Is that Monty Panesar? The old England spin bowler is stood in a crowd in Parliament Square, with a vacant, million-mile smile. George Galloway is standing in front, talking to the press. Galloway is meant to be revealing the 200 candidates that his new ‘Workers Party’ is putting up at the next election (Panesar is one of them) but instead he’s just laying into Angela Rayner, the House of Lords and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. ‘…Angela Runner, as you might come to call her! …Two cheeks of the same backside! …The largest war machine in the world today!’
Galloway likes talking to the media; these days he is more celebrity than politician. His personal website is split into three sections – ‘THE POLITICIAN’, ‘THE MAN’, ‘THE COMMENTATOR’ – and videos of him debating people get millions of views on YouTube. One, of him telling Blair minister Jacqui Smith that she ‘killed a million people in Iraq’, has been seen 13 million times. Today Galloway talks for 40 minutes. He gives it the usual about debating Keir Starmer on live TV, about changing politics and scaring the establishment. ‘We will win seats,’ Galloway says, ‘but in potentially hundreds of seats we will materially affect the result’.
Galloway says he wants to hurt Labour like Reform will hurt the Conservatives. Mirroring Reform will make him a left-wing Nigel Farage, a comparison he always claims to hate. ‘I have met him three times in my life,’ he said in an interview a few years ago (on his own Facebook page). ‘I’m often accused of being his “friend”, “cosy”, his “buddy” and so on. Three times, two of them on TV, and one on a platform, does not “cosy” or “friends” make!’ Galloway and Farage have obviously gone about their careers in similar ways. They’ve used YouTube and reality TV to further themselves (I’m a Celebrity and Celebrity Big Brother) and seem to periodically re-enter Westminster politics just to stay in the news. Does Farage really want to be an MP?
Pretend-politics suits someone like Panesar just right: he doesn’t care about getting the job. In Parliament Square, when Galloway finishes, the cricketer is asked his opinion on the war in Gaza. ‘George is an expert on that.’ Your party leader has just said he’d like to disband Nato. Thoughts? ‘I don’t have enough knowledge about it.’ Any policies? ‘I want to get rid of Ulez!’ he says. ‘And also, I want to see a referendum on net zero. Is it really sustainable? Who are the people really profiteering when it comes to this?’ A final pledge: ‘fans being more involved in the football clubs.’
Panesar says he didn’t even meet Galloway before signing up to his party. Panesar’s lawyer, Mahtab Anwar Aziz, a candidate in Leyton and Wanstead, brought him into the tent. ‘I was already convinced! Like playing for England!’ he says. It’s like Panesar just wants his old life back. He talks sincerely about his time playing for the national side, and the love his fans had for him. His cricketing career ended in shame over a decade ago, on a wild night out in Brighton, when he stood at a seafront railing and urinated over a bouncer on the promenade below. It got him dropped from the Sussex county team, and everything went downhill. He went on Mastermind, then did a master’s in journalism and became a television pundit. It wasn’t meant to end like this.
The event on Parliament Square winds down, and a protester arrives. He has a hockey mask on the back of his head, and is chanting about Galloway being a criminal. He wants to get closer to the man, but some of the candidates start getting in his way. Someone from the party pushes him. ‘Police help! Help! Police! Police! Look! Agitation! This is what democracy is!’ Seven officers arrive, arrest the protester, and drive off. ‘I was ready to kill him! He’s on the payroll of the Labour party!’ says one of the candidates. George doesn’t notice anything. Too busy giving interviews.
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