MSM Target Galloway at Victory Party

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A victory bash for the people of Rochdale descended into chaos when hit teams of MSM reporters took the prime minister’s cue to go after the newly elected member of Parliament. 

28 minutes, wild scenes at victory party. Video by Joe Lauria.

By Joe Lauria
in Rochdale, England
Special to Consortium News

Hours afters after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it was “beyond alarming” that George Galloway had been elected to Parliament in a by-election at Rochdale, mainstream media reporters descended on the newly elected MP’s headquarters to confront him.

“I despise the prime minister,” Galloway told them Friday night. “I don’t respect him at all. You keep referring to the prime minister as if that’s supposed to impress me,” Galloway told one reporter. 

Earlier in the day Sunak said in a speech at No. 10:

“In recent weeks and months, we have seen a shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality. What started as protests on our streets have descended into intimidation, threats and planned acts of violence. …  Now, our democracy itself is a target. Council meetings and local events have been stormed. MPs do not feel safe in their homes. Longstanding parliamentary conventions have been upended because of safety concerns. …

And it’s beyond alarming that last night, the Rochdale by-election returned a candidate that dismisses the horror of what happened on 7 October, who glorifies Hezbollah and is endorsed by Nick Griffin, the racist former leader of the BNP.

Yes, you can march and protest with passion. You can demand the protection of civilian life. But no, you cannot call for violent jihad. There is no context in which it can be acceptable to beam antisemitic tropes on to Big Ben in the middle of a vote on Israel, Gaza. And there can be no cause that you can use to justify the support of a prescribed terrorist group like Hamas.”

At what was supposed to be a victory celebration, Galloway told a reporter: “The prime minister is a rather diminutive, diminished and degraded politician. He made a party political statement. I don’t care about Rishi Sunak’s attitude.”  He said:

“What I care about is that the returning officer, a man of unimpeachable integrity … declared it a free and fair election, and me as the winner, and Rishi Sunak as one of the crushed, big two parties in the state. That’s all that matters to me.”

Galloway defends himself against media attack. (Joe Lauria)

Galloway’s supporters, working people and their families, had flooded his headquarters at a Suzuki car dealership to celebrate his victory, in which he outpolled major party candidates by a wide margin. But the food remained in containers as teams of mainstream reporters went after Galloway surrounded by increasingly angry supporters. 

This fed into the prefixed narrative of an “intimidating” largely Muslim crowd of Galloway voters who pose a “threat” to proper, white Britain. 

“There are allegations of intimidation by your supporters,” a reporter persisted.

“That’s five times that you’ve said that,” Galloway responded. “The returning office last night declared it — you were there — declared it a free and fair election and me the winner. You are just going to have to suck it up. I won the election.”

Another reporter tried to tell Galloway that the result somehow wasn’t legitimate because Labour had no official candidate after it booted Anzar Ali off the ticket because he said Israel was complicit in the Oct. 7 attacks. 

“Are you a Labour press officer?” Galloway sarcastically asked him.

Crowd presses in on Galloway on Friday night. (Joe Lauria)

“I’m not sure of the wisdom” of doing another interview, Galloway told a BBC reporter, before accusing her of “gate-crashing” his victory party. “We were welcomed here,” she said.

“But you weren’t welcomed to come and invalidate the election,” Galloway responded.

He refuted her statement that Gaza was the main part of his campaign, agreeing only that it was a “strong” part of his message.

“Genocide usually is something that occupies people’s interests, or ought to at least,” he said. The BBC reporter then incredibly asked if he made promises to Rochdale that he can’t keep. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing here. This is my victory party. What do you mean promises I can’t keep? Why don’t you judge whether I kept them at the end of my term?” he said.

Galloway and the crowd erupted in laughter when she said: “This wasn’t really a huge victory for you when you consider that Labour wasn’t a part of it.” 

“You are shilling for Keir Starmer,” he told her. “Is this the BBC? Am I paying for this?”

“You may think this wasn’t a normal by-election,” he said, “but I won it and I’m going to Parliament on Monday.”

Galloway spars with BBC reporter at victory party Friday night. (Joe Lauria)

A Sky News reporter on camera described a “febrile atmosphere” and “you can see the anger in the room.” At times children had to be whisked away as the crowds of reporters and supporters swarming Galloway seemed on the brink of getting out of control. 

“We are tired of dog whistle politics,” a backer shouted.

“You can see the raw emotion,” the reporter said. “I think you’ve got a flavor of the politics right now in Rochdale that this constituency has been witnessing for the past few weeks.”

“We love George!” shouted a supporter.

“You have no idea what you are talking about,” said another. “You’re just reading everything off paper, aren’t ya?”

“What do you know about what is happening in Rochdale, to the deprived?” a woman asked him. “George stands up for them. I think you should go back to wherever you came from.”

The crowd then broke out into a chant of “Free, free Palestine.”  The exasperated reporter threw his hands up. 

Crowd shouts down TV reporter from Sky News at Galloway victory party. (Joe Lauria)

“Most people thought they were coming to a victory party,” Galloway told the crowd in a speech afterward at the car dealership. “But the television cameras have turned up to question the result of the election.” 

He called Sunak’s speech outside No. 10 “a melodramatic pantomime.” Galloway said:

“He questioned not only our election victory, but more significantly, the right of the British people to peacefully protest against a slaughter in Gaza. … He deliberately tried to conflate protests and demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of people, most of them not Muslims by the way, — he tried to make it a Muslim thing, but it isn’t a Muslim thing, … hundreds of thousands of people … demonstrating their revulsion at the slaughter in Gaza and the support for it from the British government, the British Labour opposition and the vast majority of the British media. Hundreds of thousands have marched, but millions share their revulsion.”

Galloway reiterated that his victory was a threat to the dominance of the two major parties. “No wonder Sunak is alarmed by the election,” he said. “He got whipped not just by me, but by an independent candidate that no one had ever heard of.” 

Galloway speaking to supporters Friday night. (Joe Lauria)

He said the politicians and the “shills” in the media are “hysterical” about his victory “because they know that if what happened here happens elsewhere also, that big changes can be expected in British politics.”

Galloway said there are hundreds of constituencies where independent candidates and his Worker’s Party of Britain candidates can defeat Labour and “thus change the whole arithmetic” of the coming general election this year. 

“No wonder Starmer is worried. No wonder Sunak is alarmed. Because a new political power was born here (Thursday) in Rochdale,” Galloway said. “We are the pioneers.”

With the reporters refusing to leave and the food still packed away, a fed-up Galloway left the room. The media eventually left and he returned to mingle with the crowd when an apparently deranged man entered the room, said his wife had died, spat on the floor, tossed dead flowers to the ground and aggressively approached Galloway to his face, who was led to safety. 

Police arrived and took the man away. 

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

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