Rochdale by-election shows how Gaza conflict is shaping UK politics

George Galloway is an outsized character with an outsized facility for articulating outrage.

And a knack too for locating - by geography and circumstance - the opportunity for it to find expression in the House of Commons once again.

Mr Galloway has now represented four cities and three parties in Parliament.

Glasgow, east London, Bradford and now Rochdale in Greater Manchester.

He has long represented too - with a dextrous fluency even his greatest critics acknowledge - a left-wing fury at what he sees as supine failures of the Labour Party, particularly in the Middle East, from the Iraq war to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

His critics, though, see him as division in a fedora - he's rarely without his trademark hat - stoking anger, not solving problems, they claim.

My phone has pinged with texts from MPs from a range of parties expressing depression at this return to Westminster.

But it is precisely that reaction that Mr Galloway would argue lies at the heart of his appeal: he is different, he is distinctive.

More on the Rochdale by-election

• How worried is Labour after losing Rochdale?

• George Galloway: Latest win for political maverick

• What are George Galloway's pledges for Rochdale?

• What is the Workers Party of Britain?

Labour's contention that he only won here because they didn't stand deserves scepticism.

I was in Bradford 12 years ago when he beat a fully fledged Labour campaign.

Incidentally, he celebrated with the same soundbite then too - that Labour and the Conservatives are "two cheeks of the same backside".

Some lines are sufficiently colourful that their authors can't resist giving them another outing.

And remember, the reason Labour effectively didn't stand here, having disowned their candidate, was itself an illustration of how the Israel-Hamas war divides them.

Mr Galloway now becomes a walking and loudly talking reminder of that and the latest example of how the conflict in the Middle East is shaping our politics.

So where does this leave the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer?

Mr Galloway claimed in one letter sent to folk here that "if Labour lose this by-election, Sir Keir Starmer could well be forced out as Labour leader. Sir Keir Starmer, a top supporter of Israel, out".

We can categorise that as the hyperbole of the campaign trail.

But boy the divisions on the left over Gaza will now have noisy expression on the green benches.

Sir Keir will take some comfort not from the fact that Rochdale is unique.

Demographically, it is not.

There are plenty of communities with a significant Muslim population where the plight of people in Gaza is of particular concern.

What will comfort the Labour leader is not that Rochdale is unique. But that Mr Galloway is.

Finding equivalent candidates who can personify outrage about the Middle East with the longevity, potency and profile of Mr Galloway will be very difficult indeed.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that the titan brands of British politics, not least the Conservatives and Labour, the party of government and the party that aspires to govern soon, were not just humbled but humiliated here.

And we'll hear plenty more about that once Mr Galloway gets to the House of Commons.