George Galloway targets Angela Rayner’s seat
after he is sworn in as MP
Workers party leader says there are many places where
it can win or ‘make sure that Keir Starmer doesn’t’
Ben Quinn
Political correspondent
@BenQuinn75
Mon 4 Mar
2024 18.33 GMT
George
Galloway has said he will target more seats in the next general election
including the deputy Labour leader’s after his swearing-in at Westminster
following last week’s Rochdale byelection victory.
Speaking
outside parliament, Galloway singled out Angela Rayner’s constituency of
Ashton-under-Lyne, where she is defending a majority of 4,263, as an example of
where his Workers Party of Britain, or a candidate backed by it, could cause
havoc for her chances of re-election.
“There’s at
least 15,000 supporters of my point of view in her constituency. So we’ll be
putting a candidate up against her, either a Workers party candidate or more
likely an independent camp candidate that we support, and that will vitally
affect the election of the nearby deputy leader,” he said.
“And there
are many constituencies in London, from Ilford to Bethnal Green in the heart of
the City of London, in Birmingham, in other parts of the West Midlands, in
north-west England, in the towns around Rochdale, Oldham, Blackburn, Burnley,
Nelson, Bury. We’ll be putting candidates up in all these places and we will
either win or we will make sure that Keir Starmer doesn’t.”
Earlier on
Monday afternoon Galloway was sworn in and escorted into the Commons chamber by
two sponsors, the Conservative MP and father of the house, Peter Bottomley, and
Neale Hanvey of Scotland’s Alba party.
Galloway, a
former Labour MP, promised to work with the Scottish National party to force
another vote on Gaza, compared Israel’s actions to the Holocaust and predicted
his party and other independents would tap into anger over the conflict to
alter the course of the election.
He was
watched from the public gallery by his wife, Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, and a small
group of others including James Giles, a London councillor who leads the
Kingston Independent Residents party and was involved in the Rochdale campaign.
Galloway,
who won almost 40% of the vote in last Thursday’s vote after a campaign centred
on the conflict in Gaza, held a copy of the Bible as he swore an oath of
allegiance to the king, before shaking hands with the speaker of the House of
Commons, Lindsay Hoyle, and leaving the chamber.
Speaking
afterwards to the media, Galloway borrowed from a Trumpian political slogan,
saying: “It’s my job to try to make Rochdale great again.” He said he would
attempt to speak either during prime minister’s questions or in the debate on
the chancellor’s budget statement on Wednesday.
He chided
journalists for their coverage of his campaign and his focus on Gaza, saying:
“If the byelection had been in February of 1940 or 41 would anyone seriously
have condemned me for putting the crimes of the Holocaust at the centre of my
election campaign?
“And yet
the same fourth estate seemed or pretended to find it inexplicable that I would
put a genocide in Gaza in front of the voters in a byelection in 2024.”
Galloway
also took aim at Rishi Sunak, claiming the prime minister had really just been
“speaking about Muslims” during his address outside Downing Street in which the
Conservative leader warned of a threat to democracy. This was the imminent
theme of his election campaign, said Galloway, who accused Sunak’s party of
“whipping up Islamophobic racist fervour” with the assistance of the
broadcaster GB News.
His return
to the Commons means he will have represented five different constituencies:
Glasgow Hillhead, Glasgow Kelvin, Bethnal Green and Bow, Bradford West, and
Rochdale.
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