The return of ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway to the House of Commons may not be Keir Starmer’s worst nightmare, but it is certainly the recurrence of a bad dream. No one who recalls how Galloway harried Tony Blair over the Iraq war twenty years ago can deny that the new Workers Party MP for Rochdale can be a powerful Commons speaker. His Old Testament-style may seem ridiculous to many, like his adoption of that fedora – which he presumably will have to discard in the hatless debating chamber – but on issues of war, and the plight of the dispossessed, he can certainly rouse emotion. His declamatory style goes down well in the mosques attended by Galloway’s many Muslim voters, who applaud his campaign’s condemnation of ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
There is no greater irritant in Labour politics than George Galloway
Most Labour MPs will avoid him like the plague, but the new MP will no doubt be embraced by the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has also had the distinction of being given the boot by Labour. Galloway will miss no opportunity to remind Starmer that, only the day before yesterday, he was actively campaigning to have Corbyn installed in Downing Street. The forty odd Socialist Campaign group of left Labour MPs feel a deep sense of betrayal at Corbyn being written out of Labour history. They may not openly support Galloway on issues other than Gaza, but they’ll certainly be happy to see him cause irritation to their current leader.
There is no greater irritant in Labour politics than George Galloway, largely because his roots in the Labour movement go so deep, since he joined the Labour young socialists over half a century ago. And he can still turn a populist phrase or two. His election night description of Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak as ‘two cheeks of the same arse’ may not be very original but he certainly gave them a good ‘spanking’ in Rochdale, overturning a 9,600 Labour majority. Only Galloway could compare himself to Winston Churchill with a straight face as he did last night. He’s now equalled the great man’s record of representing four different seats in parliament: Glasgow, London, Bradford and Rochdale.
Galloway is undoubtedly the great opportunist of electoral politics, having launched more parties than the Great Gatsby. However, his support for the Palestinian cause is sincere and of long standing. He has been tied emotionally and politically to the occupied territories since he was a councillor in Dundee in the 1980s and was responsible for twinning the Scottish city with Nablus on the West Bank.
This passion puzzled many of his Labour comrades back in the day since few Scottish voters seemed engaged with the politics of the Middle East. But Galloway – who became the youngest ever chair of the Scottish Labour Party in 1981 at 26 years of age – was a real working-class hero back then. Five years later, he defeated the Social Democrat leader, and former Labour chancellor, Roy Jenkins, to become the Labour MP for Hillhead. Typically dressed like a gangster with his big coat, flashy ties and moustache, Galloway had no time for the scruffy intellectuals who dominated the Labour leadership in the 80s. Donald Dewar loathed him from the start and Tony Blair thought he was deranged, not least for his famous visit to Iraq to praise the ‘indefatigability’ of Saddam Hussein in 1994.
Galloway was expelled from Labour in 2003 over his opposition to the Iraq war and went on to form Respect along with various far-left fragments, including members of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party. He then infuriated Blair by winning Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 general election, defeating Oona King and showing that he could win seats even in a general election. A year later, Galloway’s midlife crisis took him into the Big Brother household where he delivered his celebrated impression of a cat. He lost his east London seat in the 2010 general election.
But history was not finished with the great feline impersonator. His sensational by-election victory in Bradford West in 2012, capitalising on the Muslim vote, catapulted Galloway back to the Commons. He lost again in 2015 but has now returned, in his seventieth year.
So what will Galloway do in his next hundred days in parliament? Well, he will not necessarily be the darling of Muslim Labour MPs like Naz Shah, who replaced him as MP for Bradford West after he had accused her of lying about the circumstances of her forced marriage. The vast majority of Labour MPs will also give him a very wide berth. But he will make sure he is seen and heard and will not just be the anti-zionist member for Gaza. Galloway may be of the left but he is also a social conservative and has repeatedly rounded on ‘anti-Brexit woke liberal identity politics and cancel culture’. He insists that Richard Tice invited him to become a Reform candidate, which might even be true.
As well as campaigning against what Starmer’s stance over Gaza, Galloway can be expected to oppose liberalisation of abortion and the banning of conversion therapy and to support sex-based rights for women. The former Russia Today presenter will also be calling for a halt to the war in Ukraine. He aroused some media mirth by promising to bring a Primark store to Rochdale. But Galloway is a consummate populist who doesn’t care what the metropolitan ‘globalists’ think of him. An icon of anti-politics, he is the ultimate member for ‘none of the above’. He may not be around for long, but we will certainly hear his voice.
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