Galloway: Good or Bad for UK Politics?

George Galloway doesn't see eye-to-eye with many people. Rula Lenska is quite a bit taller than him, for example. Then there's David Aaronovitch, if the latest BBC QT was anything to go by. Oh, and everyone in British politics. 

But is he good or bad for politics in the UK? 

It's great being on the edge of mainstream politics though. It's easy to be populist when it's also pretty obvious to even the most idiotic voter that someone like Galloway and his Respect Party hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of being within a million miles of actual government. He can be outrageous (and he is); he can promise things that will never be realised (and he does); and he can pull the tails of the main parties on any issue he pleases (and he has).

Since 1950, when Capt. John McLeod was elected to represent Ross and Cromarty as their MP, there has been a short and undistinguished list of successful independent parliamentary candidates. Only three of them have managed to get elected twice. Dick Taverne, the MP for Lincoln in the seventies, was one and Richard Taylor, for Wyre Forest, another. Taverne doesn't really count, as he was the sitting Labour MP and had a constituency with the people already. He only moved to an independent ticket because he was pissed off with Labour lurching too far to the left in 1973. He was de-selected by his party and then won the subsequent by-election and was returned again in the general election in 1974. Taylor was a 'single issue' candidate over the hospital closure planned for Kidderminster in 2001 and turned out to be such a good MP from the local population's point of view, they gave him their votes again in 2006. 

Then there's George. Is he "independent"? In any sense of the word...yes. Like Taverne, Galloway was angry with the direction in which his beloved Labour Party was going; only in his case it was the lurch to the centre and then to the right and, in particular, Blair's approach to international politics and the wars into which he took the country as Bush's poodle, along with the then PM's accumulation of wealth and power. Galloway was a Labour MP in Glasgow (Hillhead and latterly Kelvin) from 1987 and then lost the whip and everything else in 2003 after his criticism of the party over the Iraq war. De-selection followed, naturally, and thus the "Respect the Unity Coalition" was born in his head and he went on to defeat Oona King in Bethnal Green & Bow in the 2006 election, largely because King was forced by the party to declare herself in favour of the war. Galloway's tenure wasn't hugely successful in East London and it was time to move elsewhere. 

Opportunity beckoned once again for him in 2012 - this time at Bradford West. Galloway has been in all kinds of trouble at Westminster over the years but he's a seasoned campaigner and a parliamentarian  who knows how it works. When the Bradford West by-election came along, it also played into the hands of "Respect". Here was a constituency, formerly held by Labour's Marsha Singh (a very competent MP that had to stand down due to health problems), that Galloway believed could be a test of the new Labour leadership - that being 'new' with a small 'n', and personified by a plainly incompetent party leader, in Ed Miliband. 

The shocked surprise of Miliband, his party and shadow cabinet at Galloway's win wasn't echoed in Bradford. It was partly a protest vote but mostly a populist poll for someone that campaigned professionally, targeting those sections of the electorate that he knew would turn up to cast their votes for him.

Miliband was, quite clearly, so assured of a victory in Bradford that he couldn't find the time to give the Labour man direct support. Miliband probably thought that in fielding his candidate, Imran Hussein, the muslim vote would be his, almost by default. He reckoned without Galloway's appeal to anyone that the wily scotsman can convince are misled and/or oppressed by the main parties. Miliband is guilty of many mistakes since he became Labour leader and now we can add complacency to the list. Galloway can be relied upon to expose both Labour and the Conservatives as parties that don't get it at grassroots level but I imagine that he enjoys sticking it to the party that summarily dumped him for saying things publicly that have subsequently turned out to resonate with Miliband's more recent view of the conflicts in the Middle East. 

In the unlikely event that Cameron and Miliband ever begin to understand what life is like outside of the "Westminster Village", then Galloway would be reduced to the status of "also-ran" as the vast majority of independent candidates tend to be while counting the cost of their campaigns and lost deposits. Until then, we need the likes of Galloway.