Many more Galloways will fill the vacuum left by the cowardly mainstream parties

George Galloway says his victory at the Rochdale by-election was a win for Gaza. Is it a win for Rochdale? Mr Galloway was duly elected (though the dramatic rise in the numbers of postal votes cast does make one wonder how well they were invigilated). But the total electorate in Rochdale is about 78,000. He won 12,335 votes – less than a sixth of that. On this slender foundation, he boasts (with Gorgeous George, everything is a boast) of affecting a major war 2,365 miles away. 
Unfortunately, Mr Galloway is not 100 per cent mistaken. At present, the classic issues of domestic politics are so badly handled by the main political parties that adventurers who exploit visceral issues can hog the stage.

Those classic issues concern what used to be called “the condition of the people”. Both Conservatives and Labour understood this. 

For the Tories, that condition was better improved by independent institutions and a government that favoured entrepreneurism, property ownership and liberty. For Labour, government, trade unions and a welfare state were the chief engines of social betterment. Both parties engaged with subjects that mattered to all voters.

At present, both are in a mess. Mr Galloway’s low jibe that Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer are “two cheeks of the same backside” is not quite as unacceptable as one would like. 

The Rochdale result reinforces the widespread impression that the Tories are going nowhere. For Labour, it is worse. It increases the growing doubt about Sir Keir’s grip on his party and whether he can propose, as all oppositions should, answers for voters’ present discontents. Mr Galloway is eloquent, and wrong. Sir Keir is not eloquent, and not clearly right.

The general reason for Mr Galloway’s success is the weakness of the political establishment, but the particular reason in Rochdale is the large number of Muslim voters there. He sent out a special by-election address “to the voters of the Muslim faith in Rochdale”. He had “fought for Muslims ... all of my life”, he said, especially for Palestine and in Iraq. 

If I win, he told them, Sir Keir, “a top supporter of Israel”, “could well be forced out as Labour leader”. Invoking the will of God, he called on his Muslim “brothers and sisters” to “send a message that will be heard in all four corners of the world”. “Wa’ Salaam o Aleukum,” he ended. His sectarianism puts even Northern Irish politics 50 years ago in the shade. 

It is obvious that Muslim voters will, on average, care more about Israel/Gaza than the general population. The same applies to Jewish voters, usually from the opposite point of view. 

The important electoral difference is that Muslims, at roughly 6.5 per cent of our population, are well over 12 times more numerous than Jews. The Muslim vote remains too small to decide the fate of the nation but is now big enough to sway several parliamentary seats and raise the political temperature.

The Gaza conflict, and the ensuing marches in Britain, have proved this as never before. The marches’ aggression and extremism have alarmed most Jewish voters, most Gentile supporters of Israel, and many millions who have no strong views on the Middle East and do not see why the subject should dominate our public spaces. In an overdue but welcome speech, Mr Sunak said that “What started as protests on our streets, has descended into intimidation, threats, and planned acts of violence.” People resent this embryonic mob rule. 

Their resentment is often related to a belief, which recent statistics confirm, that immigration is out of control. 

For some, it is Islam itself that is the problem. Readers quite often write to me about this. This week, I received an email from a gentleman whom I have known slightly for several years. He is a retired chartered accountant, of mainstream conservative views, living in southern England. I have met him a couple of times and found him pleasant and sane. 

He does not want to be named in public (which indicates our bad situation), so I shall call him Mr A. He showed me his correspondence with his MP, who is a Conservative. Since I am not naming Mr A, I shall not name his MP, but just call him Mr B. 

Here is what Mr A wrote: 

“Islam is a major threat to democracy in this country and elsewhere.

“Islam cannot allow itself to be governed forever by non-Islamic rule. If you study the history of Islam and see how it is reflected in modern society, the clues are plain to see.

“Muslims do not integrate into our culture. They do not become British except in law. Multiculturalism is a failure and allows minorities to take us over.

“As a politician, you and your cohort and predecessors need to face the truth and not cast out someone like Mr [Lee] Anderson, with whose views I and millions of others in this country agree. It is politicians who have caused the problem with their fixation for allowing massive immigration and it is politicians like you who need to wake up and fix it.

“As one Muslim said to me a few years ago, ‘We will win in the end because we have more babies than you’.
I fear for my children and grandchildren, as should you.”

Mr B’s reply, in full, was “I will not respond to your racist email, and shall no longer respond to correspondence from you.”

As I said to Mr A when we discussed this exchange, I do not fully agree with him. There is indeed a strong anti-pluralist tradition in Islam which can work against integration and seems to have revived in modern Islamism. But the equivalent could be said of Christianity at many times and in many places in history. 

As a Christian myself, I notice how often people outside the faith mischaracterise it, drawing on isolated scraps of Biblical quotation to “prove” a hostile point. A great faith is a deep, immensely complicated thing. It is unwise to condemn it wholly. Better to focus on the bad things that extreme followers do in its name. Important, also, to acknowledge that Islam’s most strident spokesmen are self-appointed and untypical.

But it is Mr A’s – and everyone’s – perfect right to criticise any religion. It is also his right to be worried by the failures of multiculturalism and of mass immigration and to share his anxieties with his elected representative. 

It is Mr B’s response which offends. I was about to write that it is extraordinary, but I fear it may not be: it has become quite commonplace to describe any criticism of Islam as racist. 

This cannot be right. Islam, like Christianity, is offered to all mankind, and has adherents of all colours. It is a belief system, not a genetic code. All belief systems must be open to challenge. 

To call someone racist is a serious charge. Mr B has no evidence for making it. By saying he will not respond to future correspondence from Mr A, he is failing in the duty each MP owes to all his/her constituents. He is entitled to disagree with Mr A, but should answer him properly, not cancel him.

This case is a microcosm of the gap between voters and the political mainstream. If electors with genuine concerns about what they see as the effect of political Islam are insulted, how can they not be disillusioned with the political process?

Seeing such cowardly mainstream leadership, many more Galloways will press home their advantage.