Is Russia secretly backing George Galloway’s new party?

The United Kingdom will hold a national election by the end of January 2025. The latest polling data, and local council election results on Friday, suggest that the center-left Labour Party opposition will unseat the governing center-right Conservative Party and win a massive majority in Parliament.

But spoilers lurk.

One such spoiler comes in the form of Nigel Farage’s Reform party. The original agitator of Britain’s Brexit departure from the European Union, Reform has just one member of Parliament in the 650-seat House of Commons. While the party appears dormant at present, any mobilization later this year might allow it to sever otherwise Conservative-leaning votes in key swing constituencies (the U.K. equivalent to congressional districts). This would be a problem for Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in that the polls show Labour with a 20-point lead. The small population size of some U.K. swing constituencies means that even a limited hemorrhaging of right-wing voters to Reform could lead to additional Labour gains.

Yet Labour faces its own perhaps more significant threat.

Enter George Galloway and his new Workers Party of Britain. A longtime far-Left stalwart, Galloway has served in Parliament on multiple occasions for multiple different parties. Despising the United States and relying on Islamists as a core of his support base, Galloway has previously served as a paid TV host for both Russian and Iranian state television. A sustaining fan of Saddam Hussein, Galloway once saluted the late Iraqi dictator’s “courage, strength,” and “indefatigability” and pledged to be with him until the Islamic reconquest of Jerusalem.

Galloway is also exceptionally smart and a highly adept political operator, however. He knows that the far Left is disenchanted with Labour leader Keir Starmer. These voters wish for the days when Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, was in charge: Where Starmer is a center-leftist, Corbyn was a socialist hard-liner. Galloway wants to capitalize on these feelings to bolster the Workers Party of Britain’s representation in Parliament beyond his sole seat. And via his impeccable credentials with the Islamist Left, Galloway wants to galvanize and exploit voter anger over the war in Gaza.

Galloway is set to present dozens of candidates at the next election. Monty Panesar, a former star England cricketer, will stand for Galloway’s party in a London constituency. Another close ally is deputy party leader Chris Williamson. Like Galloway, Williamson is an avowedly pro-Kremlin figure. Also like Galloway, Williamson hates the U.S., NATO, and Israel. He says that “Israel must be destroyed.”

None of this will go unnoticed in the Kremlin. While Russia’s GRU and FSB intelligence services focus their U.K. operations on attempts at sabotage, assassination, and the theft of military secrets, Russia’s SVR civilian foreign intelligence service has long prioritized its political influence efforts in the U.K. While the SVR has more recently had greater success with the U.K. Conservative Party, Galloway’s ambitions offer Russia a tantalizing prospect. After all, while Galloway’s party will likely only secure a few seats in his best-case scenario, any success will boost the publicity and political potency of anti-NATO and anti-U.S. narratives.

The question must thus be asked as to whether Russia will attempt to fund the Workers Party of Britain covertly. It wouldn’t be that complicated for Russia to do so. The party provides a PayPal link on its website via which donations can be made. This is of note because the Russian intelligence services regularly use sites such as PayPal and Patreon to launder their funding. All one needs is a credit or debit card and a fake address. Moreover, Russian covert support for the U.K. far Left is nothing new.

The Soviet KGB built close links with numerous leftist U.K. politicians and helped to fund various nongovernmental organizations. Russia also attempted to influence the 2019 U.K. election in the far Left’s favor. Prior to that election, Russian hackers stole documents pertaining to a future U.K.-U.S. trade deal. The documents were then leaked and used by Corbyn to suggest that a Conservative victory would mean unpopular U.S. commercial service access to the U.K.’s socialized medical system. While the Conservatives still won by a landslide, Russia’s interest in boosting Corbyn wasn’t exactly complicated. Corbyn opposes NATO, nuclear weapons, and the U.S. alliance.

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Galloway shares all three of those positions, listing “an end to imperialist wars and financial domination, starting with withdrawal from NATO” as his party’s very first policy priority. And not only does Galloway lead an ascendant party that fundamentally opposes the U.K. foreign policy mainstream, but he proclaims the very same policies that nearly destroyed the U.K. economy in the 1970s. Even if only at the margin, Russia can hope that Galloway’s greater position would allow him to pressure Labour further to the left.

Although he has previously earned a lot of Kremlin money via his Russian state media service, Galloway is unlikely to seek covert Russian funding because of the legal and political risks it entails. But considering Russia’s record, Galloway’s ideology, and his party’s rising prospects, Russia’s covert effort at such funding is a significant possibility.