GEORGE GALLOWAY returned to Parliament today with a warning to Sir Keir Starmer that he now speaks for large numbers of traditional Labour voters.

He pledged that his Workers Party would either stand candidates or support independent challengers at the general election in a range of constituencies in London, the west Midlands and the north-west of England.

The Rochdale by-election victor singled out Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner’s Greater Manchester seat as being one of those which “we will either win or ensure that Keir Starmer does not win.”

Mr Galloway renewed his call for former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to form and lead “an alliance, a combination of socialists, progressives and anti-war forces,” and regretted that he had not already done so.

It is not likely that Mr Corbyn will take any such step, leaving Mr Galloway at the head of the Gaza-driven anti-Labour political insurgency.

There was a challenge to Rishi Sunak too, with Mr Galloway warning that the Prime Minister is seeking to exploit Islamophobia as a “wedge issue” in the forthcoming general election.

“The next election will be about attacks on Muslims and the taking away of civil liberties,” he said.

He said that the government was threatening “freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of protest and, indeed, freedom to elect people it doesn’t like,” following Mr Sunak’s extraordinary attack on the Rochdale result last Friday.

Speaking to the media outside the Commons, Mr Galloway renewed his condemnation of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and slammed a BBC reporter as “dripping with imperial condescension” for suggesting that external powers such as Britain should choose the leadership of the Palestinian people.

Mr Galloway was introduced to the Commons by the Father of the House Peter Bottomley and Alba MP Neil Hanvey.

He expressed sympathy with Speaker Lindsay Hoyle over his handling of the controversial Gaza debate, saying he “had been placed in an impossible position by the double-dealing of the Labour leadership.”

The new Rochdale MP also pledged to work for the regeneration of the town, including saving its struggling football club and securing its own postcode, ending its postal status as a subdivision of nearby Oldham.