 The competitive nature of the batley and spend by-election is a good thing. It's positive that Labour are having to compete for votes of Muslim voters rather than taking them for granted and it's positive that there are demands on Stammer's party to take some positions instead of just going into a by-election saying the Tories are bad and hoping for the best. However, there has also developed a darker side to the campaign in batley and spend and sadly in the constituency where Joe Cox was murdered, this has included political violence. The Guardian spoke to Dr Abdul Rahman Rajpura, a GP who was canvassing with former MP Tracy Brabren when another volunteer was attacked. The incident took place this Sunday. The Guardian reports Rajpura described being asked to look at a campaigner who had been knocked to the ground and kicked while on the floor. He was shaking and bleeding from the right side of his head, he said. Police were called. The former GP helped him find his glasses which had been knocked to the floor and headed back up the road with a young woman by his side. Then he says an Asian man in a mask threw eggs which hit his leg and smashed dirtying his clothes. I thought oh my lord this could be a stone. Rajpura said he wished he could catch the assailant but was unable to because of my age. That's clearly I think the most worrying thing we've heard from the constituency. There have also been fake leaflets distributed when it comes to dirty tricks going on. This is a fake Labour leaflet showing Starmer taking the knee and pledging that the party will be fighting white privilege. It's a fake Labour leaflet and it reads, the Labour Party are committed to representing the BAME community and supporting Black Lives Matter. The Labour Party believes that it is high time that white people acknowledged their privilege and gave something back to people of colour. Keir Starmer was proud to take the knee for Black Lives Matter. Will you join them? The back of the leaflet says, Labour believes that the biggest threat to our precious multicultural society is whiteness and as a community we must tackle that threat head on. Clearly trying to stoke up resentment and of course Labour would not put out a leaflet saying such ridiculous things to say during a campaign. As far as I know, no one has claimed responsibility for the leaflets. Also important to note that no one has been arrested for the attacks at least that's according to the latest reportage I've been looking at. That of course all means that we don't know which campaign if any is behind the leaflet and the attacks. However, when discussing the general divisiveness of the campaign, Labour activists have been mentioning George Galloway. Now again, it's worth repeating with these two cases I've just described I have absolutely no idea whatsoever who's responsible. I don't have evidence to connect them to George Galloway or to anyone else. I do think there probably is something to the claim that Galloway is on one level fighting quite a dirty campaign and to make that point, to explore that point, I want to return to a incident we talked about last Friday. This is a clip of the moment that Labour candidate, Kim Leadbeater, who is gay, was subjected to homophobic harassment I suppose last Friday. This is where I live. This is my community. Don't come here and shout at me in the street. The Muslim community of values spend deserve better than this. I'm asking you, are you going to support Muslim parents? Are you supporting us? Kim, I'm here. Answer the question. Why are you running? Kim, I'm here to talk to you. Are you going to support Muslim parents who don't want their children to learn about... So speak to this gentleman. We are going to chase Labour. We are going to chase Labour at every step. Now, as we said on Friday's show, the man harassing Kim Leadbeater is Shaquille Afzah. He's an anti-LGBT activist from Birmingham and he was not part of George Galloway's entourage. It's worth repeating that because there were some people online suggesting that was the case. However, it does seem to be the case that he was, at least tacitly, supporting George Galloway. This is some more footage from that same day. You heard. If you've got a credible candidate, you feel you can vote for him and he was very clearly pointing at George Galloway. Now, I don't really like the politics of blaming politicians for what their supporters do without any further evidence. Jeremy Corbyn was terrible because Nick Griffin once said he was supporting Jeremy Corbyn or whatever. This was always just trouble-making. It didn't mean that there was a genuine connection between the two people. However, in this instance, I don't think it is really reasonable for George Galloway or his supporters to claim it's a complete coincidence that homophobes are supporting his campaign. This is part of one of George Galloway's recent stump speeches in badly in Spain. I am very concerned about what's taught in the schools. Some of you won't like this. I'm the father of five school-aged children and I don't want my young children at primary school, aged seven and nine, taught about sex. I don't want them taught how to masturbate. I don't want them taught about anal sex. I don't want them taught that there's 99 genders. I don't want them taught that men can become women by the mere act of declaring themselves to be and end up in an Olympic team beating the actual girls and the actual women that parents' chest feed when, in fact, it's women who breast feed glory to women and women for that half the sky. This kind of woke liberal identity politics is anathema to me. So I want parents' views on what their children are taught and when they're taught it to be taken properly into account and in this area that is not happening. Now that was a lot of anti-LGBT dog whistles to include in a one and a half minute clip. So I think it's pretty clear that he is, for political reasons, trying to whip up fear about LGBT inclusive education and I mean, in general, the politics of LGBT issues more generally. Owen, again, from your experience being in the constituency from talking to George Galloway and from talking to, I suppose, supporters of the various campaigns, how dirty do you think George Galloway's campaign has been here? And I mean, do you think it's fair, I suppose, that not necessarily direct but potentially indirect connection I've drawn between that harassment of Kim Leadbiter on grounds about LGBT education and then George Galloway talking about those issues himself? He's an arch social reactionary who voted for the Conservative Party earlier this year. He's someone who in 2014 denounced correctly Nigel Farage for whipping up prejudice against Johnny Foreigner and then campaigned alongside him. He said, you know, he'd campaign for a main like anyone with any brain cells and then obviously was an arch prexiteer. Said some pretty grim things about Donald Trump which weren't exactly making clear his staunch opposition to the former president. And on the social issues you can hear he sounds like Lawrence Fox. I've personally interviewed, I'll get his name right, yeah, interviewed Shaquille Afsa, myself and I do think there needs to be some demarcation there because this is a landlord property developer who's headed these anti-LGBTQ protests which I made documentary about two years ago in Birmingham and he will opportunistically jump on anything essentially. But and equally Labour has their own questions to answer because if you take for example back in 2019 Roger Godsef, the Labour MP who backed, he was a Birmingham MP, he backed the anti-LGBT protests, the NEC rightly withdrew support from him. The Chief Whip, Nick Brown at the time backs the move, but some including Tom Watson spoke against having the Whip withdrawn from him. And there were sections of the Labour right who clearly don't have an exact, who now run the party, don't exactly have an example record. In fact I should mention Shabana Mahmood who is the National Campaign Coordinator of the Labour Party who back in 2019, condemned at the time, spoke about how the religious background of peoples and the age appropriateness of conversations should be taken to account when teaching RSE in relation to LGBTQ issues. Now what George Galloway said there's a pack of lies incidentally, education, inclusive education as being taught in these schools doesn't teach young children about sex, nothing about sex whatsoever, let alone being taught how to masturbate, these are crotesque lies. What you do is you have these books for example which show people with some children have mixed-race parents, some have two mothers. I mean that's literally the education that they're taught and they're taught that's okay, that's fine, families come in different shapes or sizes, these families exist, we should respect difference, that's all they're taught, that's correct, obviously people should support that. In terms of though, and I suppose the caveat I would add, I mean that's why as I said George Galloway is an archery actually and no progressive should ever support him, there will be a narrative that Muslim disillusionment is not being driven by legitimate concerns, namely issues like Palestine and Kashmir, namely their sense of Islamophobia not being dealt with within the Labour Party, their sense of being marginalised by the Labour leadership and the Labour Party not taking them for granted, but rather by homophobia and anti-Semitism and that's simply just not true because anyone who's been to batley and spend will testify that when they speak to local Muslim voters that actually those issues are not being raised at all, spontaneously ever, issues like those I've just mentioned are, in fact some have told me that the only incidents they've heard of people voters making homophobic comments about Kim Ledby to come from old white voters, now George Galloway actually in that speech may well be aiming at those kind of you know Lawrence Fox types I suppose in batley and spend that it would be a grave error to understand any problems, significant problems the Labour Party suffered being as a result of being driven in any significant way by Muslim voters being homophobic and or anti-Semitic, that doesn't mean as I've just done and you've done George Galloway should not be explicitly condemned and explicitly opposed by people on the left, he's not our friend he should be treated as an enemy he's in league with profound reactionaries and we shouldn't throw minorities under a bus even if you think the Labour leadership deserves a punch in the nose, but nonetheless you know that's the nuance I suppose that yes there's Birmingham anti-LGBT protest that opportunistically jumps in any bandwagon to further his agenda, yes there is react deeply reactionary elements of of this charlatan this demagogue George Galloway but that's not the primary reason that Labour are suffering in any sense in batley and spend Muslim voters voted for Labour for years when Labour was introducing pro-LGBTQ policies so that's clearly not the overriding concern whatsoever it's the issues I've just raised and they also voted for Labour when they had a Jewish leader well I was just saying I mean Ed Miliband actually he's the only Labour leader to call himself a Zionist and a Muslim voter still overwhelmingly voted for him that is interesting and I think it is super important because we're going to hear a load of bullshit over the next couple of days basically if Labour loses to make that distinction between voters and the candidate because George Galloway is an objectionable candidate in many many ways but many of the people voting for him and voting for him for very good reasons actually which is that on some issues he is talking in a way which means that it seems like he gives a shit about Muslim voters on issues such as Palestine and Kashmir and if Keir Starmer had been strong on those issues then yeah maybe George Galloway would have appealed a few homophobic voters off from any community from all communities in the area but he definitely wouldn't be mounting an effective challenge that he is right now if Keir Starmer hadn't seemed so weak so wet when it came to these foreign policy issues so it will be the case that ultimately if Labour loses they only have themselves to blame and anyone who I think Owen's actually put this very well in a recent video on his YouTube channel the people who are saying oh if Labour loses it's because of reactionary voters we don't want them anyway one that's electorally stupid but two it is cynical opportunistic and is intended I mean solely to get Keir Starmer off the hook even if the by-product is to increase Islamophobia in Britain which I think is a real danger if some of these Starmerites can't I suppose get some perspective here