GEORGE Galloway has announced that he is to contest the Holborn and St Pancras by-election as the candidate of the Workers Party.

Mr Galloway highlighted his opposition to Britain’s role in the Ukraine war, an issue which differentiates him from the other major candidates, Green Party leader Zack Polanski and Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali.

However, it was not immediately clear that the Workers Party leader would fight the poll in person.

Mr Galloway has been living outside the country since he and his wife were detained for nine hours by security services at Gatwick airport a year ago.  

He has spent much of the time in China and is presently in South Africa.

He has demanded government guarantees against further harassment before returning. He wrote on X: “Obviously my campaign would be more effective in person.

“But I cannot return without an assurance of an end of the political persecution suffered by me and my family.”

The Workers Party announced his candidacy in a statement: “Our party will offer voters something different.

“We believe the political focus should be centred on wages, housing, energy, peace, public services and national renewal. Currently no other candidate offers the voters this choice.

“The Greens, with their support for the assisted dying Bill and reckless backing for the war in Ukraine, have shown voters they cannot be trusted to make choices that reflect the views of the majority of Britons.”

It said: “We are a socialist party and not a liberal or ‘leftist’ one. We stand for British withdrawal from Nato and an end to British involvement in the war in Ukraine.

“No other party in this by-election can or will say this.”

Mr Galloway also denounced Mr Polanski and said that Green “policies on drugs, abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, crime/punishment, illegal immigration, energy, the economy, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Nato, the EU are all profoundly alien to the mass of the British public.”

Mr Galloway has served seven parliamentary terms over the last 40 years as an MP for the Labour, Respect and Workers parties.

His most recent election contest was in May’s Scottish parliament elections, when he stood on the Glasgow regional list for the Workers Party, polling 0.4 per cent of the vote.

Challenged on social media for standing against the Greens, Mr Galloway referenced the narrow defeat of pro-Palestine campaigner Leanne Mohamad by Defence Secretary Wes Streeting in Ilford North in 2024.

“Wherever we stand, we have to fight the Greens. They stand down nowhere. If not for them, Leanne would be an MP…”