Rochdale is a disaster for Labour – but the Conservatives are in trouble, too

The people of Rochdale obviously deserve better than the current chaos over their next member of parliament, however short that term of office may turn out to be.

More than half of those who voted in 2019, hardly a vintage year for Labour, chose the now-late Tony Lloyd, a distinguished public servant. Yet the party has somehow contrived to provide the electorate with a disgraced and disowned replacement whose name will still appear on the ballot paper.

In that context, it is interesting that those behind the leak of Azhar Ali’s antisemitic words – which included the suggestion Israel had allowed the 7 October attack by Hamas to happen, to provide a pretext for invading Gaza – and their publication in The Mail on Sunday, chose to drop the bombshell after the close of nominations, when it was impossible for Labour to change its candidate, thus heightening the problem for the party, and adding to the distress of the electors of Rochdale. The meeting at which the remarks reputedly were made was some months ago.

Not only did Starmer take several days to withdraw his support for Ali, but a second parliamentary candidate, former-MP Graham Jones, was suspended from the party over a leaked recording of a Lancashire Labour Party meeting in which he referred to “f***ing Israel” and how Brits volunteering to fight for Israel should be “locked up”. A third party member is also believed to have been “spoken to” about his comments.

Yet, on the eve of the election, the party continues to tie itself up over the issue. This morning, the shadow defence secretary John Healey admitted that his was “not a party of people who are saints”.

Less well reported is how a similar fate has befallen Rochdale’s Green candidate, who is no longer campaigning or being backed by his erstwhile party after making “regrettable” social media posts “a number of years ago”. It’s a circus, and the most chaotic of elections in years.

The constituency has the additional and very special misfortune of having George Galloway wandering its streets stirring up trouble. Locals could opt for Simon Danczuk, their former Labour MP now running for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, but Danczuk has a somewhat troubled history himself. Of course, they could vote Liberal Democrat, but the once-powerful movement in the area has suffered greatly from the now disgraced reputation of its famous leader, the late Cyril Smith MP. As I say, it’s a circus.

Somewhat lost in all this is the rather salient fact that the last party anyone seems to want to vote for in Rochdale is the Conservatives.

The Tories should be making hay – but they’re never mentioned. The actual main challenger to Labour is the Conservative Party, which finished as runner-up in the last general election. In past Labour meltdowns, national and local, the Conservatives have benefited as the default choice, at least where the Lib Dems weren’t well placed (and more often when Labour was in government).

Indeed, as recently as May 2021, the Tories were able to take the formerly safe Labour seat of Hartlepool, a “red wall”-style constituency once proudly represented by Peter Mandelson. It was the last aftershock of the 2019 Boris Johnson landslide, and highlights just how low the party has fallen since the days of “Get Brexit done” – and perhaps how unique that election actually was.

At any rate, the Tories should take little comfort from Labour’s tribulations. Whatever happens in Rochdale won’t affect the general election.

The country is not about to elect Galloway’s Workers Party of Britain as its next government, and, even if he wins Rochdale he’s liable to lose it before the end of the year.

Much has been written about the Muslim vote in the constituency as if it is some homogenous bloc, which is in any case misleading. Labour has lost much ground among such voters, and more widely, because of its stance on the war in Gaza. For Muslim voters, according to Survation, polling is down from 86 per cent support for Labour to 43 per cent, with 23 per cent undecided and others going to the Greens and Lib Dems.

But not to the Tories. The Muslim vote is down from an already miserable 10 per cent in 2019 to 4 per cent now.

Electorally, Labour’s problems with antisemitism and its policy on Palestine will inflict little net damage on its prospects of forming the next government. That’s not to say that its recent behaviour has been anything other than shambolic, and that it has failed to find a way through its policy dilemmas.

Antisemitism of a casual kind is obviously too prevalent in some Labour circles; things haven’t changed as much as they should have from the Jeremy Corbyn era. Muslim voters rightly fear Islamophobia and they also need to have confidence that the main political parties are safe spaces for them, too.

But on the cold, hard choices facing the nation as a whole, Rochdale is a rather tragic sideshow.