given a “final warning” by Labour whips, and issued a “full apology”.

He was vociferously opposed to the second Gulf War as well, and was vice president of the Stop the War Coalition.

In March 2003, he said that Tony Blair and George Bush had attacked Iraq “like wolves”, and called on British troops to “refuse to obey illegal orders”.

It was following this incident that Mr Galloway was eventually expelled from Labour.

As well as speaking out on Iraq, Mr Galloway has also long been vocal on Palestine, including taking part in a convoy to take aid into Gaza.

But he has faced allegations of antisemitism, and was sacked from his role at TalkRadio in 2019 over comments the station called antisemitic.

Since 2008 he has worked for Press TV, the Iranian state-run television channel.

He has also been pictured with two heads of Hamas, including being pictured with current leader Ismail Haniyeh in 2009.

In 2013, while MP for Bradford West, he walked out of a debate with a university student after discovering they were Israeli.

“I don’t recognise Israel and I don’t debate with Israelis,” he said.

The student accused Mr Galloway of “pure racism”.

Rochdale

After the death of Tony Lloyd, Mr Galloway announced he would be standing in the by-election in Rochdale.

Like many of his previous election campaigns, this seat has a high proportion of Muslim voters, and Mr Galloway has campaigned hard on the Israel-Hamas conflict and Gaza.

His campaign material even included the Palestinian flag, and branded Labour “pro-Israel”, adding that the two main parties were “two cheeks of the same backside”.

But after Labour abandoned its candidate following an antisemitism scandal, Mr Galloway emerged as favourite, has now swept to victory once again, and will return to Westminster.

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July 7, 2025

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Politics

MP recalls childhood abuse as he calls for law change to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence

Published

5 hours ago

July 7, 2025

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MP recalls childhood abuse as he calls for law change to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence

An MP who decided until recently to “never speak” about the abuse he suffered as a child has shared his harrowing story so that “no kid has to go through” what he did.

Josh Babarinde describes being physically abused by his mother’s former partner from the age of four, and remembers crying himself to sleep under the covers “hearing shouts, hearing screams and things smash”.

He says he became hypervigilant growing up and felt safe at school but “like he was treading on eggshells” in his own home.

The Eastbourne MP, who is also the Liberal Democrats’ justice spokesperson, says his experience has driven his politics. He is calling on the government to stop abusers “slipping through the net” and being released from prison early.

Opening up about his story in his twenties was “difficult” but looking back, Mr Babarinde says, he is “so proud of the resilience of that kid”.

The MP recently found his childhood diary containing Star Wars drawings alongside an entry he wrote from the bathroom. The diary, he recalls, wrote: “I’m really going to try to go (to the toilet) but I can’t. Oh my goodness, I’m gonna be in so much trouble, I’m going to get smacked so hard.”

Then an entry five minutes later: “I still haven’t done anything, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

He says reading the entry reminded him of how “helpless” he felt.

“It was mortifying,” he says. “An abuser takes away your sense of self-worth.”

The 32-year-old is calling on the government to change the law to make domestic abuse a specific criminal offence. The change would mean, he argues, abusers can no longer effectively disguise their history under other offences like assault.

He says the Ministry of Justice’s early release scheme, which has seen thousands of prisoners released early to ease overcrowding, has failed to exclude domestic abusers despite government promises because there is no formal categorisation for offenders.

It is impossible, he argues, to know exactly how many domestic abusers are in prison currently so perpetrators are “slipping through the net” on early release.

Mr Babarinde says the uncertainty means victims and survivors are not able to prepare for their abuser’s release.

He said: “They might need to move house or move their kids to a new school, shop in different places. All of these kind of things are so important, and so that’s why that commitment the government made was so important.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: “Our thoughts are with all victims of domestic abuse – it takes immense courage to speak out.

“We are building a justice system that puts victims first – strengthening support, increasing transparency, and giving people the confidence to come forward and be heard.”

Politics

Another tantrum from the Labour backbenches is inevitable

Published

17 hours ago

July 6, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

In common with many parents across the country, here’s a conversation that I have with my young daughter on a semi-regular basis (bear with me, this will take on some political relevance eventually).

Me: “So it’s 15 minutes until your bedtime, you can either have a little bit of TV or do a jigsaw, not both.”

Daughter: “Ummmm, I want to watch TV.”

Me: “That’s fine, but it’s bed after that, you can’t do a jigsaw as well.”

Fast-forward 15 minutes.

Me: “Right, TV off now please, bedtime.”

(Pause)

Daughter: “I want to do a jigsaw.”

Now replace me with the government, the TV and jigsaw options with axing welfare cuts and scrapping the two-child cap, and my daughter with rebellious backbenchers.

Politics latest: Former Labour leader calls for wealth tax on assets above £10m

That is the tension currently present between Downing Street and Labour MPs. And my initial ultimatum is the messaging being pumped out from the government this weekend.

In essence: you’ve had your welfare U-turn, so there’s no money left for the two-child cap to go as well.

As an aside – and before my inbox fills with angry emails lambasting me for using such a crude metaphor for policies that fundamentally alter the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society – yes, I hear you, and that’s part of my point.

For many in Labour, this approach feels like the lives of their constituents are being used in a childish game of horse-trading.

So what can be done?

Well, the government could change the rules.

Altering the fiscal rules is – and will likely remain – an extremely unlikely solution. But as it happens, one of Labour’s proverbial grandparents has just popped round with a different suggestion.

A wealth tax, Lord Neil Kinnock says, is the necessary outcome of the economic restrictions the party has placed on itself.

Ever the Labour storyteller, Lord Kinnock believes this would allow the government to craft a more compelling narrative about whose side this administration is on.

That could be valuable, given one of the big gripes from many backbench critics is that they still don’t really understand what this prime minister stands for – and by extension, what all these “difficult decisions” are in aid of.

The downside is whether it will actually raise much money.

The super-rich may have lots of assets to take a slice from, but they also have expensive lawyers ready to find novel ways to keep their client’s cash away from the prying eyes of the state.

Or, of course, they could just leave – as many are doing already.

In the short term, the future is a bit easier to predict.

If Downing Street is indeed now saying there is no money to scrap the two-child cap (after heavy briefing in the opposite direction just weeks ago), an almighty tantrum from the backbenches is inevitable.

And as every parent knows, the more you give in, the harder it becomes to hold the line.