Farrukh Dhondy | Democracy can be dodgy: The war in Gaza still plagues UK’s Labour Party

“They said that sleep was innocent

Yet we find it full of guilt

With fantasies and enmities

From which our dreams are built.

Yet sleep is always welcome

As long it’s not eternal

Which sleep will ultimately lead

To heaven or to the infernal.”

From A Humble Kambal, by Bachchoo

Dodgy are the uses of democracy. which can turn to resembling the toad -- ugly and venomous -- and yet hope springs eternal -- that it wears a precious jewel in its head. (Quite enough of Shakespearean parody -- Ed)

Winston Churchill called it the best worst system, and added that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter”. He didn’t live long enough to have even a half-minute conversation with Donald Trump supporters in the United States.

Some of these supporters are educated professionals, some are salt of the earth.

What makes them supporters of a -- OK, I won’t characterise Dump, everyone knows about his attitudes to race, to women, to immigrants, to other nations, to Nato, to the US Constitution -- and the word Trump is synonymous with ignorance and vulgarity -- but do the MAGAwallahs care? Oh democracy, our democracy!

And so, move to those countries which don’t support, through the one-person-one-vote system, a maniac such as Trump, but support leaders who appeal to voters through pre-democratic or atavistic allegiances: religion, a nostalgia for lost empire, a myth of national greatness, xenophobia, racism…

The vote in several nations of Europe is predominantly influenced today by a reaction against the mass migrations of populations in a globalised world. There is Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist government in Italy, Viktor Orban’s EU-dissenting party in Hungary, Vox in Spain, the “Sweden Democrats”, Portugal’s Islamophobic Chega… One could go on!

Then there are the “democratic” countries who fall for appeals to religious dogma and ideologies of political antagonism to other religions. Mother democracy gives power to these factions which then commit matricide -- killing the very things like freedom of expression and protection of minorities that democracy should stand for.

But having said all those profound things, gentle reader, I give you now the current, if minor, travesty of the democratic process and appeal -- and that is the story of the coming byelection to the Westminster Parliament in the constituency of Rochdale.

The byelection, owing to the death of Sir Tony Lloyd, the former Conservative MP, has a list of eight candidates.

The Labour candidate, chosen before the closing date for nominations on February 2, is one Azhar Ali. This candidate asserted at a public meeting that Israel had allowed Hamas to carry out the attacks and the taking of hostages on October 7, 2023 in order to have a reason to attack Gaza and seize territory.

This conspiratorial opinion displeased Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, whose one big play for popularity is distancing himself and the Labour Party from the supposed (though I personally disagree) anti-Semitism embraced and/or allowed by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

The Israeli slaughter in Gaza has put the Labour Party in a bit of a quandary. It is no surprise that the Muslim population of the UK, whose decisive votes have contributed to the election of 31 Labour MPs in this Parliament, are avid supporters of the Palestinians and opposed to the Israeli genocide of civilians and demolishing of Gaza’s cities.

Keir Starmer has apparently decided that his stance of coming down hard on any “anti-Semitism” will keep the “red wall” working class voters and the intellectual middle classes on Labour’s side and despite their sympathies with Gaza, the Muslim vote will, in substantial numbers, have nowhere else to go.

Azhar Ali, very calculatedly, apologised unreservedly for his remarks and said he was completely mistaken -- and I say “calculatedly” because he didn’t mean the apology. He had got his real opinions across to the Muslims of Rochdale and now offered his tongue-in cheek apology to stop Labour disowning him. Nevertheless, according to reliable newspaper reports, he continued to hold the opinions, or similar anti-Israeli opinions for which he had apologised. The Labour Party then said that it doesn’t support him even though on February 29, when the byelection takes place, his name will appear on the ballot paper as the Labour candidate.

His calculation is certainly that he will get a, possibly decisive, majority of the Muslim vote and enter Parliament as an Independent MP now that Labour has disowned him.

There is, of course, the possibility that it may not happen. He is opposed by one George Galloway, a maverick politician who was once in Labour but was thrown out of the party for obsequiously supporting Sadaam Hussein during the UK-US war against him two decades ago. Galloway went on to win a parliamentary seat in the majority Muslim constituency of Tower Hamlets, defeating the Jewish Labour candidate. He is now campaigning in Rochdale wearing a Palestinian-colours scarf and may draw a substantial portion of the Muslim vote.

The other candidates, from the Conservative, Lib-Dem and Green parties and Independents, are not campaigning on any Palestinian platform, but rather pushing their parties’ national and local policies. Except for Simon Danczuk, a former Labour MP for Rochdale who was dismissed in 2017 for sending sexual material to a 17-year-old. He is standing for the Reform UK party, a new extreme right-wing essentially anti-immigration group.

No predictions.