Rochdale byelection live: Keir Starmer apologises after George Galloway wins but says he was right to disown Labour candidate | Politics

[ad_1]

Starmer apologises to voters for Rochdale result, but says he was right to disown Labour’s candidate

Keir Starmer has restated Labour’s apology to the people of Rochdale for what happened in the byelection. But, in a clip for broadcasters, he sought to extract a positive message from the saga, suggesting that his decision to disown Azhar Ali, the candidate, over antisemitism at a point where it was too late to replace him showed his determination to transform the party.

Starmer said:

Galloway only won because Labour didn’t stand a candidate.

I regret that we had to withdraw candidate and apologise to voters in Rochdale.

But I took that decision. It was the right decision. And when I say I changed the Labour party, I mean it.

Obviously we will put a first class candidate, a unifier, before the voters in Rochdale, or the general election.

Keir Starmer speaking to broadcasters today.

Keir Starmer speaking to broadcasters today. Photograph: Sky NewsShare

Updated at 13.26 CET

Key events

Humza Yousaf says he and his wife expecting baby this summer

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has announced he and his wife are expecting a baby this summer, saying they are “delighted” to be adding to their family, PA Media reports. PA says:

Yousaf said his wife Nadia El-Nakla is due to give birth in July.

It will be the first time a Scottish first minister has had a child while in office.

The couple already have two children – their daughter Amal is four and Mr Yousaf is stepfather to 14-year-old Maya.

Yousaf has previously spoken publicly about miscarriages the couple have suffered.

As he spoke about his desire to improve miscarriage care last September, he revealed he and El-Nakla have lost four pregnancies – “two before our daughter was born and another two after”.

Announcing his wife is expecting again today, he thanked staff at the early pregnancy unit at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee for the “wonderful support” they have provided.

Share

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has said that Labour was right to apologise to the people of Rochdale for what happened in the byelection. Speaking in a press conference in Leeds at the Convention of the North event, he said:

Labour has let the people of Rochdale down because it didn’t give them a good enough choice at the election held yesterday.

It’s right that the leader of the party has apologised to the people of Rochdale but we will now work with him and his team to make sure there is some reflection on what has happened, some honesty, so that we can all come together and work together to regain the trust of the people of Rochdale, and that is exactly what we will do working with the leader of Rochdale borough council.

Andy Burnham speaking at the Convention of the North event today. Photograph: Ian Forsyth/Getty ImagesShareSunak fails to deny government considering abolishing non-dom status in budget

In his TV clip for broadcasters Rishi Sunak refused to comment on reports saying the government is considering lifting Labour’s plan to abolish non-dom status as a means of raising revenue to fund a general tax cut in the budget.

Sunak said it would not be appropriate to comment on tax matters ahead of a budget.

This counts as a non-denial, because budget “purdah” has never stopped the government ruling out potential tax increases ahead of a budget if it wants to.

Asked about the report in an interview on Sky News this morning, Ellie Reeves, the party’s deputy national campaign coordinator (and sister of Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor), said that if the Treasury did adopt the Labour plan, it would be further proof the government was “out of ideas after 14 years”.

She said the government had already borrowed other Labour ideas, like the windfall tax on energy companies and the dental recovery plan.

ShareSunak insists Rwanda policy ‘worthwhile investment’ despite NAO saying it could cost £1.8m per asylum seeker

Rishi Sunak’s flagship plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda will cost taxpayers £1.8m for each of the first 300 people the government deports to Kigali, the National Audit Office has revealed. The NAO report is here, and here is Rajeev Syal’s story.

In his broadcast clip, Rishi Sunak was asked if he still thought the Rwanda deportation policy was a good deal in the light of what the NAO said about how much it would cost. Sunak insisted it was a “worthwhile investment”. He said:

The current situation is unsustainable and unfair. Taxpayers are already forking out millions of pounds a day to house illegal migrants in hotels across the country. That’s not right. And that’s why I made stopping the boats one of my priorities.

I’m pleased that we’ve made progress last year, the numbers were down by a third. That’s never happened before, shows that the plans are working. But in order to fully resolve this issue, we need to have a deterrent, we need to be able to say if you come here illegally, you won’t be able to stay, we can remove you to a safe country.

That’s why the Rwanda scheme is so important. It’s a worthwhile investment, and I’m determined to see it through.

Rishi Sunak being interviewed at Baker Hughes in Montrose, Angus Photograph: Michał Wachucik/PAShare

Updated at 14.18 CET

Sunak says Rochdale byelection ‘one of most divisive in recent times’

Rishi Sunak has described the Rochdale byelection as “one of the most divisive in recent times” and claimed he was pleased his party at last ran a positive campaign.

Speaking in Scotland, where he will be addressing the Scottish Conservative party’s conference in Aberdeen this afternoon, Sunak said:

It was very concerning to see the reports of intimidation through the byelection, and by all accounts one of the most divisive campaigns that we’ve seen in recent times.

I’m pleased the Conservative party was the only party to run a really positive campaign focused on local issues with a great local candidate, Paul Ellison.

Rishi Sunak being interviewed in Scotland today. Photograph: Sky NewsShareStarmer apologises to voters for Rochdale result, but says he was right to disown Labour’s candidate

Keir Starmer has restated Labour’s apology to the people of Rochdale for what happened in the byelection. But, in a clip for broadcasters, he sought to extract a positive message from the saga, suggesting that his decision to disown Azhar Ali, the candidate, over antisemitism at a point where it was too late to replace him showed his determination to transform the party.

Starmer said:

Galloway only won because Labour didn’t stand a candidate.

I regret that we had to withdraw candidate and apologise to voters in Rochdale.

But I took that decision. It was the right decision. And when I say I changed the Labour party, I mean it.

Obviously we will put a first class candidate, a unifier, before the voters in Rochdale, or the general election.

Keir Starmer speaking to broadcasters today. Photograph: Sky NewsShare

Updated at 13.26 CET

According to Sam Coates on Sky News, George Galloway will be introduced by Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, and David Davis, the Conservative former Brexit secretary, when he takes his seat in the Commons next week.

ShareTeaching unions criticise government’s advice to pay review body for salaries in 2024-25

Richard Adams

Richard Adams

Teaching unions in England have been angered by the Department for Education’s evidence to the independent School Teachers Review Body (STRB), ahead of the body’s pay recommendations for 2024-25.

The DfE has not named a percentage increase that it would support, and instead asked the STRB that the pay award be “sustainable” in the light of school finances – implying that schools can’t expect anything in the coming budget.

The DfE’s case is that pay increased by 5% per cent for most teachers in 2022 and a further 6.5% last year. It also argues that a forecast rise in unemployment “is expected to ease the level of vacancies across the private and public sector, supporting recruitment and retention” – in other words, that fewer teachers will leave the profession if unemployment is higher elsewhere in the economy.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said:

The government evidence talks about teacher pay awards returning to a ‘more sustainable’ level – but it is the damage to education caused by government policy that is not sustainable. The recruitment and retention crisis, driven by pay cuts and excessive workload within an environment of funding shortages, is causing severe damage not just to teachers and school leaders but to the pupils and communities they serve.

We need a fully funded, major correction to teacher pay to repair the damage to teacher living standards and to the competitive position of teaching, and to protect our education service.

The NEU is opening on Saturday a preliminary ballot of teachers members in England calling for a fully-funded above inflation pay increase. This latest announcement from government will anger our members. Strike action is a last resort but it will be an option our members will seriously consider.

Share

Updated at 13.11 CET

Azhar Ali was selected as Labour’s candidate in Rochdale (before he was disowned) after narrowly beating Paul Waugh in the selection contest. Waugh is a prominent political journalist who gave up his job as the i’s chief political commentator to try to become Labour MP for his home town, and he must have a good chance of being selected as Labour’s candidate for the general election.

In a column for the i, which blames Ali for Labour’s defeat, Waugh argues that his town won’t benefit from having George Galloway, with his “bilious brand of divisive politics”, as its MP. He says:

The sign that greets everyone coming from the M62 declares “Rochdale – birthplace of co-operation”, highlighting that it was here in 1844 that a group of weavers got together to form a co-op, the start of what became a global movement for social justice.

But Galloway has always preferred confrontation to co-operation, bombast to bread and butter issues. His previous election and by-election campaigns have seen appalling abuse directed at Labour women like Naz Shah in Bradford and Kim Leadbeater in Batley and Spen.

He arrives in a blaze of noise and publicity, but often doesn’t stick around. Sooner or later, people realise it’s all about him, not them. Like all circuses, he’ll leave this town eventually too, the question is how much damage he leaves in his wake.

Many people of all backgrounds are appalled by the death toll of women and children in Gaza in Israeli attacks. But when Galloway explained his priorities for Parliament, he actually admitted in one interview that if he got to the Commons he would speak about Gaza first, then Rochdale “second”.

Yet even those who care passionately about Gaza actually have more local concerns. When I canvassed for Labour, before Azhar Ali was disowned, it was the cost of living, the state of the NHS, town centre crime and the shortage of affordable housing that were raised most often on the doorstep.

Share

Updated at 13.25 CET

A reader asks:

Any idea @AndrewSparrow on what basis Prof Sir John Curtice says “although most Labour supporters don’t take a side in the current conflict in the Middle East”?

This is a reference to what Curtice said on BBC Breakfast this morning. (See 8.42pm.) He seemed to be referring to a polling question that asks people if they sympathise more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict. As this YouGov chart, with data going back to 2019, shows, amongst the public at large there is more sympathy for the Palestinians than for the Israelis, but generally there are even more people who say they sympathise with neither side, or who don’t have an answer.

Amongst Labour supporters, there is much more support for the Palestinians than there is for the Israelis. The chart below shows data for this group from a survey on 15 January. It suggests 56% of them do have a view (46% pro-Palestinians, 9% pro-Israelis), but Curtice was presumably trying to make the point that a sizeable chunk of Labour supporters don’t take sides. Or perhaps he has seen more recent or alternative data.

Polling on views of Labour supporters on Israel/Palestine conflict Photograph: YouGovShare

Neal Lawson, director of Compass, the leftwing group committed to more pluralistic politics, says the Rochdale result suggests Labour has been taking its supporters for granted.

We don’t know if Rochdale is a blip or part of a more seismic trend in terms of the Muslim community’s support for Labour. But our first past the post voting system tends to disguise tectonic shifts in voting behaviours, as we’ve seen in Scotland and then the red wall.

FPTP encourages Labour to take its big blocks of voters for granted, in the presumption that they have nowhere else to go. The SNP, then Ukip/Brexit and via them the Tories, and now Galloway have proven to be alternatives. Labour MPs and candidates in seats with big Muslim votes will be nervous today. People don’t like being taken for granted.

Share

Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, has denied George Galloway’s claim that he invited Galloway to join his party (see 6.44am), Harry Cole from the Sun reports.

Tice: “I genuinely have no idea what Mr Galloway is referring to. It is clearly an attempt to distract attention away from the appalling way that this by election in Rochdale has been conducted”

Tice: “I genuinely have no idea what Mr Galloway is referring to. It is clearly an attempt to distract attention away from the appalling way that this by election in Rochdale has been conducted” https://t.co/1hEwhOvodj

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) March 1, 2024

ShareGalloway says he would ‘love to crush the Labour party’

Sky News has been showing footage of an interview that George Galloway did with Sam Coates in the early hours this morning after the result of the byelection was declared at the count. Here are the main points.

I’d love to crush the Labour party. I see it as my mission in life.

I don’t know if Sky will allow me to quote Malcolm X. But the difference between the wolf and the fox is this. The wolf is quite clear about its intentions. As it comes towards you, you know what it’s going to do. The fox on the other hand looks like it’s smiling, looks like it’s friendly.

That’s the difference between the Conservative party and the Labour party. And so my ire against the Labour party is for precisely that reason. The Tories don’t pretend to be friends of the people. The Labour party does.

He said he did not believe Keir Starmer was genuined committed to a ceasefire in Gaza. Asked if he thought Starmer genuinely wanted a ceasefire, Galloway replied:

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in London I could sell you going cheap. Nobody believes that. If he really did, he wouldn’t have wrecked the SNP motion in the house just a week or so ago. He would have backed the SNP’s motion. Or better he’d have called a debate himself and put his own motion down.

He didn’t do any of those things. He preferred to force the speaker into a monstrous manipulation of parliamentary conventions and cause the scenes that you saw. He’s a phoney. He’s doing everything that he can to protect Israel from the righteous wrath of the international community and the people of Britain.

He said he wanted the current state of Israel to be replaced by an enlarged, secular country, taking in Palestine, where Jews and Muslims could live together. He said:

If you’re really asking me what should be the final state of affairs in Israel and Palestine, well, my position is quite well known. I think there should be one democratic and secular state, between the river and the sea. And if I was doing their marketing, I’d call it the Holy Land.

Asked if that meant he did not want Israel to exist, he replied:

No state has a right to exist, not the Soviet Union, not Czechoslovakia, not the Zionist apartheid state of Israel. I believe that the best solution for everybody is, as it was in South Africa, freed from apartheid, a democratic state where white people and black people, Jews, Christians, Muslims, live as equal citizens under the law.

I’ll be using such parliamentary skills as I have acquired over the best part of 30 years, in six previous parliamentary terms. I’ll be using such gifts that God gave me as a speaker, as a debater.

And I’ll be speaking for millions of people who feel that they’re not being heard by the British political class, or the journalists for that matter, that their earnest feelings of anguish about what’s happening in Gaza is being ignored, or worse distorted into a kind of Islamophobic fervour which the political class, and much of the media, has been whipping up over the last few weeks.

George Galloway being interviewed by Sam Coates from Sky News Photograph: Sky NewsShareGalloway’s ally Chris Williamson provokes outrage by failing to condemn Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on 7 October

In his Today programme interview Chris Williamson, George Galloway’s ally and deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain, Galloway’s party, declined to condemn the Hamas massacre of Israelis on 7 October.

Asked by Mishal Husain to condemn those attacks, Williamson replied:

The two main parties have not called for a ceasefire. They’ve not condemned the Israeli regime’s activities. You can’t expect to live in a situation where a people have been oppressed for 75 years and not expect a reaction.

Asked if he was saying the attacks were understandable, Williamson replied:

What about the Palestinian people that have been massacred over 76 years now. Where is the media outrage at that? In international law oppressed peoples have an absolute right to armed resistance.

Husain said that did not cover killing innocent people, like children and the elderly. In response, Williamson claimed most of the innocent people killed on 7 October were killed by Israeli forces. Husain said the evidence did not show that, and she moved the discussion on as Williamson began to articulate a conspiracy theory about the Hamas massacre.

Husain also asked Williamson if he was happy about the fact that Galloway was endorsed by Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party. In a message on X yesterday, Griffin said:

If you follow me in #Rochdale, get out and vote for George Galloway today. He’s not perfect, but it’s the best way by far to stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies.

Williamson replied:

If people want to endorse, you can’t spurn endorsement, or indeed control people who want to endorse a political party.

Husain said that Griffin said on his X feed he wanting to free Britain from Zionist control. She said if Williamson was uncomfortable with Griffin’s endorsement, he could say so. Williamson replied:

You’re trying to damn George Galloway and the Workers party by association. It’s up to people. If they want to endorse a political party, that’s entirely a matter for them. I’m not going to play those games.

Williamson claimed Galloway, himself and the Workers Party of Britain had “a long track record of standing up to racism and bigotry in all its forms’.

Ellie Reeves, Labour’s deputy national campaign coordinator, was interviewed immediately after Williamson. She said:

Can I just start by saying that I’m utterly appalled by Chris Williamson’s failure to condemn Hamas attacks on 7 October, and likewise his failure to distance his party from the endorsement of Nick Griffin.

Share

Updated at 13.05 CET

Galloway’s election ‘dark day for Jewish community’, says Board of Deputies

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has described the election of George Galloway as “a dark day for the Jewish community”. In a statement it said:

George Galloway is a demagogue and conspiracy theorist, who has brought the politics of division and hate to every place he has ever stood for Parliament. His election is a dark day for the Jewish community in this country, and for British politics in general. We believe he should be shunned as a pariah by all parliamentarians.

And the Campaign Against Antisemitism has said:

Given his historic inflammatory rhetoric and the current situation faced by the Jewish community in this country, we are extremely concerned by how [Galloway] may use the platform of the House of Commons in the remaining months of this parliament.”

Galloway has campaigned on behalf of Palestinians for all his politcal life, but he strongly denies being antisemitic.

Share

Here is a Guardian graphic showing the Rochdale results.

Rochdale byelection resultsRochdale byelection resultsShare

Updated at 10.35 CET

Chris Williamson said this morning that George Galloway’s return to parliament next week would send shockwaves through the corridors of power. (See 8.59am.) In his analysis of the byelection result, my colleague Peter Walker explains why that is unlikely.

Galloway’s return to parliament comes only days after Rishi Sunak argued that “mob rule” had taken over British politics, a reference to regular pro-Palestine demonstrations and threats to MPs over the issue.

Expect some politicians, perhaps Suella Braverman, who has already claimed Islamists are “in charge”, to respond to Galloway’s win via the ruthless targeting of one demographic as another sign of shattered community cohesion.

The reality is perhaps less apocalyptic, if nonetheless messy. Galloway won in the same way in Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005, and Bradford West in 2012. He served one term in each with minimal impact in parliament, the country more widely, or, his critics said, for his constituents.

Galloway will hope to arrive back in Westminster as the figurehead for Gaza. But he is too divisive and controversial a figure to have broad appeal, and past experience shows he much prefers campaigning to become an MP than the slightly more prosaic business of actually being one.

Peter’s article is here.

Share

[ad_2]

Source link