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As the residents of Rochdale prepare for a snap by-election later this month, voters find themselves at the centre of an increasingly toxic political campaign to become the new MP for the former mill town in north-west England.
The poll on February 29 was called after the death last month of the serving Labour MP, Tony Lloyd, a veteran party figure viewed with affection by colleagues and many local voters.
But many of those on the all-male list of candidates now lining up to replace him have tapped into one of two highly charged issues — Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and Rochdale’s legacy of child sex abuse scandals — leading to an increasingly bitter political debate.
Azhar Ali, the candidate chosen by Labour to defend Lloyd’s 9,668 majority at the 2019 election, was disowned by the party on Monday night after leader Sir Keir Starmer initially stood by him.
The withdrawal of support followed press reports about alleged comments the local county councillor made about the Gaza conflict, in which he repeated a conspiracy theory about Israel and criticised “Jewish” elements of the media.
Starmer’s handling of the issue has provoked a vicious war of wards within the national party, with the leader criticised for failing to act fast enough after the details of Ali’s comments emerged at the weekend.
The decision leaves Labour without an official candidate in its seat, although electoral rules mean Ali will still appear as the party’s candidate on the ballot paper because nominations for the contest have closed.
It has also left several of the other candidates, with controversial pasts, in a stronger position, with the bookmakers installing George Galloway, a firebrand former Labour MP, as the new favourite.
Even before Ali’s comments were made public, Galloway, who has caused previous election upsets running against Labour in Bradford West and the London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow, was already hoping to tap into anger over the Gaza conflict in Rochdale’s sizeable Muslim community.
The Labour leadership has come under fire from its membership in recent months over their handling of the Israel-Hamas war, including an initial refusal to back a ceasefire.
Galloway’s decision to stand again against Labour has caused jitters within the party, fearing the inflammation of an already highly charged political atmosphere. In 2019, he was sacked from his show on Talk Radio after sending an alleged antisemitic tweet.
“From my perspective, it’s the division it causes,” said one worried councillor in a nearby seat, who called the situation for Labour “fucking chaos”. The “fallout” from a toxic campaign would be felt beyond Rochdale’s boundaries, they said, including in the forthcoming local elections.
The Green Party’s candidate, Guy Otten, has already withdrawn from the race ahead of the poll, due to his historic statements about Palestine and Islam. Like Ali for Labour, his name will still appear on the ballot paper, but he told the BBC he would not be campaigning.
While Gaza has dominated a large part of the campaign trail, Rochdale’s legacy of child grooming scandals is a focus elsewhere, an issue that recently resurfaced after the publication of the latest of a long line of reports into statutory failures to stop organised sexual exploitation.
Simon Danczuk, who served as the town’s Labour MP between 2010 and 2015 and has campaigned previously on the issue, is standing for the populist Reform party.
The party’s leader Richard Tice has said he is the right person to take on the issue again, despite Danczuk having the Labour whip withdrawn nearly a decade ago after sending lewd messages to a prospective teenage employee. Danczuk apologised at the time for “inappropriate” behaviour.
Independent candidate Billy Howarth, founder of the campaign group Parents Against Grooming UK, is also running, arguing that the town needs a change after decades of paedophilia scandals dating back to the 1970s.
One local Labour councillor said the combination of divisive issues highlighted during the campaign was not indicative of the town. “People are proud of being from Rochdale,” said John Blundell, the town council’s cabinet member for economy and communication. “This by-election doesn’t represent the people of Rochdale at all.”
