After Labour blows up in Rochdale, George Galloway seizes his chance

‘Rochdale’s election is not about Palestine, Rochdale’s election is about Rochdale’

Dear Millers — welcome to our Thursday edition. When Sir Tony Lloyd died last month, his seat in Rochdale looked like a relatively easy hold for Labour. Now, with the party’s candidate disowned for spreading a conspiracy theory about Israel and George Galloway picking up support over the war in Gaza, the by-election has entered uncharted territory. 

Illustration: Jake Greenhalgh.

Under the glare of the national media, three former Labour members are on the ballot, but Labour has effectively suspended its campaign. And speaking from his campaign HQ in a Suzuki garage, Galloway is feeling confident. Members of his team are even claiming that Labour’s now-expelled candidate Azhar Ali has left the country. We sent Jack to Rochdale to find out what on earth is going on. 

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Your Mill briefing

👮 An eighteen-year-old from Bury has been charged with multiple offences following an investigation from Counter Terrorism Policing North West. Muhammad Zakir Arif was charged with one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, one count of strangulation or suffocation, two counts of possession of a bladed article, and two counts of breaching a Section 49 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act order — which compels someone to disclose their electronic data access.

🧓 Manchester Metropolitan University’s sports institute has been awarded £400,000 in funding to build a new laboratory for research into healthy ageing, with a particular focus on people with dementia, diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. Professor Nick Brook, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Manchester Met, said: “We have an increasingly ageing population and with that comes many obstacles, but we are focused on overcoming these so people can continue to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.”

📃 “Serious failures” at Tameside Council’s children’s services have left kids “being harmed” or at risk of being harmed, according to the latest report from Ofsted, which rated the service inadequate. The report marks a deterioration in the quality of the service since a 2019 report that said the service required improvement. 

💸 A romance scammer, who used online Scrabble tournaments to identify targets, took more than £20,000 from an 83-year-old woman from Oldham. The fraudster posed as an American millionaire widower, coming up with false stories about unpaid hospital bills or needing money to get bailed out of a Turkish prison to extract money from the victim. 

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A gleeful George Galloway watches Labour implode in Rochdale

By Jack Dulhanty

George Galloway, the dark horse candidate in this month’s by-election in Rochdale, is sitting in the boardroom of a Suzuki garage comparing himself to Churchill. If he wins this race, he will equal Churchill’s record of having represented constituencies in four different cities — in Galloway’s case, Glasgow, London, Bradford for now, possibly, Greater Manchester.

“I’m quite proud about that,” he tells me. “I’m not sure that record will ever be matched.”