Keir Starmer has been told Labor may be taking Muslim voters for granted as MPs say the party is struggling to win back support lost over its stance on the Israel-Gaza war.

The warning came after George Galloway’s stunning victory in the Rochdale by-election, taking nearly 40 per cent of the vote. The game was filled with chaos and controversyfocusing on conflicts in the Middle East.

The party’s largest internal Muslim group said the results showed Starmer faced a “full-blown crisis”, while Neil Lawson, director of cross-party campaign group Compass, said Labor could face a slow collapse in support similar to the one seen in the “red” Wall” and Scotland.

After a campaign considered one of the most unfortunate and divisive in recent political history, Azhar Ali Abandoned by the Labor Party After making inflammatory remarks about Israel, it received just 7.7% of the vote, limping home in a distant fourth place.

The decision to sack Ali came too late for Labor to nominate a replacement. “Galloway won because Labor failed to find a candidate,” Starmer said on Friday. “I regret that we have to withdraw our candidate and apologize to the voters of Rochdale.”

While someone backed by Labour’s electoral machine is likely to retain the seat won by the late Tony Lloyd by almost 10,000 votes in 2019, such a resounding victory for Galloway has alarmed some in the party.

“We face a real battle,” one senior backbencher told the Guardian. “It’s going to be chaos. Workers’ Party [Galloway’s party] There will be candidates in the West Midlands, Birmingham, much of the Pennine towns and areas such as Redbridge, Waltham Forest and Newham where Labor votes are divided over Gaza.

“A win for Galloway will also embolden other independent groups backing potential candidates. It would be evil and give the impression that Labor has lost control, which is simply not true. We just need to step up our messaging.”

The chairman of Labour’s Muslim Network says the party is at a “moment of crisis” on the issue. “There is no doubt that there were some extenuating and extraordinary factors in Rochdale that will not be repeated across the country,” said Ali Milani, a former Labor parliamentary candidate who has been Critical of Labor on Gaza. “But I think anyone who thinks this is not evidence that Labor has a serious problem with the trust and support of the Muslim community, which Labor has had for decades, is just burying their head in the sand.”

Lawson said that while it remained to be seen whether the Rochdale election was “a blip or part of a larger trend in terms of support for Labor in the Muslim community”, Labor should be mindful of the impact of a first-past-the-post voting system on the party. (FPTP) has previously glossed over Labour’s slow decline in support in “red wall” seats in Scotland and the north.

“The FPTP encouraged Labor to take large numbers of its voters for granted and think they had nowhere to go,” Lawson said. “The SNP, then UKIP/Brexit, and through them the Conservatives, now the Galloway has proven to be the alternative. Labor MPs and candidates with large Muslim votes today will be nervous. People don’t like to be taken for granted.”

Another lawmaker said that given the problems in Gaza are wider than just Muslim voters evidence of Overall public support for the ceasefire is high. Still, senior Labor figures believe not too much should be read into the so-called “unique” by-election.

“In the short term we have lost support for this conflict. But this should not be exaggerated,” they said. “Galloway is a terrible man. We’ve seen this movie before. He got into parliament but didn’t really do anything until he lost the election.”

A range of independent potential candidates based on a pro-Palestinian message, including a number of former Labor MPs, plan to run in local elections in places such as Bradford in May.

A Labor local government source said: “It might be easier for independents to run for council and that might be worrying if a lot of them win. “But at the same time there is less focus on local elections. .”

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Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said any significant success of a pro-Palestinian candidate in May would be a “huge headache” for Starmer and his team.

“Even if some Labor MPs think they’re at risk, whether that’s true or not, that means they’re going to be looking for help in the general election,” Ford said. “If you want to win the target 150 seats to get a majority, you really don’t want to put Resources move to the seats where you think it’s already imperative.”

Galloway, a controversial former Labor MP who has previously won seats in Bethnal Green and Bow and Bradford West, heralded a victory speech that was interrupted by hecklers What he calls a “shifting tectonic plate” in British politics.

However, the wider results showed more of the chaos, with local businessman David Tully, running as an independent, coming in second, ahead of Conservative Paul Ellison Ellison, who spent much of the campaign on vacation.

Reformist candidate Simon Danczuk, a former Labor MP who was suspended in 2015 for sending inappropriate messages to a teenager, came in sixth.

“If you asked a political scientist to design a by-election in which it was impossible to learn any wider lessons, it would probably look a bit like this,” Ford said.

The Council of Deputies of British Jews said Galloway’s victory was “a dark day for the Jewish community”, calling him a “demagogue and conspiracy theorist who has brought the politics of division and hate to every place he has ever represented in parliament”.