George Galloway’s pro-Gaza party has a star candidate who has made dozens of anti-Islam tweets, including describing it as a “false religion” and accusing it of being based on “lies”.
Former Rugby Super League star Keith Mason was announced as the party’s candidate in Wakefield, and received a personal endorsement from George Galloway in May.
The video of the pair, filmed in Parliament, saw Mr Galloway describe Mr Mason as “the next MP for Wakefield”.
However despite the party heavily targeting Muslim voters at the election, Mr Mason’s view of the religion appears to be heavily at odds to Mr Galloway’s.
In a number of posts to Twitter/X in 2023, Mr Mason repeatedly described Muhammad as a “false prophet” and a “warlord”.
He added: “He was a murderer and married a 7 year old girl he ain’t no messenger”.
The former rugby star has repeated the insult about the prophet’s young bride on at least three occasions, adding in March last year: “Imagine believing in a man who married a 6 year old”.
In addition to calling Islam a false religion, on two further occasions Mr Mason used the phrase: “Islam without lies dies”.
The comments could prove tricky for a party heavily leveraging the current conflict in Gaza to peel away Muslim voters from Labour at the election.
Speaking after his by-election victory in March, George Galloway said that this election “will be about Muslims”.
He spoke of his hope of picking up “potentially millions of votes from those… who wish to defend the Muslim communities in Britain”.
Mr Mason has also had a number of run-ins with the law, with him claiming he has been arrested over 50 times.
In 2015 the parliamentary hopeful was banned from driving after he crashed into a car carrying a mother and her two daughters before leaving the scene.
After retiring from sport, he later become an actor alongside Mickey Rourke.
Mr Mason is not the first Workers Party candidate to have had controversial social media statements unearthed during the election.
Yesterday the Sunday Telegraph claimed that the party’s candidate for Chesterfield, Julie Lowe, posted a tweet disputing that six million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Meanwhile another candidate shared a social media post belittling Holocaust Memorial Day as a “galactic load of victimhood”.
In April, the Express revealed that one of Mr Galloway’s star candidates – the former MEP Ahmad Bashir – was previously described by Mr Galloway himself as “so untrustworthy as to be unfit to represent voters”.
In 2015 Mr Galloway accused Mr Bashir of failing to have “any real political principles or commitment, only naked opportunism and self-interest”.
When confronted with their past disagreement, Mr Galloway insisted: “There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since [I made those remarks]”.
Both the Workers Party and Mr Mason were approached for comment.
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