Labour has withdrawn its support for Azhar Ali, its candidate for this month’s Rochdale byelection, in the wake of controversial comments he made about the 7 October attacks on Israel.
In line with electoral law, Labour cannot replace Ali with another candidate because the deadline passed on 2 February. He will stand as a Labour candidate on the ballot paper, but if elected he will not hold the party whip and will sit as an independent MP.
Labour sources said that campaigners in Rochdale were told to stop leafleting and social media activity on Ali’s behalf at 5.30pm on Monday – an instruction that came from party HQ.
I’m not sure what else Labour could have done here apart from withdrawing support / replacing him earlier. If a candidate makes comments like this with no evidence… especially such incendiary comments… what is Labour supposed to do?
No evidence? It’s publicly available. See my comment.
From the article:
You can’t be suggesting that the is evidence for this? I don’t think you are and we might have our wires crossed, but just to check.
Yes. That’s literally what happened.