In response to George Galloway's byelection victory in Rochdale, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivered one of the most bewildering, rambling, pointless speeches Mirror columnist Keir Mudie has ever seen.

Early hours of Friday morning and up pops one of those election “experts” assuring puzzled viewers: “Galloway is not that big of a deal.” These people just get more and more wrong, don’t they?

A few hours after Mr Galloway’s win in Rochdale – more of that in a second – and our politicians began behaving strangely. First, Mr Starmer apologised to the people of Rochdale. Fair enough, although a little unnecessary. A touch of arrogance, too – it’s all Labour’s doing for not fielding a candidate, etc. No allowance for the agency of the people of Rochdale.

Still, it was nothing compared to the PM. I can’t describe the sort of language that went around when he decided to call a press conference at 5.45pm. “Who in their right mind calls a press conference at teatime on a Friday? In Downing Street? When it’s raining?” one staffer said to me. “It has to be an election.”

It wasn’t an election. Rather, one of the most bewildering, rambling, pointless speeches I’ve ever seen. Mr Sunak, bizarrely spooked by Mr Galloway, talked for a decent 10 minutes about the threat to UK democracy we’re currently facing.

I don’t think we are. Neither does Amnesty. I’d like to run their quote in full because of its importance: “The overwhelmingly peaceful protests about mass atrocities in Gaza must not be conflated with extremism. People are protesting because of the terrifyingly high civilian death toll in Gaza, which is still mounting inexorably, and the Government’s lack of action for an immediate ceasefire to stem the unbearable suffering.

“The threat to impose yet more restrictions on people’s right to peacefully protest is deeply wor­ry­­ing and suggests the Government is determined to silence those who may disagree with its policies. This is entirely in line with the chaotic patchwork of legislation and sweeping policing powers we have seen in recent years.”