UK’s George Galloway sworn in after by-election win dedicated to Gaza

Newly elected Rochdale MP George Galloway is sworn in at the Houses of Parliament in London, after being elected to the UK parliament on March 1, in a chaotic by-election marred by allegations of antisemitism.

Galloway, 69, first became an MP in 1987 and will return to the House of Commons for the first time since 2015, after winning the seat of Rochdale, in northwest England, by nearly 6,000 votes.

He was elected last week in a turbulent vote, which saw the main opposition Labour Party withdraw its candidate, Azhar Ali, after he touted a conspiracy theory that Israel had allowed Hamas to carry out its deadly attack on October 7, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking an additional 253 hostage.

Galloway, long accused by critics of stoking community tensions, put the Gaza conflict front and center of his campaign in Rochdale, which has a 30 percentage Muslim population.

“Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza,” Galloway, leader of the fringe Workers Party of Great Britain, said in his victory speech last week, referring to the Labour Party’s leader.