It’s rare that an election result leaves you with a sense of giddy, disbelieving glee, but there it was in black and white. Galloway, George, Respect (George Galloway) Party, 37,007 votes. Walker, Sophie, Women’s Equality Party, 53,055 votes. Once you took second preferences into account, Walker and her newly formed feminist movement beat Galloway and his band of Islamists by almost 100,000 votes.
This result is so striking, and so perfect, because Galloway is one of those old-fashioned socialists whose attitudes towards gender equality are distinctly retrograde: it is the man’s job to further the revolutionary cause and the woman’s to provide dutiful comradely support. Indeed, while he may not be the only misogynist in British politics, he is certainly the most notorious. Famously, he claimed that what Julian Assange was accused of was not rape ‘as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it’: it was merely ‘bad sexual etiquette’. ‘Not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion,’ he added, prompting the then leader of his Respect Party, Salma Yaqoob, to resign
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