George Galloway has thrown his ubiquitous hat into the ring for next month’s Holborn and St Pancras by-election – although residents of the constituency shouldn’t expect a knock on the door from him any time soon.
The veteran of the hard left – now leader of the fringe Workers Party of Britain (WPB) – is standing in the by-election sparked by Keir Starmer’s decision to get out of the House of Commons. But Galloway is doing so from South Africa, where he claims to be in “exile” after counter-terrorism police stopped him and his wife at Gatwick Airport in September.
The WPB says Galloway is awaiting confirmation from the Home Office that he is “free to carry on with political campaigning” before he returns to the UK to take part in the election. But he is currently on a speaking tour in South Africa and has events scheduled there October 4, just four days before voters go to the polls.
Galloway took to Instagram to outline his position, saying that: “Thanks to Keir Starmer, I’m having to fight a parliamentary by-election for his old constituency of Holborn and St Pancras from exile in Africa, in South Africa, to be precise, where I spent some of the best days of my life.
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“So don’t feel sorry for me, but cry for British democracy. They held my wife and I for nine hours in total under the Terrorism Act and quizzed her about the Palestinian flag on her fingernail. They did so because I’m one of the leading voices – one of the only voices – speaking up against war in Ukraine, which they’re busy preparing to turn into a wider conflagration.” All of the other parties in the by-election were supporting NATO and Ukraine, he moaned.
Galloway and wife Putri Gayatri Pertiwi, the WPB’s deputy chair, were detained when they were believed to have been returning to the UK from Moscow via Abu Dhabi. Days earlier he had posted a picture of the pair in Red Square with the message: “Celebrating our wedding anniversary in Red Square. Midway between faith and socialism. What could be better than that?”
Galloway’s decision to stand, though, has not gone down well with all of his WPB colleagues. Long-time hard left ally Chris Williamson, also a former Labour MP, has quit the party, claiming his leader was splitting the left wing vote by standing rather than throwing his lot behind Green leader Zack Polanski.
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He wrote on X: “I have… resigned from the Workers Party of Britain because I profoundly disagree with the decision to stand in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. I have a huge amount of respect for George Galloway, but I believe we should get behind Zack Polanski on this occasion.”
James Giles, a councillor in Kingston and Galloway’s former chief of staff in the Commons, has also publicly warned against standing against Polanski, writing: “Blocked by @georgegalloway for stating my position on Holborn & St Pancras: I want Labour defeated, and the only way of doing that is a vote for @ZackPolanski and the Greens. I say this as George’s former Chief of Staff in Parliament.”
But Galloway has defended his position, saying: “In Manchester, just a couple of months ago we supported the by-election victory of the Green Party so don’t call us sectarian. We stood aside in Manchester but the Green Party stands aside for nobody ever.”
Still, at least the hard left vote won’t be split even further: Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, whose co-founder Zarah Sultana last year said was aiming to be in government, has continued its record of not doing anything as bourgeois as actually putting up a candidate for election.
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