https://www.politico.eu/article/pro-palestinian-firebrand-george-galloway-win-rochdale-by-election-blow-for-uk-labour/
Labour says sorry as veteran left-winger who ran a stridently pro-Palestine campaign grabs seat.
This is how representative democracy works, none of the presented options are likely to be "perfect" for any given voter.
I can't imagine how a representative democracy would operate otherwise. In representative democracies you're picking some person to make decisions on your behalf, and that person is different from you so some of their decisions are not going be the ones you would have made if you were in their place.
You may be wanting direct democracy, in which you would personally get to vote on the government's actions. Your "representative" would be perfect in that case because your representative would be you. But since you would only represent yourself, that's not what would normally be called "representative democracy."
And replace it with what? The only two basic forms of democracy are representative and direct, and direct democracy has its own problems.
Sortion, but dont shink of it as randomly choosing to fill a parliament. The scope and scale of task assigned a selected group of representatives must be kept small and the frequency in which people are chosen myst be high. Fortunately there is plenty of example in the process of jurior selection.
GALLOWAY: "Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are two cheeks of the same backside, and they both got well and truly spanked tonight!"
He was my local (Bradford) MP and he was absolutely useless. The main has a fragile ego and is totally dedicated to himself. He is an opportunist politician and Rochdale will suffer for it.
I'm sorry Rochdale, it's going to be a rough few years...
Hard to tell if Labour lost support for running an anti-Semitic candidate, or if they lost support for disowning him shortly before the election. He was going to end up independent even if he won.
Be interesting to see if he can keep that seat in the general election which must surely come this year. Probably depends on George being a decent hardworking MP for the locals, rather than going on TV pretending to be a cat again. Probably also depends on how long Israel attack Gaza for. Doesn't show any signs of getting better so far.
I can't see Labour remaining pro-Israel. They've got way too many Muslims supporting them to risk that, while at the same time the anti-Semite allegations that have plagued Labour for decades hang over them. Just about anything they do risks upsetting someone.
Azhar Ali.
It was too late to take him off the ballot papers by the time they realised they didn't want him any more, meaning they effectively didn't field a candidate.
But Labour was forced to publicly suspend its campaigning for its candidate in the seat, Azhar Ali, after he claimed Israel had “allowed” the Hamas attacks on October 7.
RTFA
Are we calling people who tell the truth antisemites now? Or did he say anything actually antisemitic?
I don't think it's really a blow for Labour, given their withdrawal of support for their own candidate.
Had they had a normal by-election campaign and still lost to Galloway, then that would be a blow. This is just weird circumstance, and a political opportunist making the most of it.