At about 2.45am on Friday March 1 last week is the moment that Rishi Sunak is understood to have realised that extremism in the UK and on the streets had truly got out of control.
A very senior government source described the result where far-left former Labour MP George Galloway comfortably won a bitter and poisonous Rochdale by-election as “a moment of horror for us all”.
They knew it would lead to the “horrifying” moment today at 2.30pm when Galloway was sworn in as an MP “on the back of a campaign which pandered to anti-Israel Islamic extremism”.
The source went on: “The Prime Minister and all of us knew then that this is something to be incredibly worried about. It was a real ‘break the glass and get out the emergency speech’ moment. We could not sit back.”
Indeed, it was what led Mr Sunak to come out at 5.30pm that evening to deliver his speech from the steps of Downing Street on extremism.
While he missed out the far left, he identified Islamists and the far right but specifically named Galloway who earlier in the week he had described in Parliament as antisemitic.
The by-election had shown the Prime Minister and, according to sources, his Home Secretary James Cleverly a number of things.
First was that Labour had lost control of the antisemitic, extremist element within its own party and could not be trusted to keep a lid on the problems which had exploded under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
The decision to ditch their candidate Azhar Ali after he had been selected and after Sir Keir Starmer had sent senior MPs to defend him when it was revealed he had pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories against Israel showed that Labour was “a complete mess on the issue”, the source noted.
But here it is understood that Sunak and Cleverly disagreed. With Galloway basking in the glory of his victory, Cleverly, much more political by nature, is understood to have wanted to go on the attack on Labour while the Prime Minister wanted to have a moment of unity against extremism in his speech.
This may be why the “far left” were not mentioned but it feels like the battle with Labour on an issue which could define the election is not far away.
The second factor was the nature of the by-election, where Galloway went around with what seemed to be Islamic henchmen and other candidates, particularly Reform’s Simon Danczuk, complained of intimidation and threats.
But it was the way that the campaign centred around Gaza, hatred of Israel, apparent pandering to antisemitism and what seemed to be an encouragement of Islamist extremism which was what did it for the Prime Minister.
The senior source said: “There is a recognition that things have to change – we have to draw a line in the sand here and go on the front foot to tackle this issue.,”
There has been widespread anger over how the police, especially in London, have taken a soft approach to the demonstrations, attacks on Jews and regular uses of extremist language whether it is the song “from the river to the sea” being sung in Whitehall or beamed on to Big Ben or the comparisons of Israel as Nazis on placards.
The source said: “I think we all realised that a new approach is needed and that was the real message of the Prime Minister.”
It was perhaps directed to the police most of all.
But there is also a recognition that “this should have been stopped 20 years ago.”
The source said: “Obviously it would have been better if it had been dealt with 20 years ago, but the next best thing to do is deal with it now. and that’s what we are going to do.”
