An important by- election was held in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, last Thursday. I followed the results, on and off, on the BBC’s live internet feed.

There were eleven candidates. The two candidates for the mainstream leftwing parties (Labour and the Greens) had been disowned by their own parties for making allegedly racist comments. Since they were about opposing racial or religious groups, one might imagine that they would cancel each other out, with supporters of each racial/religious group cleaving to the leftwing candidate who insulted the other. But it was not to be.

At 3.31 am, while waiting for the result, the BBC interviewed one of the eleven candidates:

The Rev Mark Coleman who stood as a Just Stop Oil campaigner said the election has been “an absolutely amazing experience”. He added: “I felt a real privilege and talking to the people of Rochdale. It is not like going to say come to a meeting or buy some double glazing.  This is like saying, can I have your vote. And they want to know why so I’ve had to explain myself. What the platform is what we want to do. But they inevitably say we don’t trust politicians. I know it’s a bit of a cliche, but people like local candidates but we are all local candidates and some of the other candidates are not so local, so we have that sense of what’s wrong. And what’s possible. In the community. And, yes. I’m talking a bit about a global issue. The climate, the economy. But you cannot separate local from national. Because if there’s no food in the supermarkets that will happen throughout the country. And the solutions are a national and International. Rochdale’s heart for the people of Gaza is his enormous. People are so sad to see the suffering there. So I’ve been moved by their compassion and kindness.”

The BBC later added more detail:

Mark Coleman is a long-time climate campaigner and Just Stop Oil supporter who was imprisoned for taking nonviolent direct action.The 64-year-old worked as a vicar in Rochdale town centre until he retired in 2020 due to Parkinson’s disease. Mr Coleman said: “The people of Rochdale deserve the truth – and that is we need radical action on climate right now to stand any chance of a safe and stable future. Government policies have put us well on the way to climate hell, and the Labour Party is willing to let that happen. “I want the people of Rochdale to be able to ‘vote change’ in this election to show they want failing Westminster politicians to step up and defend our future.”

And the BBC added an audio of his “one minute manifesto” which I transcribe here:

I’m Mark Coleman. Our leaders are failing us. They won’t protect us. They are enabling the death of massive numbers of our fellow human beings. The killing in Gaza must stop with a permanent ceasefire. Investing in new oil & gas will bring climate breakdown & kill millions of people. Labour in power won’t revoke Tory new oil & gas licences and they will burn our future. Big oil companies are making obscene profits, while we struggle to pay energy bills. We pay them billions of pounds a year in subsidies & tax breaks. They should pay for free home insulation & retrofit for all & free electric local public transport. If elected, my job is to get your voice heard. I will set up a people’s assembly to bring communities together so that we can agree what’s best for Rochdale. This way, you will have your actual voice in Parliament. This is the future of politics. Vote Mark Coleman to protect our communities.

The BBC announced the result at 3.47am. Few would be tuned in at that hour, so they repeated the results at 7.06am under the headline: “A resounding win for Rochdale’s new MP” without actually naming him in the headline. I wouldn’t like to upstage our national broadcaster, so I won’t name him either. 

At 6.17am the BBC gave us a short extract from his victory speech:

“.. during which orange confetti was thrown in his direction by a rival candidate. A heckler also accused [him] of being a climate change denier, and you can watch that moment below:

[I watched it but couldn’t catch the comments. The new MP waited for the end of the intervention and then continued his speech, announcing: “I want to put the council on notice that we intend to clean the Town Hall Clock”]

The BBC added more detail:

Rev Mark Coleman – who ran in the by-election as an independent candidate – produced a box of orange confetti and threw it in G***’s direction as he began addressing the hall. Coleman is a long-time climate campaigner and Just Stop Oil supporter who was imprisoned for taking nonviolent direct action. Another climate change protester could be heard heckling from somewhere in the room too, which led to quite a long pause in the speech.

[Call me a rightwing authoritarian, but you’d think a bloke with a criminal record who’s already done time would hesitate before throwing things at a newly elected MP, especially in Greater Manchester, following the bombing in 2017 that killed 22 people.]

At 8.52am the BBC gave “the results in full” for a second time – “results in full” which in fact only listed half the candidates, thus obscuring the fact that the BBC’s favorite, the Reverend Mark Coleman, was one of five candidates to get just 1% of the vote, the others being two independents with the same surname, the allegedly racist Green, and the Monster Raving Loony Party. 

[Never underestimate the Monster Raving Loonies. Back in the last century they beat one David Steel – a politician who was widely tipped as a future prime minister – into seventh place in a by-election, leading to his utter humiliation and subsequent elevation to the House of Lords.]

What to make of this election, in which the two leftwing parliamentary parties – Labour and the Greens – were utterly humiliated for reasons that remain obscure to the BBC, along with the rest of the left-leaning media?  

Let’s leave the last word to another leftwing journal, the New Statesman where Anoosh Chakelian writes:

“..  in the centre of Rochdale, one politician remained defiant. A statue of John Bright looked out at the nearby hills rising above his birthplace. One of the great Victorian free traders and liberals, Bright is perhaps best remembered in parliamentary history for his appeal to the House of Commons against the Crimean War: “The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.” It was a speech delivered in vain then, and now, with tens of thousands dead abroad, the angel’s wings return to beat our fractured land.”

And right on cue, just this week Chancellor Scholtz of Germany, our oldest ally (remember, Germans helped us defeat the Romans, and Napoleon, and valiantly opposed our current enemy Russia in 1942) revealed that the British Army is active again in Crimea, scene of that  famous military exploit celebrated in Lord Tennyson’s poem, “the Charge of the Light Brigade”:

They that had fought so well 
Came thro’ the jaws of Death, 
Back from the mouth of Hell, 
All that was left of them, 
Left of six hundred.

That was not the Climate Hell predicted by the Just Stop Oil candidate, who received 455 votes (all that was left of them.) It was the real thing.