So, who on earth should Rochdale vote for?

Tomorrow in Rochdale, Rishi Sunak told Keir Starmer in the Commons, “the people will have a choice of three former Labour candidates, two of which are antisemites”.

Ouch. It was one of many low blows in a noisy and unedifying session of Prime Minister’s Questions, much of which was taken up by the two party leaders accusing each other of being too weak to disown their predecessors, Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn.

But the prime minister’s response did point out an embarrassing problem for Starmer: “His party is so mired in hate that, despite three ex-Labour candidates standing, he can’t back a single one of them.”

George Galloway, the former Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead (later Glasgow Kelvin), is standing in Rochdale for his latest party, the Workers Party, as a protest against Labour’s policy on Gaza.

Simon Danczuk, the former Labour MP for Rochdale itself, is standing for Reform UK, the former Brexit Party, a company in which Nigel Farage is the majority shareholder.

But Starmer’s embarrassment is Azhar Ali, who is listed on the ballot paper as the official Labour candidate because the party didn’t disown him until after the papers were printed. It wasn’t until it was too late to replace him that The Mail on Sunday reported Ali’s comment from some months ago that Israel had allowed the 7 October Hamas attacks to happen as an excuse to invade Gaza.

Hence the question that has stumped several Labour frontbenchers: how would they vote if they lived in Rochdale? The standard answer is that they would spoil their ballot paper, which may be because the party’s rules do not allow members to advocate or campaign for any candidate standing against the official Labour candidate.

(That rule was not drafted with the unusual situation in mind of an official Labour candidate being ditched during the campaign but it would still not be done for Labourites to urge people to vote for rival parties.)

The rest of us are not bound by such restrictions, however, so we can speculate freely about the relative merits and demerits of the candidates. This is not a problem for supporters of some parties. If you want to vote Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Reform, you can go right on ahead – although Reform supporters might want to consider the reason Danczuk was suspended by Labour in 2015. He admitted exchanging explicit messages with a 17-year-old girl, behaviour that he described as “inappropriate and stupid”.

The Conservative candidate, Paul Ellison, was voted Rochdale Man of the Year in 2020 for his role in the town’s success in the Royal Horticultural Society In Bloom awards. He seems a safe enough choice. The Lib Dem, Iain Donaldson, is campaigning on the NHS, the cost of living and sewage. He is the lowest common denominator candidate.

Who else on the all-male, 11-person ballot paper could you vote for? Two independents both called Howarth, Michael and William respectively; another independent, David Tully; and a Monster Raving Loony candidate, if that is your thing.

There is another candidate on the ballot paper with no party description: Mark Coleman, who is a vicar and a Just Stop Oil supporter. This is relevant, because the Green Party candidate, Guy Otten, ran into the mirror-image of Azhar Ali’s problem before the Labour candidate did.

Otten was disowned by the Green Party because of old social media posts that came to light in which he criticised Islam and the Palestinian cause – but it also was too late to take his name and party label off the ballot paper. So if you want to vote Green and you don’t have a problem with what I regard as Just Stop Oil’s counterproductive tactics, perhaps the Rev Coleman is for you.

One problem with all these candidates, though, is that they are most unlikely to win. According to the bookmakers, the by-election is a two-horse race between Galloway, the favourite, and Ali, who is expected to pick up votes from people who are either unaware that he has been suspended or who want to stop Galloway.

If I had a vote in Rochdale, it would be a severe test of my belief that it is always possible to say that one candidate would be better than another, and that spoiling your ballot is an abdication of responsibility. But I stand by that. Abstaining or spoiling your ballot simply means that you let others decide.

The real choice, then, is Ali or Galloway, and in the end, I would vote for Ali. I experienced Galloway’s poisonous politics at first hand when he was my MP in Bethnal Green and Bow. He was kicked out of the Labour Party because he urged British troops in Iraq to disobey orders, and his contribution to politics has been relentlessly divisive. Recently, he described the war in Ukraine as “the Nato-crazed suicide mission against Russia”.

What Ali said was appalling, too – but he does not seem to be part of a movement that sides with Britain’s enemies. To have him as an independent MP for nine months before a good Labour candidate can be returned in the general election would be the lesser of two evils.

The people of Rochdale, Labour or otherwise, should hold their noses and vote for Azhar Ali.