Residents in Rochdale have received Labour leaflets calling on people to back their ditched by-election candidate.
The Opposition party’s humiliation continued on Wednesday when the campaign literature backing supporting Azhar Ali began arriving on doormats across the constituency.
Labour withdrew their support for the by-election hopeful who claimed Israel deliberately allowed the October 7 massacre.
The four-page pamphlet – printed before the controversy – comes with a ringing endorsement from senior party figure Andy Burnham who insists he will be a “strong voice” for the region.
Mr Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has his picture on the literature where he also says Ali will be a “powerful champion” for the town.
There are several pictures of Ali wearing a traditional red rosette telling locals to “vote Labour” at the end of the month.
Five local residents are also pictured on the leaflet saying they back Ali’s plan to help improve the town centre and the nearby hospital.
Ali writes: “Residents don’t want empty promises, they want someone with a plan and a commitment to get things done.”
Mr Ali had apologised after he was recorded in a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party suggesting that Israel had taken the October 7 Hamas assault as a pretext to invade Gaza.
But Labour moved to end its backing of the candidate after a newspaper reported that he had blamed “people in the media from certain Jewish quarters” for fuelling criticism of a pro-Palestinian MP.
Mike Katz, chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he would like any party members at the Rochdale meeting to be suspended if they failed to call out the language used.
Mr Katz said: “The idea that somehow we are still in the kind of the bad days of the Corbyn leadership is really ludicrous.
“We have gone through a transformation, the difference is like night and day in the way that we are treated as an organisation, the way that our members are treated.
“This has not been the party’s finest hour. We have huge lessons to learn, but the direction of travel is very much upwards. It’s very much in the right direction.”
Labour continues to face questions about why it took so long for Mr Ali to be suspended, with left-wing critics of Sir Keir’s leadership claiming that factional rivalry is to blame for inconsistency in the handling of complaints.
Voters go to the polls in the Rochdale by-election at the end of the month, with the result now hugely uncertain following the Labour decision to drop support for Mr Ali.
If elected, Mr Ali will sit as an independent MP and will not receive the party whip.
The decision means that Labour will also need to find a new candidate to contest the seat at the upcoming general election.
