Starting tomorrow, the UK’s Conservative Party faces three by-elections in two weeks.
So what? It will lose them all, but what should have been a thumping triple endorsement of Labour’s government-in-waiting has turned into an excruciating electoral embarrassment. The scale of the problem is such that some are even speculating the Tories could bring forward the general election date.
This week:
- Labour has had to disown two candidates for anti-Semitic and conspiratorial remarks about Israel.
- The Tories have seized the moment to accuse Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer of failing in his four-year effort to purge his party of anti-Semitism.
- The spectre of George Galloway, one of the most divisive figures in British politics, rides again as the likely winner in Rochdale.
What happened? Speaking at a meeting last autumn, Labour’s candidate for Rochdale, Azhar Ali, said Israel had “deliberately” dropped security from the border with Gaza just before 7 October. “They allowed ... that massacre that gives them the green light to do whatever they bloody want,” he said in a recording leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
Since then:
- Ali apologised for his “deeply offensive, ignorant, and false” comments;
- Labour initially condemned the comments, but not the man, who cannot be replaced at this stage in the contest;
- He was eventually suspended, but not before “new information about further comments” came to light – that Ali had invoked a classic trope about Jewish people in the media.
And that’s not all. Yesterday it emerged that another Labour parliamentary candidate, Graham Jones the former MP for Hyndburn, referred to “f**king Israel”. According to the political blog, Guido Fawkes, Jones also said Brits who volunteer to fight for the Israel Defense Forces “should be locked up”.
This second incident has put Labour’s supposedly rigorous selection process back under the spotlight.
But speaking at a Tortoise ThinkIn on Tuesday Luke Akehurst, a senior member of Labour’s NEC who has been heavily involved in selections, insisted the party was carrying out due diligence to the best of its ability.
“We can’t really legislate for people not telling us the truth when we ask the killer question at the end… ‘is there anything in your background past or present, which could politically embarrass the Labour Party if it got into the public domain?’”, he said.
Back to square one with Labour? Since Saturday Conservative MPs and ministers have been lining up to stick the boot in, reminding people that Starmer was a frontbencher under Jeremy Corbyn and that the new leader has failed to rid the party of anti-Semitism.
Rishi Sunak, whose attack line “back to square one with Labour” has thus far been the butt of jokes about people wishing for precisely that, might finally be able to land a punch. There is even talk that it might prompt him to bring a general election forward six months to May, coinciding with a round of local elections.
By, by-baby. So Rochdale, where voters go to the polls on 29 February, is a mess. But Sunak is kidding himself if he thinks the row will help him in the first two by-elections, which take place on Thursday.
In Wellingborough when Tortoise visited the mood among voters was downbeat: there was no real enthusiasm for either main party, but the blame for failing services and rising prices was squarely laid with the government, even by erstwhile Tory voters.
Broken Britain. One local resident did raise Gaza. More generally it was the cost of living and a sense that “everything is broken” – something underlined by the state of Wellingborough’s near-derelict Conservative campaign office.
Up the road from Labour’s quietly determined hub, the Brexit-backing Reform party had commandeered the town square and was looking to soak up some of those disaffected votes. If candidate Ben Habib succeeds in coming higher than third place, CCHQ will fear Reform’s impact in other Leave-backing seats, whenever the election is called.
Bad Data. With sticky inflation and the spectre of a UK recession looming, the week could end on a worse footing for the Tories than Labour. Should the by-elections go badly, anti-Sunak plotters are reportedly planning to launch a “grid of shit” to further destabilise their leader.
It has been a very bad week for Labour and Rochdale presents a major headache for Starmer; but Wellingborough should remain the focus for those looking for clues about the general election.
