FOLK in Rochdale face a terrible choice in this month’s by-election.
Extremist and veteran rabble-rouser George Galloway was booted out of Labour in 2003 after calling on British troops to “refuse to obey illegal orders” in Iraq.
He has praised Arab dictators, supported communist Russia and said the Soviet Union’s collapse was “the biggest catastrophe of my life”.
Labour was eventually forced to withdraw support from their candidate Azhar Ali over revolting anti-Semitic comments and disgusting conspiracy theories about Israel.
The Greens had to drop their candidate, too.
Reform candidate Simon Danczuk was the town’s Labour MP until 2015 but left Parliament under a cloud.
The Tory candidate seems to have disappeared.
Who do you pick out of that lot?
No one should ever vote for Galloway, who is standing for the Workers Party of Britain.
He poisons community relations and stirs up trouble wherever he goes.
Who thinks he cares about Rochdale? It is always all about him and his vanity.
Ask people in East London or Bradford why they booted him out after one term.
But Ali is a disgrace and there is no doubt this is a setback for Sir Keir Starmer and his claims to have cleaned up the Labour Party.
Starmer is much better than the crazy old commie Corbyn, but that is not much to boast about.
It was always too soon to say Labour had dealt with extremism and racism.
I understand their dilemma in Rochdale. The deadline for the election had passed so Ali could not be replaced.
They were worried Galloway would damage community relations.
But “our guy is bad but he’s not as bad as the really bad guy” is not a great slogan.
They should have dumped Ali as soon as his first comments came to light on Sunday. Much better than being forced into it.
Zero tolerance must mean zero tolerance.
We are told there is no place for racism in the Labour Party yet too many get a slap on the wrist.
Kick out the cranks and conspiracy theorists, particularly people in positions of leadership who should know better.
What really worries me is why someone like Ali, who everyone said was decent and moderate, behaved like this in a private meeting.
Why did no one object to his racist bile?
What else is going on behind closed doors?
Look at the problems in places like Rochdale. They should be voting on jobs, housing and the NHS, not a war 3,000 miles away.
It is the same obsession that results in London and other towns and cities being taken over every weekend by people screaming racist abuse and chanting support for terrorism.
The woke students and trendy lefties do not seem to care very much about millions being killed in Africa, yet call the rest of us racist
Ian Austin
I am not saying everyone on those marches is a racist, but there are 200 conflicts over land in the world and if the only country you are marching about is Israel, it will look like you have a problem with Jewish people.
Where are the protests about a million Muslims in concentration camps in China, half a million Muslims killed in Syria or the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen?
The woke students and trendy lefties do not seem to care very much about millions being killed in Africa, yet call the rest of us racist.
Let’s be honest about this: There is an obsession with Israel.
It is the latest version of the age-old hatred of Jewish people and it has to be tackled.
The Labour Party claims to be the political home of the Muslim community and dominates politics in towns such as Rochdale.
The vast majority of Muslims are just as appalled by racism and terrorism as everyone else, but Labour must show a lead and give them the confidence to take on the extremists.
If they want to show the Labour Party has really changed, they should kick out John McDonnell and the other Corbynites on the hard Left too.
Just a few weeks ago he was billed as speaking on the same platform as Latifa Abouchakra, who recorded an ecstatic video celebrating the Hamas atrocities on October 7.
She praised the massacre as a “triumph” and “homecoming”.
Remember what he said about the IRA, or rioters who smashed up buildings in London, or his “joke” about a female Tory being lynched.
Last month, East London MP Apsana Begum made a speech urging people to turn to late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani for “hope”.
It turns out he was not just a writer but a leading figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
They organised a terror attack on Israel, murdering 26 people.
A photograph taken shortly before the attack shows Kanafani with one of the gunmen.
Birmingham Labour MP Tahir Ali had to apologise after accusing Rishi Sunak of having “the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands” over the Israel-Gaza conflict.
He even claimed the Government had “hidden” documents showing concerns about the legalities of the conflict.
Does Labour really expect us to vote for these people?
The hard Left hate Britain and despise the West — that is why decent people rejected them so strongly in 2019.
Kick them out, Keir, and show Labour has changed for good.
