01.10.2026

It’s a two-horse race ... and George Galloway is far behind and campaigning from South Africa

Vote for Palestine

Elections always involve difficult tactical calculations. We favour voting and active participation over sitting on the sidelines in the name of purity. Zack Polanski has supported the pro-Palestine protests and now calls himself an ‘anti-Zionist’. On October 8 that should count. Carla Roberts weighs the pros and cons

The October 8 by-election in Holborn and St Pancras really underlines how weak the left in Britain is. The only candidate with the word ‘communist’ or ‘socialist’ in the given description is Jonathan Silberman from the Communist League - a tiny and bizarre outfit that supported the witch-hunt against the left in the Labour Party.¹ Stay well clear.

Unsurprisingly, Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party is not standing - nor, at the time of writing, is it recommending a vote for a particular candidate. In fact, it has nothing to say on the election (or much else). It might still have ten thousand or so ‘members’ on its books, but it literally does nothing with them. The few ‘official’ branches are tiny and entirely devoid of the kind of buzz and lively discussions between socialists from different backgrounds that the hundreds of proto-branches were once characterised by. The most enthusiastic members have long gone. The short-lived ‘opposition’ by a number of those elected to the YP leadership on Corbyn’s slate, The Many, came to nothing. No surprise.

After the resignations from YP’s central executive committee of leftwingers Sophie Wilson, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and Solma Ahmed, the Grassroots Left has now entirely folded. Meanwhile, Candi Williams and Mel Mullings have politically collapsed. They remain on the CEC and are proudly hosting a national ‘Your Party anti-racism action event’ in Birmingham on October 18. It is bound to be a runaway success. As for Zarah Sultana, she is pregnant and has virtually taken her leave from YP (we wish her well). She now sends out letters as “MP for Coventry”. Your Party might hang on until the Dear Leader decides to formally retire - but as a socialist party that could organise a viable alternative to this rotten capitalist system, it is as dead as a dodo.

But back to the by-election. George Galloway, standing on behalf of his Workers Party of Britain, has got no chance of winning - and he is not even trying. He is conducting his campaign from South Africa, having gone on a speaking tour from his current self-imposed “exile” in Russia, claiming that he cannot safely return to the UK after he and his wife were stopped by counter-terrorism police at Gatwick Airport and questioned for many long hours.

We have called for a vote for Galloway before - most recently in the Rochdale by-election in February 2024 (which he won, before losing to Labour’s Paul Waugh in the general election 54 days later). In the first election he was, in our estimation, the most credible pro-Palestine candidate, and famously shouted after his victory: “Keir Starmer, this is for Gaza!” But this time around he is hardly a credible candidate. As if his social conservatism and nationalism were not bad enough, he has now become an entirely uncritical cheerleader for the regimes in Iran and Russia (his ‘enemy’s enemies’). We suspect his WPB will go the way of YP. Former Labour MP Chris Williamson has already quit as deputy leader. A sign of things to come.

Some on the left, particularly those infected by identity politics, have fooled themselves into supporting Labour’s candidate, Sagal Abdi-Wali: She is a black, a Muslim and a woman - and she has been attacked by rightwingers who claimed she was a “Somali asylum-seeker” and therefore ineligible to run. As it turns out, she arrived in the UK as a child refugee in the 1990s and holds official British citizenship. She is also the leader of Camden council, an arch careerist and an unapologetic Starmerite … er, now a Burnhamite, of course.

She pointedly pulled out of a husting organised by the Camden Muslim Network on September 22. Although a devout Muslim, she clearly did not want to answer questions about the Labour government’s ongoing support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. She probably knew that she would not have got away with aping the pathetic efforts of Ed Miliband to feign outrage over “illegal Israeli settlements” while carrying on business as usual with Israel.

She was less busy two days later, when she attended a husting organised by the Jewish Board of Deputies. When asked whether she was a Zionist, she replied: “I believe in a two-state solution”- which is, of course, no solution at all. Not only will Israel not agree to it: any such a ‘solution’ would see nothing more than a Palestinian bantustan, not a strong independent sovereign state. According to the Jewish Chronicle, she also said she had proudly stood alongside Sir Keir as he “tackled anti-Semitism within Labour”, and she “joined the other candidates, with the exception of Polanski, in saying that Zionism was not racism”.²

We are not auto-anti-Labourites and do not automatically dismiss it as ‘thoroughly bourgeois’, as many left groups do (some of them having discovered this only after they were kicked out). We believe that the affiliation of the unions in particular means that Labour is still a ‘bourgeois workers’ party’. Labour’s politics are thoroughly bourgeois, of course, but its social base ensures ongoing and important links with the organised workers’ movement. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader showed how quickly things can change. But in the case of the October 8 by-election, a vote for the Labour candidate would be the wrong tactical call.

Green Party

That leaves Green Party leader Zack Polanski. His candidature is not without risk; he might well not have his ‘Hannah Spencer moment’. And, should he lose to Labour big time, this could seriously dent the Green Party’s image as the rising opposition kid on the block. Labour’s ‘Burnham bounce’ has already taken its toll on the Greens, with the admittedly fickle polls showing support dropping from a high of 21% to about 13%, according to YouGov.

We should expect Burnham’s well crafted Liverpool conference speech to give Labour some considerable further momentum. Politically, it was very astute and shifts Labour to the left by that vital inch or two with the big promise on social care and revisiting EU membership. Burnham has his eye firmly on the next general election and remaining PM for a second term. Even the announcement on the triple lock was well timed … not now, but after the general election.

Burnham’s speech has certainly gone down well amongst Labour members and supporters. We even hear talk of the Socialist Campaign Group dissolving itself (there will certainly be those now looking for ministerial positions). The former Labour member, Owen Jones, welcomed the speech, claiming that it had vindicated the left’s arguments when it comes to austerity, corporate power and public ownership. So will Owen be rejoining? We shall see.

Nevertheless, Polanski is in with a fighting chance in what is a two horse race … and clearly the main issue for him and for us is Palestine. Indeed, he used his September 24 hustings organised by the Board of Deputies to describe himself - for the first time - as an “anti-Zionist”. Good, though it has taken him long enough. When asked whether Zionism was a form of racism, he replied: “I think there’s a problem with definitions. It means different things to different people. If you’re defining Zionism as a displacement genocide, which is how, in practice, Zionism has become, then that is racism.”³

That sums up Polanski’s problem - trying to have his cake and eat it. No, Zack, there has never been a non-racist Zionism. Zionism is inverted anti-Semitism. It too considers Jews a race - a race of outsiders, who will always face persecution from those they live amongst. It explains the disdain for assimilation and the dogma of eternal anti-Semitism. Instead of demanding equality and fighting anti-Semitism, it should be accepted as a fact of nature, a norm, a perfectly understandable reaction to the presence of Jewish “strangers”.⁴ Only when the Jews ‘return to Zion’ will they become a ‘normal people’.

As a career politician (he only switched from the LibDems in 2017) he is keen to show the establishment just how responsible he is. It is a very delicate balancing act: posing left, all the while touting the idea of a European (capitalist) defence pact as an ‘alternative’ to Nato. Touring trade union conferences, while assuring medium and big business that he is no anti-capitalist. The Greens’ spring conference removed their previous commitment to nationalise “the five largest energy supply companies”.⁵ He is speaking out in solidarity with the Palestinians, while continuing to mobilise against the entirely harmless ‘Zionism is racism’ motion that is going to the Green Party conference in Brighton (he no doubt had a hand in making sure it fell off the agenda at their online spring conference). Meanwhile, he happily watches on, as his party expels anti-Zionists like Tony Greenstein. Nor has he made any attempt to overturn the Greens’ commitment to the IHRA misdefinition of anti‑Semitism (adopted under former leader Caroline Lucas, with his outspoken support⁶).

In other words, Polanski is eager to appear both radical and responsible. He envisages the Greens joining some coalition government in the future (Burnham’s vague talk on proportional representation will certainly encourage Green ministerialism).

Critical vote

We would have preferred it if there was a better choice. Andrew Feinstein, having won almost 19% in the last general election, said that he is “unable” to stand and has urged people to vote for Polanski. The Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB too has decided, “on balance”, to call for a tactical vote for Polanski. He is the most credible pro-Palestine candidate in this election. Yes, that is not saying much. But a victory for Polanski on October 8 would be an important ‘two fingers up’ to Labour’s ongoing support for the genocidal government of Israel.

An alternative to voting Labour, Green or WPB would be calling for spoiled ballot papers - the weakest call you can make in an election. There are some CPGB members, myself included, who would still - marginally - prefer such a call. In any case, as should be clear enough from the above, we are not cheerleaders for either the Greens or Polanski.

Many on the left have convinced themselves - wrongly - that a vote for the Greens presents a real challenge to the system. It does not. It is not an anti-capitalist party, let alone one that fights for socialism. Polanski cannot “stay red”, as the October 8 Socialist Worker editorial demands⁷, because he has never been red. This can only sow illusions in a party that, at best, wants to tweak capitalism, not abolish it.

Even worse is the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which sends members into the Green Party on “reconnaissance” missions, trying to pick off primarily young, radicalised members; while the equally pro-imperialist Anti-Capitalist Resistance wants “working alliances with green activists”, which would “help efforts to make the green movement more [!] anti-capitalist”.⁸

The CPGB’s call to vote Polanski comes without sowing such daft illusions. And it certainly is not a blanket call for the Green Party in any future elections, let alone a general election. It is merely a tactic.