I really wish that this was the breakthrough everyone on the Left has been waiting for to seriously challenge Labour in their heartlands. But it isn't.
What it is - and there's no point in fudging it - is a victory of opportunist communal politics. Not a step forward but a throw-back to the kind of boss-politics of the US Democratic Party - with whole communities delivered as an ethnic electoral bloc.
I look at Galloway and I see the ghosts of Derek Hatton and Tommy Sheridan at his shoulder. But actually Galloway for all his undeniable charm and guts represents something far worse - the personality cults of Deza and Tommy may have succumbed to vanity and hubris, but they never so shamelessly politically degenerated into opportunism.
4 comments:
Yes, I know he's an opportunist, but it looks like people who maybe ordinarily wouldn't be voting in such numbers - young people, Muslim women, were out in force. People disaffected by the main parties have become politicized and that can't be a bad thing - he was the wrong person there at the right time. The Labour Party should be quaking.
Yes, I know he's an opportunist, but it looks like people who maybe ordinarily wouldn't be voting in such numbers - young people, Muslim women, were out in force. People disaffected by the main parties have become politicized and that can't be a bad thing - he was the wrong person there at the right time. The Labour Party should be quaking.
I think you have to salute his indefatigability
I'd have Galloway over any of the other 'opportunists' Parliament has to offer. Policy-wise I'm not sure why you seem so hostile to the man? There's more than enough people monstering him in the mainstream media and, well, 'nobody's perfect' as the man says at the end of Some Like it Hot.
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