George Galloway, Britain’s Wildest and Most Controversial Lawmaker, Wins Election

George Galloway, a controversial and outspoken critic of Israel and U.S. foreign policy, is set to return to to British Parliament after winning by-election Thursday night which he hailed as a victory “for Gaza.”

The veteran campaigner, who once served in the U.K.’s Parliament as a Labour lawmaker before his expulsion from the party over his opposition to the Iraq war, used his speech after winning nearly 40 percent of the vote in the Rochdale constituency to attack the incumbent Labour leader, Keir Starmer. “You will pay a high price for the role that you have played in enabling, encouraging and covering for the catastrophe presently going on in occupied Gaza, in the Gaza Strip,” Galloway said.

The by-election in northwest England had been triggered by the January death of the incumbent Labour lawmaker Tony Lloyd. Galloway repeated a strategy of appealing to Muslim voters in the ensuing race, putting the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas at the heart of his campaign. In campaign materials, Galloway explicitly attacked Starmer for his support for “Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.