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.

Azhar Ali had been taped putting forward two anti-Jewish fantasies.

In these paranoid circumstances, Galloway and his supporters think his victory is inevitable

First, he declared that the Israeli state had allowed Hamas to massacre Jews. Ali was not quite engaged in the modern equivalent of holocaust denial – that would have meant pretending the massacres never happened. Instead, Israel was meant to have ‘deliberately’ permitted the mass murder, rape and abduction of Jews because it wanted a pretext to devastate the Gaza Strip.

Not content with that, Ali moved closer to home: in a recording he appears to imagine that there was a conspiracy of Jewish journalists targeting a pro-Palestinian Labour politician.

James Giles, Galloway’s campaign manager seemed impressed. That’s the way to do it, he thought. That’s the way you win seats like Rochdale.

‘When I first heard those comments… I thought “my goodness he is trying to win back favour among the Muslim vote”,’ Giles said.

Then Ali went and blew it all by apologising ‘to Jewish leaders for my inexcusable comments’.

‘I thought… he won’t be receiving any votes from people who care about Israel-Palestine,’ Giles continued. ‘You can’t make a comment like that then row back on it very publicly. That’s just, frankly, pissing off everybody.’

So there you have it. The descent into foul and paranoid politics is the way to win in ‘Muslim’ seats.

Labour withdrew its support, although Ali will remain as the Labour candidate for the Rochdale by-election on 29 February because it is too late to change the ballot papers.

In retaliation, Ali’s supporters are urging him to apologise for his apology and campaign as a martyr sacked by Starmer ‘for speaking on Palestine’ rather than lying about Jews.

In these paranoid circumstances, Galloway and his supporters think his victory is inevitable.

Maybe it is. But there are reasons to doubt it. Rochdale is not a majority Muslim town. And it is far from certain whether its population will turn the election into a contest about Keir Starmer’s attitude to a war in the Middle East over which the British Labour party has no influence whatsoever.

Around one in four of Rochdale’s population identify as Muslims. They do not vote as a monolith, and in any case we have a few reasons for thinking that the days when white saviours from the hard left can sweep into constituencies and count on unconditional support are over.

Once they could hoover up votes. I first met Galloway in 2005 when his Respect party was campaigning to take Bethnal Green and Bow from Labour.

Surely, the East End’s Muslim voters wouldn’t back Galloway, I thought in my youthful naivety. He was a tankie from the left’s Stalinist faction. Galloway had gone to Iraq and greeted its dictator Saddam Hussein, with ‘Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability … I can honestly tell you that there was not a single person to whom I told I was coming to Iraq and hoping to meet with yourself who did not wish me to convey their heartfelt, fraternal greetings and support.’

To maintain himself in power Saddam had used poison gas on and killed tens of thousands of (Muslim) Kurds and had slaughtered tens of thousands of (Muslim) Arabs. Surely the (Muslim) East End would not vote for him.

Oh, but they did.

Galloway returned to Parliament in the Bradford West by-election of 2012. In the 2015 general election, he defended the seat in a campaign of Stalinesque brutality. He accused the Labour candidate, Naz Shah, of lying about her forced marriage – an accusation he perhaps thought would play well with conservative Muslim voters.

It did, but not well enough, and he lost. Galloway tried again at the Batley and Spen by-election in 2021, and lost again.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, Muslim commentators told me that there were hints that religious conservatives were no longer content to let hard left carpetbaggers move in.

It is worth looking at it from their point of view.

For years I and others hammered the far left for its alliances with fascistic dictators and the ultra-conservative religious right. Nothing illustrated its moral and intellectual bankruptcy better than the willingness of Jeremy Corybn, Galloway and their comrades to appear on Iran’s Press TV – the propaganda station of a regime that persecutes and kills feminists and socialists.

In its decadence western far-leftism had simply become a cheerleader for anti-western dictatorships.

If you turn that critique around and look at it from the point of view of Muslim activists, the spectacle is equally ugly and absurd.

Among the anti-western dictatorships the far left supported was Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime, which murdered at least 300,000 civilians as it clung on to power.

As the woke left has taken the place of the old far left, it has anathematised ‘white saviours’ who deny minorities agency and take over their struggles.

At least some Muslim activists are asking why Galloway should be exempt from the criticism.

But it is noticeable that in Rochdale, as in Batley and Spen, the Conservatives are not campaigning against Galloway.

In theory, they deplore him. In practice, they welcome anyone who weakens the Labour party. I have had several senior Conservatives mutter to me since 7 October that they hope that somehow Muslim anger will stop Labour winning a majority at the next election.

It’s true that dozens of Labour councillors have resigned. It’s equally the case Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary and many other Muslim Labour politicians are warning of a collapse in trust.

But Tories and far leftists expecting Labour to suffer hugely may be disappointed.

Rob Ford, professor of politics at Manchester University, has been through the polling evidence. He did not think Gaza would have any great effect on the general election.

Ford pointed to the danger of treating British Muslims as an alien presence who do not share everyone else’s concerns about inflation and falling living standards.

Forthcoming by-elections and local elections may change the picture, but as of today all the evidence suggests that, whatever stances the current leadership Labour adopts, whatever wars break out in the Middle East, the settled will of the country is to throw out the Conservatives.

Once Labour is in office it will face huge pressure from its supporters, and its leaders will be praying that the Middle East goes away and leaves them alone.

But for the time being George Galloway and the conspiracy theorists who still flock to him are less important than they like to imagine

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