UK

Rochdale: the lessons for Labour

Carol Turner argues Labour just doesn’t get it. It’s not Islamic extremists endangering Britain, but the collapse of faith in Westminster parties.

MARCH 5, 2024LABOUR HUB EDITORS

The results of the Rochdale by-election left Labour and Tories on the back foot. George Galloway won only because Labour didn’t stand a candidate, according to Keir Starmer and Labour’s Deputy Campaign Coordinator Ellie Reeves. The Tories responded with more rhetoric about Islamist extremist running wild on the streets of Britain – and Labour agreed.

Labour List was beyond unprepared for the outcome. On the morning polling stations opened, it led with an article by an obscure think tank: “If George Galloway wins it will be on the back of a low turnout vote. If Azhar Ali – the former Labour candidate – wins, it will likely be on the back of the strong brand of the Labour party logo.”

The morning after brought no sober reflection. Labour List reported the result with another quote from the same think tank. It was far more likely the lesson of Rochdale was “about candidate selection and due diligence than public opinion.” Oh yeah?

Voters had expressed their preference – not for one, but for two alternatives to the Westminster parties. The real news of the by-election, as a few commentators pointed out, was that neither Labour nor Tory candidates got a look-in. The Conservative came third, with a vote that dropped by 19.2% on the 2019 result, while Azhar Ali, the candidate Labour withdrew support from after the list had closed, came fourth – a massive 43.9% down.

As Sir John Curtice told BBC Breakfast on Friday morning, the Labour result was its worst ever in any post war by-election. The most prominent feature of the results, he said, was that a local candidate pipped both of the main parties to second place.

Particular aspects of the Rochdale campaign mean these results are not a reliable foretaste of the general election. Not only did Labour withdraw support from Azhar Ali – who didn’t even turn up to the count – the Green Party similarly withdrew support from their candidate after the list was published. Simon Danczuk standing for the Reform Party was a former Labour MP for Rochdale (2010-2017) blocked by Labour from standing after a scandal over explicit text messages to a 17-year-old young woman. The winner himself was a one-off who turned the story of the campaign into the story of Gaza.

While Labour was in denial, the Tories tried to turn Rochdale into the latest result of allowing Islamic extremists onto the streets of Britain. This media understood that this was the reason for Rishi Sunak’s bizarre Prime Ministerial non-statement from the steps of No 10. Labour did not. Starmer echoed Sunak.

The focus on Labour and Tory responses to Rochdale, mean two important lessons have gone largely unremarked.

The first, and most obvious: Rochdale confirms how out of touch Labour and Tories really are about the public’s feelings on Gaza. Rochdale’s Muslim communities were not the only ones to express their concern at the ballot box. The size of Galloway’s result strongly suggests a section of non-Muslim voters did too. Successive opinion polls and high mobilisations on Gaza demonstrations back this up.

We may anticipate that this same concern can make itself felt countrywide in the general election. Day after day, for four months solid, agonizing images of death and destruction have chased each other across our screens. Does anyone really doubt the feeble response of government and opposition will linger in public consciousness? A point of comparison, perhaps, is the distrust of Tony Blair in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, which still clings to him today.

The second lesson of Rochdale, which is largely missing from the media, is recognition that Galloway won and a local candidate came second by appealing to the disaffection felt by Rochdale voters. Galloway’s campaign referenced a number of Rochdale-specific issues – restoring maternity and A&E services, getting Primark to open a store in Rochdale, reopening the open-air market.

Galloway is a populist. He even doffed his fedora to Trump, saying his job as MP would be to “make Rochdale great again”. Like Trump he draws on ‘anti-woke’ sentiments about women and the LGBT+ community. Galloway understands what Labour refuses to acknowledge: the roiling dissatisfaction with political parties who duck the issues – inflation and the high cost of living, low wages, poor health care, inadequate housing and lack of local authority services – the list is long.

In 2022 Greater Manchester Poverty Action identified a child poverty rate of 28% in Rochdale. Later that year, a study by Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) put Rochdale 25th of a list of the 30 most deprived areas in Britain. Like Rochdale, many of these have disproportionately high non-white populations; Muslims are disproportionately represented amongst Britain’s worst off.

The biggest lesson of the Rochdale by-election is, indeed, the strength of dissatisfaction with government and opposition parties alike. It is not – as Sunak claims and Starmer echoes – the problem of Islamic extremism that is threatening parliamentary democracy. It’s the unwillingness of government to tackle impoverishment, and the lack of real alternatives from Labour.

Labour’s reliance on an electoral strategy of harvesting the votes of alienated Tories suggests that keeping heads down and waiting for the breaks might not be the winning strategy Labour imagines. Rochdale suggests the electorate is tired of broken promises and ditched policies. Voters are smarter than Labour or Tories give them credit for. Faith in Westminster is rapidly collapsing.

Carol Turner is Labour CND Chair.

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