With global tensions running high amid Russia’s continued bombardment of Ukraine, cool heads are needed now more than ever. Alternatively, we could instead listen to George Galloway. The fedora-rocking serial candidate advises his 400,000 Twitter followers that ‘the US is about to stage a false-flag #WMD incident in #Ukraine’. No word as of yet where Gorgeous George got this tip off. He of all people should know about ‘sexed-up’ intelligence.
In recent months Galloway has been dedicating much of his time to his talk show Sputnik, which he co-hosts with his wife Gayatri on Russia Today. It’s like Richard and Judy if every title in their book club was self-published and about Western imperialism. It’s fair to say George has not had a good war so far. Not least because just a month ago he insisted there wasn’t going to be a war. In the sassy-hectoring tone of a TikTok e-girl about to explain why your use of ‘guys’ is problematic, he tweeted:
Y’all said #Russia was about to invade #Ukraine. I told you it wasn’t. You were wrong. I was right. Again. Show some bloody humility. Especially if they’re not even paying you to act like an idiot.
Yas, kween! Slay those Nato lickspittles! Alas, ten days later, Russian tanks rolled in. Since then, Galloway has offered some eyebrow-raising commentary on the war.
Of course, the problem with someone who feels so moved by so many causes to get himself elected to parliament — any parliament — is that, however selfless his ambitions, Galloway can risk overshadowing those causes. Think, for example, of All for Unity (formerly Alliance for Unity), a small band of Scottish Unionists who convinced themselves that Galloway was the man to take on the SNP in the 2021 Holyrood elections. This ‘alliance’, between Galloway and a rightish campaigner called Jamie Blackett, fell flat on its face come polling day. In the immediate wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Blackett declared himself against Putin’s actions, said that Galloway ‘does not speak for me on issues unrelated to Scottish domestic politics’ and confirmed that, as a result of some of Galloway’s ‘wrong and counter-productive’ comments on Ukraine, ‘our alliance is at an end’.
That’s all well and good but, in light of his latest tweet, Steerpike can’t help but wonder if Galloway’s Unionist boosters ever reflect on what might have happened if they had succeeded in getting him into Holyrood? His claims of an impending US false-flag attack on Ukraine wouldn’t have been the frothing of a Russian telly ranter but the pronouncement of a prominent Unionist MSP, someone whose talents for oratory and media ubiquity would no doubt have made him the most famous Unionist politician in Scotland by now. How many Scottish voters, currently busy donating to charities helping fleeing Ukrainians, would have seen this and concluded that, if this was Unionism, then bring on indyref2?
Scottish Unionism had a lucky escape but Mr Steerpike reckons there might be a lesson in all this about choosing wisely when striking alliances.
Comments