How I fell out of love with George Galloway

A guest post by Alex Skinner

My first clear memory of George Galloway is of him being interviewed on TV assailing the blind, anti-Scottish unionism of the Major government, which had just been re-elected, as one of the founders of the pro-devolution Scotland United group. I was eighteen and I liked his oratory and his politics: a left-winger standing up for Scotland and demanding change.

Later I came to love him, in the way some people love able political rhetoricians who seem to embody their most cherished political beliefs. The apogee came with the Iraq War of 2003, as George stood against the Bushite drive to make the world a much more dangerous place. I was one of the million who marched in London against that disaster. Later I cheered as he took Bethnal Green and Bow from a New Labourite and his performance – and that really is the right word – before the US Senate was one of the most striking pieces of political theatre I’d ever seen. I and thousands of others on the left lapped it up.

As a supporter of independence I was disappointed that George was against, but I accepted it as the one major area we disagreed on. Hell, the wonderful Tony Benn was against too. You can’t have it all.

Then came two events that changed everything.

The first was the referendum. It’s not that George campaigned against it. That was predictable. It was the strangeness and weakness of the arguments he put forward: there are too many borders already in the world, independence would trigger a race to the bottom, Sturgeon is Thatcher in a kilt.

The anti-borders stance has validity in certain contexts, no doubt. But in Scotland’s case? Surely if you are horrified by the idea of a Scottish state emerging, logically you ought to campaign – putting a difficult history behind us – for Ireland to re-join the UK. Surely you ought to bewail the fact that Norway became independent in the early 20th century, leaving a union with Sweden. The unionist logic is that the world is definitely a worse-off place because of those two countries sharing the Scandinavian peninsula. That seems, well, let’s be polite - a pretty strange idea.

The race-to-the-bottom theory seems deeply flawed as well, and has in fact been comprehensively debunked on Wings Over Scotland. It seems to me far more likely that a surging Scotland would breathe new life into these islands both economically and politically. A race to the top, if you will.

Nicola-as-Maggie is almost too stupid to comment on, and ironically I reckon she and George would agree on most things with the obvious exception of independence. There was a surreal moment during the referendum campaign when George sat next to his fellow unionist Ruth Nae-Vision, facing Nicola and Patrick Harvey. George painted a horrific picture of – get this – the financial sector fleeing Scotland in the event of independence! Astonished as I was at what my icon had become, at least it let Nicola come back with a nice slapdown.

Though I was rapidly falling out of love with George by this point, the camel’s back was finally broken by something rather more than a straw. I’d never bought the right-wing attacks on George over his critiques of the Israeli government. It seemed to me he was merely speaking the truth about, frankly, a bunch of criminals. But then he said something that sickened and stunned me: that he didn’t want Israeli tourists to come to Bradford (probably not the number one holiday hotspot that they dream about in the cafes of Tel Aviv – but that’s not the point). This was not a valid attack on the Israeli state and its disgusting policies. This was the demonisation, at least potentially, of every Israeli citizen, logically including even those who disagree with their government and campaign against it. That may not have been what he meant, but it’s what he said, and to my knowledge he’s failed to correct it. A line had been crossed.

My love affair with George is over, though I’ll always acknowledge his progressive credentials, particularly his anti-war leadership. I must admit I’m curious what he’ll say when Scotland really does emerge as a progressive beacon, ridding itself of nukes, pushing renewables, protecting the NHS and free higher education and – I dare hope – lifting a million Scots out of poverty.

Who knows, if he can admit he was wrong about independence and his grotesque comment about Israelis, maybe one day the spark of love can flicker to life again. But I’m not holding my breath.

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This is guest post no. 5 since I launched my 'appeal'.  Guest posts are welcome on any topic (within reason!).  My contact details can be found at the top of the sidebar.

Can the Galloway miracle outgrow Galloway?

I've come to the conclusion that I like George Galloway far more as an English politician. A year ago, I was extremely worried that he would win a seat at Holyrood, and then perversely (as he'd made clear he would) back Iain Gray as First Minister. He had also declared his intention to use his seat principally as a platform to attack the SNP and independence. In retrospect, it shouldn't really be a surprise that he underperformed after putting forward such a prospectus - where was the niche for a rebel ex-Labour politician who only wanted to provide an alternative to the SNP? Now, a rebel ex-Labour politician who wants to provide an alternative to New Labour is a different story entirely, and in all honesty I couldn't find a thing to disagree with in his victory speech last night, in spite of the characteristically blood-curdling language.

Galloway described his win as "the most sensational result in British by-election history bar none". He might have an arguable case based on the mammoth swing, and on his overcoming of the inherent difficulties of a fringe party taking on the big guns. But what really determines the importance of a by-election is whether it changes the political weather, and influences the outcome of the subsequent general election. A classic example is Govan 1973 - without that win, the SNP probably wouldn't have had the momentum to jump to seven seats in February 1974, and then the high watermark (to date) of eleven seats in October 1974. But in my view, the three most important by-elections in modern British history are Carmarthen 1966, Hamilton 1967 and Darlington 1983, because they didn't just influence the outcome of the subsequent general election - they changed the political landscape permanently. If the SDP hadn't gone into meltdown in Darlington, it's reasonable to suppose that Labour might have been pushed into third place in the popular vote in the general election a few months later, and as a result might never have returned to power. Hamilton and Carmarthen were vital because they transformed the SNP and Plaid Cymru from fringe parties into major players, which they remain to this day. Bradford West has the potential to do the same for Respect, if the party can put down roots and outgrow the cult of Galloway. It's obviously too early to tell if that will happen. But with two previously fringe parties (the Greens and Respect) now having representation at Westminster, England suddenly has an almost miraculous double opportunity to break free from the suffocating three-party centre-right consensus.

As I love nothing better than dredging up the faulty political predictions of others (my current favourite is Michael Gove declaring that "George Robertson was right!" on the day after the 2003 Holyrood election), I should probably come clean and admit that I wrote the following just 24 hours ago -

"I haven't been following Bradford West, and I was confused by all the talk of the Tories coming third - I wondered if the Lib Dems had come back from the dead without me noticing?

Silly me. But after what happened in Glasgow last year it's hard not to think that Galloway might fail to match the expectations."

However, if that makes me look a trifle daft, it's as nothing compared to the daftness of the excuses trotted out by the defeated candidates. Apparently Labour only lost "cos of Big Brother" (really? I thought that's what had destroyed Galloway's credibility forever?), the Lib Dems were "fighting for fourth place" and succeeded, and the Tories regard a 23% drop in support in a seat that was a target for them in 2010 as a disaster only for Labour. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm convinced...

Result :

Respect 55.9% (+52.8)
Labour 25.0% (-20.3)
Conservatives 8.4% (-22.7)
Liberal Democrats 4.6% (-7.1)
UKIP 3.3% (+1.3)
Greens 1.5% (-0.8)
Democratic Nationalists 1.0% (-0.1)
Monster Raving Loony 0.3%

Swing from Labour to Respect = 36.6%

It seems my "apologism" goes on...

With utter predictability, Political Betting's resident US Republican cheerleader 'Stars and Stripes' popped up a couple of hours ago to triumphantly pounce on the story from a Swedish tabloid that the former Libyan justice minister (who has defected to the opposition) claims to have proof that Colonel Gaddafi ordered the Lockerbie bombing, and that Megrahi was guilty.  For the uninitiated, Stars and Stripes is one of the most consistently vicious and offensive commenters on PB, for all that he maintains a veneer of civilised discourse much of the time.  Here's his pearl of wisdom for this evening -

Now that we have the admission of the Libyan justice minister that Libya was indeed behind the Lockerbie bombing, and Megrahi indeed did it, will we still hear from PB’s Scottish government apologists who insisted Megrahi was just a poor stooge unjustly convicted by the West because we couldn’t get our hands on the real culprit?  Thought not.

So, naturally, I felt a response of some kind might just be in order...

Even for a man who’s been so spectacularly wrong so many times before, S&S, you’ve just surpassed yourself.  Wrong yet again.  As the weight of evidence stands at the moment, Megrahi’s conviction is unsafe, and indeed even simply on the balance of probability he’s likely to be innocent.  “Apologism” for the Scottish government doesn’t come into this, as they - wrongly, in my view - professed their faith in Megrahi’s guilt when they released him. 

Now, if this new claimed evidence is actually produced and stacks up, what will I say then?  Well, to coin a phrase - “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”   In your case, S&S, we already know the answer to that question from your reaction to the severe doubts raised over Megrahi’s conviction by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission.  You stick your fingers firmly in your ears.

Incidentally, here’s the wry response to this ‘revelation’ from Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands -

“[On this blog yesterday, the following was posted:]

“What’s the betting that, sometime in the next few weeks, the following happens:
 

1. In the burned out ruins of a Libyan government building, someone finds definitive documentary ‘proof’ that Libya and Megrahi were responsible for Lockerbie, and/or

2. A Libyan official reveals, ‘we did it’.

The official case is now so thin that only such concoctions can save it (although it’s also crossed my mind that a prisoner will come forward who says ‘Megrahi confessed to me’ – another hallmark of paper-thin cases).”"

Sure enough, my own first reaction was how eerily similar this was to the forged “Galloway documents” that conveniently turned up in Baghdad within days of the fall of Saddam’s regime.  But unlike you, S&S, I’ll be waiting to see if this proof actually stacks up before reaching a definitive judgement.  Facts may be dull things, but in the long run they’re so much more reliable than gut certainties.

It is of course true that there have been instances over the years where, despite considerable doubts over the safety of a conviction, new evidence emerged that conclusively demonstrated the individual in question had been guilty all along.  A good example is James Hanratty, and I always thought it was a matter of regret that the legendary campaigner Paul Foot couldn't bring himself to concede he'd been wrong in that case - albeit wrong for the very best of reasons.  It certainly wouldn't have detracted from the many, many cases he'd been proved right about, most notably that of the men jailed for the murder of Carl Bridgewater.  But the idea that a vague assertion from a man who has every motivation to urgently burnish his anti-Gaddafi credentials means that all the doubts about Megrahi's conviction have been instantly and comprehensively magicked away is utterly risible.  Here is a telling quote from a Swedish Middle East expert, highlighted by a commenter at Robert Black's blog -

"At the same, considering Al Jeleil just left the regime, there may be a credibility issue. It could be that these sorts of leaks from former members of the regimes are more about distancing themselves from Gadaffi as than revealing the truth."

Could yet another far-left tiff save a precious seat for the SNP in Glasgow?

It's worth remembering just how much the SNP owe to the Tommy Sheridan soap opera and the related implosion of the socialist vote in 2007.  Even if Solidarity had merely (as fully expected) been able to retain Sheridan's own seat on the Glasgow list, then the chances are that the SNP would have had one seat fewer, resulting in a dead-heat with Labour.  George Galloway's recent entry into the Holyrood fray under the Respect banner had raised the spectre of a Left candidate nicking back that crucial Glasgow seat in May, but such a prospect seemed to recede yesterday with the news that 'Gorgeous George' will be directly opposed by Gail Sheridan for Solidarity, along with (presumably) a full SSP slate as well. If a two-way split in the socialist vote was disastrous in 2007, it's hard to imagine what the effect of a three-way split could be.

Galloway's wounded reaction to this development seemed somewhat contradictory as well - he pointed out that the previous call for Ms Sheridan to be number two on his own electoral list wasn't really logical, given that Solidarity (unlike him) are a pro-independence and far-left force.   But if that's the case, isn't it entirely logical for Solidarity to stand against him?

How would a Galloway candidacy affect the SNP v Labour battle?

I'm ever so slightly dismayed by the hints from George Galloway that he might be gearing up for a run in the Holyrood elections next year. Although I certainly don't agree with everything he says and does, I've thus far been able to take a certain amount of satisfaction in his occasional triumphs since being expelled from Labour, as it was that party he was a perennial thorn in the side of (along of course with a US Senate Committee that was almost as clueless as Menendez and co). However, if he does stand for the Scottish Parliament, he unfortunately seems somewhat more likely to do harm to the SNP than to Labour, simply because the SNP are so reliant on their list seats in Glasgow (and because Labour have no list seats to defend in the city at all). I can see five possible scenarios...

1) Galloway is no longer the force he was, and in any case his defection to the bright lights of London a few years ago has done him few favours in Glasgow. He receives a derisory vote, making no difference to the distribution of seats.

2) Galloway still has a big enough personal following to secure a seat, but in doing so he simply takes a seat that would have been won by another far-left candidate anyway. This ties in with Jeff Breslin's theory that the socialists are likely to recover sufficiently from their 2007 trouncing to at least sneak a seat in Glasgow.

3) Galloway does still have a big following, and it's one that the two 'indigenous' socialist parties can no longer match following the Sheridan saga. He takes a seat on the Glasgow list that would otherwise not have been won by the far-left, and that would otherwise have been taken by the SNP.

4) Same as scenario 3, except that either the Lib Dems or Greens underperform in Glasgow to such an extent that Galloway takes a seat that would otherwise have been won by one of them, not the SNP.

5) Galloway doesn't poll strongly enough to take a seat, but does do well enough to split the socialist vote and prevent another far-left candidate from being elected. This would leave an extra seat available on the list to be seized by a grateful SNP, or another mainstream party - but almost certainly not Labour.

So that makes three scenarios that would have no impact on the Labour v SNP battle, one that would harm the SNP, and one that might even conceivably help them. Unfortunately I think scenario 3 is probably more likely than 4 or 5.