BY-ELECTIONS 29.02.24

George Galloway is the new MP for Rochdale following one of the most bizarre by-elections in Westminster history.  The Workers Party leader polled almost twice as many votes as his nearest rival, the surprise second placed local independent David Tully.  The disavowed Labour candidate Azhar Ali finished a distant fourth, despite the Labour party name and logo still assigned to him on the ballot paper.  He also appeared first on the ballot, courtesy of the alphabet, but the ovwhelming majority of voters skipped past his name and went for one of the other ten candidates.

The result was a particular disappointment for Reform UK, who chose former Rochdale's former Labour MP as their candidate.  Like Azhar Ali, Simon Danczuk did not even hang around for the result.  Reform finished sixth, behind even the Lib Dems, albeit they saved their deposit.  Reform leader Richard Tice issued a furious tweet prior to the result, alleging that his activists had been subjected to death threats and racist abuse during the campaign.

The rest of the field was made up of mostly independents and a Green candidate, but only on paper as he, like Ali, had been disowned by his party during the election campaign.  The Green Party instead got behind a Just Stop Oil activist, Mark Coleman, who appeared to throw orange confetti towards Galloway during his victory speech.

What a clown show.  It remains to be seen whether Galloway will be able to hold off Labour in a general election, but rest assured - he will continue to sow division and whip up the local Muslim community between now and then.

Rochdale Parliamentary By-Election

George Galloway (WPB) 12,335 (39.7%) New

David Tully (Ind) 6,638 (21.3%) New

Paul Ellison (Con) 3,731 (12.0%) -19.2%

Azhar Ali (Lab*) 2,402 (7.7%) -43.9%

Iain Donaldson (LDem) 2,164 (7.0%) N/c

Simon Danczuk (RefUK) 1,968 (6.3%) -1.9%

William Howarth (Ind) 523 (1.7%) New

Mark Coleman (Ind) 455 (1.5%) New

Guy Otten (Grn*) 436 (1.4%) -0.7%

Michael Howarth (Ind) 246 (0.8%) New

Ravin Rodent Subortna (Loon) 209 (0.7%) New

WPB GAIN from Lab

* Candidates not endorsed by their own parties

There were also five council by-elections on Thursday.  The Lib Dems held both the seats they were defending in East Yorkshire, while Labour defended a seat in Great Yarmouth.  The absence of an independent in the latter appeared to benefit the Tory candidate marginally more than it did Labour.  In West Sussex two seats changed hands.  The Greens gained an independent seat, while the Conservatives gained a seat from the Lib Dems.

Minster & Woodmansey, East Riding of Yorkshire Council

LDem: 1,438 (50.7%) +8.6%

Con: 706 (24.9%) -1.9%

Lab: 495 (17.4%) -9.4%

Grn: 198 (7.0%) New

LDem HOLD

Tranby, East Riding of Yorkshire Council

LDem: 958 (55.3%) +4.4%

Lab: 408 (23.6%) +2.7%

Con: 268 (15.5%) -4.2%

Grn: 97 (5.6%) -2.9%

LDem HOLD

Central & Northgate, Great Yarmouth Borough Council

Lab: 482 (52.6%) +6.5%

Con: 296 (32.3%) +7.7%

LDem: 139 (15.2%) +3.3%

Lab HOLD

Henfield, Horsham District Council

Grn: 668 (44.2%) +19.8%

Con: 569 (37.7%) +12.9%

Lab: 215 (14.2%) -5.2%

LDem: 59 (3.9%) -2.4%

Grn GAIN from Ind

Southwater North, Horsham District Council

Con: 618 (49.0%) +11.2%

LDem: 388 (30.8%) -13.0%

Grn: 162 (12.9%) +3.8%

Lab: 92 (7.3%) -2.0%

Con GAIN from LDem

Abbreviations

WPB = Workers Party of Britain

Con = Conservative

Lab = Labour

LDem = Liberal Democrat

RefUK - Reform UK

Grn = Green

Loon = Monster Raving Loony

Ind = Independents

DARE WE SAY IT? ALI WAS RIGHT! PROBABLY...

Next week's big Westminster by-election could turn out to be a damp squib thanks to Labour.  They were favourites to hold Rochdale, but that was before they disowned their candidate.  On paper, voters have a Labour candidate named Azhar Ali, but it's a wasted vote as he won't represent Labour if elected.  It's a laughable situation and the bookies have since installed George Galloway as the new favourite.  Galloway is standing for his hard left Workers Party of Britain, with the politics of the Middle East at the forefront of the campaign - such is the depth to which Britain has sunk into the multi-cultural abyss.

Meanwhile, Azhar Ali's Labour career is destined to remain in the local politics of the quasi-Islamist towns of south Lancashire and Greater Manchester.  His election would merely give him an independent seat in the Commons for the remainder of this year at best, or just a matter of months depending on which date Sunak goes to the polls.

Ali's career floundered upon a media exposé of his supposedly 'anti-Semitic' views.  Starmer acted to suspend him after a couple of remarks leaked, ostensibly a reference to 'Jewish quarters' in the media and a boast of having persuaded several Lancastrian towns not to parade the colours of the Israeli flag in the wake of the Hamas attacks.  However, he was not suspended for the initial Daily Mail exposé in which he voiced his firm belief that Israel allowed the Hamas attacks to proceed unhindered, thus giving them the justification to attack, invade, occupy and potentially even annexe Gaza.

This 'conspiracy theory' sparked 'outrage' claimed the Mail.  How on earth could a state allow the massacre of its own citizens to justify a war?  Of course, this faux outrage takes place in the established world where us mugs are supposed to believe that the Americans did not do exactly the same thing in September 2001 and used those attacks to justify carnage across the Middle East that continues to this day.

Now bear in mind that the mainstream media is constantly involved in psychological warfare against its own consumers, lurching from one scare story to the next, often creating contradictions in the process.  Lo and behold, it was none other than the Daily Mail itself that was among many news outlets that alleged that Israel deliberately downplayed prior warnings of the Hamas attacks.  The following headline appeared online in November.

The Mail report is based on an actual news story from Israel itself, and so it is remarkably shortsighted that in the space of three months such a significant revelation has become a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy while still - at the time of writing - freely available on the Mail website.

The mass media are so invested in the arrogant belief that its consumers are so stupid they won't ask questions.  Question everything they tell you, because what they tell you is almost certainly not in your own interest.

LABOUR DEBACLE IN ROCHDALE

Azhar Ali and Keir Starmer in happier days

In a bizarre turn of events, next week's Westminster by-election in Rochdale will be defended by a Labour candidate who has been suspended from the party.  Azhar Ali was suspended on Monday after comments came to light regarding Israel and Jewish media influence.

The initial 'revelations' about Ali came in the Mail on Sunday, that had obtained a recording in which Ali addresses a Labour meeting following the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel.  In it, he suggests that Israel 'allowed' the attacks to proceed in order to justify their invasion of Gaza.  As media interest in the story grew, Ali issued several grovelling public apologies on social media and Labour initially stood by their man, saying that he had 'fallen for an online conspiracy theory'.

"The Egyptians are saying that they warned Israel ten days earlier.  Americans warned them a day before: 'There's something happening'.  They deliberately took the security off, they allowed the massacre of 1,200 innocent people and that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want."

(Azhar Ali, Lancashire Labour meeting, October 2023)

However, the Mail had more ammunition in reserve and on Monday morning released further audio transcripts, including details of how Ali and colleagues put pressure on local councils to not co-operate with Rishi Sunak's decree that all government buildings be decked out in the colours of the Israeli flag.  Ali asserts that the exercise would 'cause community problems and tensions' and says: "We do not want the Israeli flag flying from the town halls at Nelson, Burnley, Accrington, [inaudible, possibly Blackburn], Preston."

Ali goes on to defend hard left Labour MP Andy McDonald, who was suspended from the party following a speech he made at a pro-Palestine rally last year.  Ali then refers to the media response to McDonald's speech from 'certain Jewish quarters'.

Keir Starmer finally bucked to media pressure on Monday afternoon and all Labour campaigning on behalf of Ali was ordered to cease that evening.  Later, having announced that the party had 'withdrawn support' for Ali, it was confirmed that his party membership had been suspended.  It was too near polling day to remove Ali as the Labour candidate altogether and his name will still appear on the ballot paper as a Labour candidate, although if he is elected he will enter Parliament as an independent.

It is unclear as to how this clown show will influence the result of the February 29th by-election, but the bookies have now made George Galloway odds on favourite to win a seat in which the Muslim vote appears to be the only one that matters.

LABOUR'S SHOCK URDU VIDEO

The death of Labour's Tony Lloyd last month sparked a by-election that was rapidly scheduled for the 29th of February.  Labour hit the ground running, selecting Rochdale councillor Azhar Ali as their candidate before Mr Lloyd was even cold.  Nomination papers are already in for all candidates, weeks ahead of Lloyd's funeral.

Last week Cllr Ali appeared in a video posted to Twitter, alongside Manchester Gorton MP Afzal Khan.  Ali addresses the camera in English, which is followed by a translation from Khan into Urdu.  This shock video formed the basis of our latest YouTube effort (click below).

Labour's reliance on the block Muslim vote is well documented, but for a candidate to produce a video in the national language of Pakistan for a by-election in England shows a damning lack of integration for a community already viewed with suspicion following repeated rape gang convictions.

Labour are odds-on favourites to win the Rochdale by-election, a seat they have held since 2010.  Prior to that the seat changed hands several times between Labour and the Lib Dems throughout the 90s and 00s.  Labour's majority in 2019 was 9,668 over the second placed Conservatives.

Second place this time around is anyone's guess, with George Galloway out for revenge and likely to whip up his own Muslim support by putting the politics of the Middle East front and centre of his campaign.  Galloway is not the only former Labour MP standing with vengeance in mind.  Eyebrows were raised when Reform UK selected Simon Danczuk as their candidate.  Danczuk was Labour MP for Rochdale between 2010 and 2017, although he had the party whip withdrawn in 2015 after it emerged that he had exchanged explicit messages with a 17-year-old.

The full roster of eleven candidates is as follows.

Azhar Ali (Lab)

Mark Coleman (Ind)

Simon Danczuk (RefUK)

Iain Donaldson (LDem)

Paul Ellison (Con)

George Galloway (Workers)

Michael Howarth (Ind)

William Howarth (Ind)

Guy Otten (Grn)

Ravin Subortna (Loon)

David Tully (Ind)

LABOUR'S GROOMING SILENCE

Manchester has been in the spotlight this week thanks to a new report that confirmed that both Greater Manchester Police and Manchester City Council had aided and abetted Muslim grooming gangs based in the city.  While the bulk of the report relates to paedophile activity in south Manchester, the title of the report refers to Greater Manchester, a conurbation that takes in many towns including the scene of one of the UK's most infamous cases - Rochdale.  Grooming activity has also been reported in Bolton, Bury, Oldham and Wigan, although convictions are sorely lacking.

Labour has a diabolical record on grooming gangs, dating back more than a decade.  Gordon Brown as PM is alleged to have urged police forces to turn a blind eye in 2008.  Countless Labour councils around the country have been implicated in covering up for grooming gangs and senior Labour figures won't even mention the scandal, let alone condemn it.  Even the one frontbencher who dared to raise the issue and was summarily sacked for doing so was herself a part of the problem.  In an interview with ITV in 2014 Sarah Champion defended the perpetrators by claiming that most child abusers were white men.

Some Labour MPs are notoriously prolific on Twitter, but you won't uncover many tweets relating to grooming gangs on their accounts.  For instance Diane Abbott has tweeted or retweeted 28 times since the latest report was released and while she is keen to talk about refugees, Windrush and 'racism' against Meghan Markle, there's not a single mention of industrial scale rape of English children.  In Greater Manchester itself only two of the 17 Labour MPs on Twitter - Afzal Khan (Manchester Gorton) and Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) - wrote anything about the grooming report.  Powell wrote:  "This hard-hitting review exposes starkly serious failures of police, social services and others to protect vulnerable young women & girls 15 years ago.  Undoubtedly culture and practice has changed markedly since, however still serious lessons & questions".  No, Lucy, nothing has changed.

The three Greater Manchester MPs who are currently campaigning to be either leader or deputy leader also ignored the issue, but all three (Long-Bailey, Nandy and Rayner) tweeted about Islamophobia.  It appears that where Labour MPs are concerned, defending Muslim voters from criticism is more important than protecting English girls from Muslim rapists.

ROCHDALE'S CCTV SCANDAL

by David Winder

On Tuesday the Government announced a new law that taxi drivers will have to undergo greater checks before licenses are issued.  CCTV will also be fitted in taxis.  This uniformity of standards should prevent situations in which drivers can operate in towns and cities despite having been licensed elsewhere, where checks are less stringent.  This is what has been happening in Rochdale.

We know that in Rochdale taxis have been used by grooming gangs to ferry around abused girls for many years.  With this in mind I started up a petition over four years ago, calling on Rochdale Council to enact a local by-law to force all taxis operating in the borough to have CCTV fitted as a pre-condition of trade.  It attracted over 650 signatures.

I presented this petition to Steve Rumbelow, the chief executive of the council.  After several months he finally responded and claimed there was no record of the petition ever having been received.  His excuse at the time for not enacting the by-law was that the council could not afford the CCTV, somewhat missing the point - these are private hire vehicles, no-one had asked them to fund it.  Secondly, Rumbelow claimed to have asked local taxi firms about fitting CCTV, but they didn’t want to foot the bill either.  So that was that (letter below).

Rochdale Council had clearly decided that public safety was secondary, despite the knowledge that gangs were using taxis to transport their victims to different locations around the borough.  It must have been fairly evident to them by the refusal of the taxi firms to have the cameras installed.

In the four years that have passed since I presented my petition just how many children have been abused and trafficked in this manner while Steve Rumbelow and our Labour council sat on their hands?  Imagine if they had acted on it back then?  The police would not have been able to ignore victims so easily with CCTV evidence to call upon.  So what are we to take from the council's reluctance to deploy the technology, just whose side are Rochdale's Labour council on?