Rochdale the UK's capital of conspiracy theory

A by-election in a northern town where antisemitism, Muslim anger, and post-communist politics come together.

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This week I want to look at tensions in the United Kingdom, which are way too high for comfort. The Hamas attack and the Israeli response has led to an explosion of antisemitism. Everyone expects that terrorism will revive. In the middle of it all comes a by-election in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on 29 February, which promises to be brutal.

The Spectator asked me to take a look at it because for years I have written about the alliance between the post-communist left and radical Islamists – the red-brown pact of our day. On the face of it, the Rochdale campaign was following a grim patten of white far leftists amplifying and exploiting Muslim grievance

George Galloway, a tankie who has supported Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad, rolled into town promising to make it a referendum on Labour’s failure to oppose Israel. (That Labour is in opposition, and nothing it says or does has the smallest effect on the Israeli government or Hamas, was irrelevant. As so often, we are in the realm of gesture politics.)

Meanwhile Labour had to suspend its own candidate after he started babbling Jewish conspiracy theories. On top of that the candidate for the radical right Reform party is Simon Danczuk, who used to be the Labour MP, until the party chucked him out for exchanging explicit messages with a 17-year-old. He could win if white backlash politics take off.

Most think that Galloway will take the seat.

But Muslim observers of radical Islam made an interesting point to me that the days when white saviours from the far left could hoover up conservative Muslim votes may be numbered.

In future, they will represent themselves.

Here’s how I summed it up. Nothing cheery to report, I am afraid.

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It is a measure of how conspiracy theories have triumphed in the darkest corners of the left that, when the Labour candidate for Rochdale started banging on about Jews, his rivals in the George Galloway campaign thought he was making a smart political move.