George Galloway and the Inevitable Rise of Identity Politics

Lessons from a UK election

This week in the UK, George Galloway was elected to parliament with a landslide victory in a by-election in Rochdale. On its face, these results are quite remarkable: Galloway finished with almost double the number of votes of his closest rival, an independent who received little media attention, and both soundly defeated the Labour and Conservative candidates.

This was of such concern to the British establishment that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave an address from 10 Downing Street to warn the country of “extremists undermining democracy”. Sunak specifically identified Islamism and far-right extremism as the forces seeking to undermine “the world's most successful multi-ethnic multi-faith democracy”.

I’m no PR guru, but I’m not sure how wise it is to respond to a landslide election victory by saying it undermines democracy. The subtext of this speech was that Galloway had won by appealing to the Muslim population of Rochdale — who make up 30% of the constituency — over their outrage at the war on Gaza.

Voices of official Britain have spent the days since complaining about the “sectarian” and “divisive” nature of Galloway’s campaign, apparently concerned it would further this sectarianism and division to come out and say what they actually mean.

Writing for Unherd, Ralph Leonard spelled out the concern more clearly

Despite making a few milquetoast local pledges — bringing back a maternity hospital and a Primark to “make Rochdale great again” — Galloway’s single-issue campaign was clearly targeted towards Rochdale’s Muslim population that comprise 30% of its population. 

Outside mosques, he campaigned for votes by appealing to the consciences of worshippers. Could they face God on “judgement day” and say they opposed Keir Starmer and the Labour party’s position on the Gaza crisis when they had the chance? He won a by-election in Bradford West in 2012 with a rather similar strategy, where he beat Labour by portraying himself as a champion of oppressed Kashmiri Muslims. 

One interesting aspect of Galloway’s campaign is he produced different election material to appeal to Muslim and White voters. While his appeal to natives focused on family, patriotism and law and order (specifically promising to target grooming gangs), his appeal to Muslims asked they protest Labour’s complicity on the slaughter in Gaza by electing someone with a long track record of standing up for Palestine and Muslims worldwide.

Despite his leftist bona fides, Galloway is one of the last of an older breed of British socialists, and it’s interesting to read his appeal to White voters still taps into family values, rejection of trans ideology, and British patriotism.

Galloway has always been a masterful politician, and his instinct to appeal to White voters on these issues rather than typical left-wing appeals was very wise. This strategy was a success, and for official Britain, this is a worrying sign of something terrible stirring under the feet of the establishment: identity politics. Leonard writes

For most politicians, it has become rote to affirm modern Britain as a multicultural success story. But in reality, in a place like Rochdale, this multiculturalism isn’t a cosmopolitan paradise, but really what Amartya Sen called “plural monoculturalism”. Here different groups live apart with little contact with each other or any sense of shared social space. 

This magnifies ethnic divisions and degenerates politics into nothing more than championing tribal grievances at the cost of enacting a broader social vision for the benefit of all. And while it is doubtful that there will be explicitly Islamic parties like in Germany, or a BNP-style party based on white majoritarian resentment seizing power any time soon, it is the logical endpoint of this ethnic identitarianism. 

While at first it may seem hysterical for the establishment to respond as aggressively as it has to Galloway’s win, in a sense they are correct. In the long run, identity is stronger than ideology. The Gaza war has shown that Muslims in the West still hold great affinity for their brothers in the Middle East, and will be activated politically for their causes. After decades of multiculturalism, Muslims still care more about their issues than any of the domestic policies which will be the topic of debate for the upcoming general election.

The truth is, immigrant groups have always voted in their own interest. They support maintaining open immigration policies, opposing the expression of ethno-nationalism, and engage in all sorts of lobbying efforts for their particular group. The establishment is fine with this, because their desired system is liberal mass democracy, and a diversity of minoritarian groups lobbying on behalf of their own rights while helping to police the public square from outbreaks of populism representing the majority national group maintains the stability of that system.

The difference now, though, is that two of these minoritarian groups — Jews and Muslims — are at odds over the question of support for Israel, there is nothing the Jewish lobby can do to win over most Muslims or White leftists, and that the British government remain totally committed to Zionism. On this one issue, the state’s desired social engineering project reached a limit in the identity of Muslims. It would make political sense for the establishment parties to abandon their slavish support for Israel — a country committing the greatest televised slaughter in history and engaging in ethnic cleansing — but each is subservient to the Israel lobby.