No one saw it coming
What does Galloway's victory tell us about British politics?
By Salma Yaqoob Published 01 April 2012 9:59
Anybody wanting to follow the Bradford West result unfold was forced to rely on Twitter as journalists and politicians alike were caught unawares by the political earthquake about to take place. But Respect supporters on the ground had been predicting for the last fortnight that a shock was in the air. And for one simple reason; people are disillusioned with austerity and war, they are disillusioned with being taken for granted, and when presented with positive coherent political alternatives, they respond with enthusiasm.
Bradford is mired in unemployment and stagnation. Its voters don't think they are "in it together" with the Tories and their millionaire donors. Quite the opposite. Respect's solution on the doorstep was to argue that we need investment not cuts in order to re-energise our economy and create the growth to deliver jobs. This is not some loony-left pipe dream; it is the experience of the American economy where old fashioned Keynesian intervention is driving down unemployment while discredited Thatcherite neo-liberalism drives it up here. When the voters of Bradford West heard that argument put confidently and coherently, albeit with an eloquence that only George Galloway can summon, they responded warmly to it. Surely that is the real lesson for Ed Milliband to draw from this result.
The other lesson is that huge numbers of people are disillusioned with British politicans sending our troops to occupy other people's countries. When George said that the two soldiers killed by their Afghan comrade had "died in vain", he spoke for many people in Bradford and beyond whose views on the war are rarely if ever reflected by mainstream politicians.
Finally, the Respect vote is a call for change to the ossified political structure in Bradford. People are tired of being taken for granted. The Guardianwas the only paper to pick up on the specific way that frustration expresses itself within the Muslim community where the Labour party have for generations relied on and reinforced the corrupting influence of "Braderi" - clan networks - that so disfigures South Asian politics. The fact that Respect won in every ward in the constituency, and won by a massive 10,000 majority, testifies that that disillusionment goes way beyond the Muslim community. In the predominately white, middle-class ward of Clayton approximately 900 votes were cast for Respect compared to 40 for Labour. The resounding mandate also testifies to the unifying message of Respect which addressed the roots of disillusionment and challenges the scourges of neglect and scapegoating.
For me, the most exciting and inspiring aspect of the election was the sight of hundreds of young people and women throwing themselves into the political process. They were galvanised by a man who stands by his principles and tells it straight. A wave became a tsunami, very quickly overwhelming anything that has gone before. People poured out into the streets to exclaim support: an unusual sight in politics where canvassers usually try to cajole some interest. Very large numbers of voters in Bradford West clearly like George Galloway's distinctive message and style. They are not alone.
Salma Yaqoob is the leader of the Respect Party
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What it tells me is that when the government wants to elect a new people they tend to forget that sooner or later those new people are going to vote for their own interests.
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Living in the Bradford area and having witnessed the by-election first hand, I laughed out loud when I read this article.
Yaqoob claims "In the predominately white, middle-class ward of Clayton approximately 900 votes were cast for Respect compared to 40 for Labour". I canvassed in Clayton and Fairweather Green ward most of last Thursday. As Yaqoob should know, votes in parliamentary elections are NOT counted by wards. Even if he were correct, the Labour and other candidates must have done phenomonally well in other wards to make up for the more than 22 to 1 advantage for Galloway he claims in this ward - the final result was 2 to 1. On the doorstep, Galloway is not well liked outside the Asian community. His comments about British troops "dying in vain" did not go down well, especially after the recent deaths of 5 Yorkshire army personnel.
Although I have no time for the Daily Mail, and thought some of what Melanie Philips wrote rather over the top in itself, she hit the nail on the proverbial when she wrote, "Galloway won because young Bradford Muslims turned out for him in droves. They did not vote for him because he was promising them better public services. They did not vote for him, indeed, on account of any British domestic issues. They did so because he tailored his message to appeal to their religious passions and prejudices about conflicts abroad". Although not a Labour party member myself these days, I went to help out on the day precisely beause this was what I was hearing prior to the elction. I "did see it coming" and it appalled me.
Phillips wrote "declaring in one address that ‘God knows who is a Muslim’, he implied that he was even more of a true adherent of that faith than Labour’s Muslim candidate who, he suggested without a shred of evidence, drank alcohol whereas he himself had never touched the stuff". I was hearing this from Asian Muslim voters themselves on the doorstep on election day.
Whatever this result was, this was no victory for a radical left wing anti-establishment candidate; it is certainly no "breath of fresh air". Some of the things that I overheard in Bradford West made me despair.
It just goes to prove that democracy is a double edged sword!
George Galloway talked a great deal about Iraq, Palestine and Kashmir: forced marriage and the disappearance of many a young Bradford girl never got a mention. Galloway insulted Labour’s candidate saying he wasn’t a true Muslim and implied he drank beer; most in Bradford do!! I would just like to ask George what as Iraq, Palestine and Kashmir have to with youth unemployment in Bradford? Many are either delusional or stark raving mad if they honestly think George Galloway would be elected outside his usual confines. I will agree: most are crying out for an alternative to Labour and the Tories, but most aren't crying out for Galloway and the Religious lunatic fringe which this political opportunist represents. Respect is a Jihadist front. The awful truth is most outside Bradford just associate Bradford West for been the locality many of the 7/7 bombers spent an awful lot of time.
How is she racist?
Erm, maybe because she uses racist language to speak about certain ethnic groups.
When you says things like ''moral depravity of the Arabs” and “Arab barbarism” it's not really hard to call her a racist lunatic.
Arabs are not an Ethnic group, they are a large population of people in the world that live in the middle east. I don't know where you have gotten those terms from, but they seem fair enough to me if they are describing a truthful and accurate trait of the people in question.
A lethal game-changer for British politics?
Published in: Daily Mail - by Melanie Phillips
The general response to George Galloway’s sensational victory in the Bradford West by-election has missed the point by a mile.
Comment has concentrated on the undoubtedly stunning defeat for Labour, and has ascribed Galloway’s victory to widespread disaffection with mainstream political parties.
This is certainly part of the story — strikingly, a significant section of the Tory vote appears to have gone to Galloway — but it is not the key factor behind this torrid triumph of a discredited demagogue.
For this rested principally on something that commentators are too blinkered or politically correct to mention.
Galloway won because young Bradford Muslims turned out for him in droves.
They did not vote for him because he was promising them better public services. They did not vote for him, indeed, on account of any British domestic issues. They did so because he tailored his message to appeal to their religious passions and prejudices about conflicts abroad.
Specifically, he campaigned against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and for the Palestinians, declaring that his victory would help satisfy voters’ ‘duty’ to care about such grievances.
Most commentators have dismissed this victory as a shocking one-off with no further significance than an upset by an entertaining maverick.
Not so. For with Galloway’s election, religious extremism has become for the first time a potential game-changer in British politics.
The point being so resolutely ignored is that Galloway ran on an Islamist religious ticket. It wasn’t simply that he was pandering to Islamist foreign policy obsessions. He made explicit references to Islam throughout his campaign.
‘All praise to Allah!’ he saluted his victory through a loud-hailer — having previously told a public meeting that if people didn’t vote for him, Allah would want to know why.
Indeed, declaring in one address that ‘God knows who is a Muslim’, he implied that he was even more of a true adherent of that faith than Labour’s Muslim candidate who, he suggested without a shred of evidence, drank alcohol whereas he himself had never touched the stuff.
Pinch yourself — a British politician using the inflammatory rhetoric and professions of Islamic piety more commonly heard in Iran or Saudi Arabia.
Just as such religious hucksterism inflames millions of followers in the Islamic world, so certain unscrupulous British politicians have now realised they too can tap into the same well of irrational hatred to deliver them electoral victory.
For sure, countless numbers of Muslims will be as horrified as anyone by this playing to the Islamist gallery. While radicalisation among young Muslims has reached terrifying levels, the vast majority of older British Muslims want nothing whatever to do with ideas which threaten their own liberties along with those of everyone else.
And those loyal Muslims who serve in the UK’s Armed Forces will doubtless be particularly horrified by such cynical support for Iran or the Taliban.
Yet with so many now so profoundly turned off mainstream politics, there is a real risk that millions of disaffected voters will sit on their hands at future elections — thus giving radicalised Muslims the opportunity to begin reshaping the political map of Britain.
This is precisely what Ken Livingstone is also disgracefully exploiting in the London Mayoral election.
There has long been concern that Livingstone has aligned himself with the radical Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal is to conquer the free world for Islam, and has also pandered to Iran by working as a presenter for the Press TV channel owned by the Iranian regime.
In a speech last month at the radical Finsbury Park mosque in London, Livingstone more than amply confirmed such fears. For he pledged to ‘educate the mass of Londoners’ in Islam, saying this would help to cement London as a ’beacon’ for the faith.
Since when was making London a ‘beacon’ for a foreign religion a legitimate goal for any British politician, let alone a priority for a British city mayor?
This was simply no less than the Muslim Brotherhood’s own seditious goal. And this is a man who as Mayor of London would have control of the Metropolitan Police?
In another recent incident, he appeared to be using anti-Jewish remarks to play to Islamist, anti-Jewish prejudice.
Jewish Labour Party supporters who met him for a private discussion reported that he had said he did not expect Jews to vote for a Labour candidate because they were rich.
In an article trying to repair the damage from this reported piece of bigotry, Livingstone has now issued a weaselly denial that he used these words — but conceded that they could have been interpreted in this way.
Such excruciating manoeuvring is less than reassuring in the light of his previous record of anti-Jewish remarks, including his infamous comparison of a Jewish journalist to a Nazi concentration camp guard or telling a Jewish property developer to ‘go back to Iran’.
What is so outrageous, however, is the free pass given by the Left to both Galloway and Livingstone. Both support agendas which anyone of conscience, let alone of ‘progressive’ views, should totally abhor.
Livingstone has literally embraced Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Islamic religious leader who justifies the suicide bombing of Israeli children, the execution of homosexuals, female genital mutilation and the killing of coalition troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Galloway has fawned over both Saddam Hussein and the Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, whose regime is slaughtering untold thousands of Syrians, but to whom Galloway has paid homage as ‘the last Arab ruler’.
Both suck up to terrorist regimes such as Gaza’s Hamas or Iran, the latter declaring regularly its intention to wipe out Israel.
Yet in the face of their support of such inhumanity and tyranny, the Left remains silent.
Indeed, the shocking fact is that, unlike Galloway who remains an exile from the Labour Party which threw him out, Livingstone is Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London.
Ed Miliband has been slated for his failure to condemn the militancy of his union paymasters in Unite. But far worse, he has backed the bigot-supporting Livingstone as ‘someone who has fought prejudice his whole life’.
There is also a corresponding danger that Galloway’s victory will have galvanised radicalised Muslims by showing how to drive a devastating wedge into British politics.
And if Livingstone wins in London, the temptation will become overwhelming for other unprincipled politicians on the Left similarly to play the Islamist, anti-West, anti-gay, anti-Jew card.
In other words, this is a dangerous moment for British politics.
When my book Londonistan was published in 2006, my warnings about the supine response of the British governing class to the Islamisation of Britain were dismissed as scare-mongering.
What we are now seeing, however, is of course far more alarming even than that response by a complacent and ignorant elite which appears to be possessed of a desire for cultural suicide.
With George Galloway and Ken Livingstone manipulating Islamic religious extremism in order to gain power for themselves, we now stare at the appalling vista of a political landscape transformed by religious sectarianism.
The very democratic process is at risk of being turned into a vehicle for the promotion not just of religious bigotry but of the destruction of the West itself.
As mainstream politics steadily disintegrates into incompetence, irrelevance and public scorn, a lethal interloper is now poised to fill the vacuum.
Could you not have just said "Mad Mel, the raving racist is unhappy - hurrah! Well done George and Ken!"
How is she racist? Cos she understands the threat of Islamic supracmists and how the wicked left are supporting them.
Mad Mel is universally acknowledged by anyone who is not themselves a racist to be one of the most hysterical, violently prejudiced bigots the British press has ever spawned, she spews racist filth onto the page in a way that makes Enoch Powell look like a United Colours of Benetton ad. Save your talk about the 'wicked left' for the next meeting of your local EDL branch.
Errr...Bullshit, she is amazing, speaks up for what right. The EDL are like girl guides in comparison to the real hatred, violence and rhetoric from the Muslim community. - in the UK and worldwide.
Give Galloway a chance. He is a breath of fresh air and if his ego is bigger than his brain that can be dealt with later.
Give Galloway a chance. He is a breath of fresh air and if his ego is bigger than his brain that can be dealt with later.
Apparently, there were 10,000 proxy votes cast - which might be a little suspicious.
Galloway modestly likened his victory to 'the Arab spring', which might well be surprisingly accurate, but in a sense opposite to what he meant.
Both events change nothing: by-elections are just political theatre, with no effect at all on wider politics. The Arab Spring has improved people's lives hardly at all - Egypt is still ruled by the army; Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and all the other pro-Western tyrannies are still in place; Libya is wrecked, riven by tribal hatreds, torture is rife, there are more fundamentalists there than ever.