Your last but one Labour Prime Minister must have taught him all he knows.

1. Galloway gave away a cushy career in the Labour Party because he stuck by his principles. He fought to stay in the LP but lost and was expelled. As the LP's campaign manager he was guaranteed a safe seat wherever he wanted. His decision to risk his political career and reputation was a massive risk...quite the opposite of opportunist.

2. He didn't lose his seat in Bethnal. He chose not to contest it, preferring (wrongly as it turns out) to try and expand his base into neighbouring Poplar & Limehouse.
In any case it's simply not true that 'good' MPs don't always keep their seats, and it's certainly true that some pretty rotten ones stay in for decades.

It is simply ridiculous to assert that Galloway's unbending adherence to causes that he has championed for decades, both in and out of the Labour Party can be construed as either insincere or opportunistic.

Yes, sloppy is right, it wasn't "on the hoof" about policy at all.
What I meant was that he only has to toe his own line so he has much more freedom of expression.

True, but he had to follow the courage of his convictions and risk his career to earn that right.

The sad shame is that there aren't more principled and outspoken politicians in the mainstream parties. They all toe the party line over war and austerity. None of them therefore have anything to say other than following the leadership governed concensus.

It is this sad indictment of the major parties that, IMO, led to the mass disillusionment that allowed Galloway to win so easily...even in predominantly white middle-class wards in Bradford.

He IS an opportunist because he campaigns in one way only and that is as a protest against the incumbent Labour MP or as he did in Bradford in a vacant usually Labour seat. IMO the issues he uses to fuel his protest campaigns have a happy knack of appealing to certain sections of the voters in the kind of constituencies he chooses to contest. I doubt we will ever see him test himself in anything other than a Labour area. He picks his fights in any area he thinks he can win which to me is as opportunistic as you care to get.

If he swans off abroad like he did when MP for Bethnal Green he won't remain popular in Bradford for long either.

As an aside one of the things I can't stand is when [iany[/i party parachutes an MP into an area they have never lived in. Galloway looking for seats up and down the country to contest is no different.

Anyone would choose the ground they stand on if possible. Do you think the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet don't carefully select the seats in which they stand. In this sense they are all every bit as opportunist as Galloway.

Although he frequently attacks the Tories and LibDems Galloway stands for what he believes are old Labour values, It is natural therefore that he choose to fight on Labour ground, but you clearly haven't seen anything of his Bradford campaign which took up not just the war and austerity but also the bankers, the media, NHS, student and local issues.

Certain sections of voters? This is just plain ridiculous. Galloway won hands down, even in predominantly white middle-class wards, and got 95% in the very diverse 'University' ward.

Where would you have wanted him to stand...Exeter perhaps, maybe Ripon...trouble is he wouldn't have got many votes there. They didn't have an election to stand in.

We're talking about the same cat-impersonating, Saddam-fellating George Galloway here, right?

Not very smart by your standards Rock God.

The cat stuff was stupid, naive and egotistic, howeveragainst Saddam whilst British, American and French politicians were meeting him regularly to sell him weapons and military expertise.
Even after his last meeting with Saddam, Galloway described him in the national press as a 'brutal dictator.'

The 'Saddam-loving' myth is part of the demonisation of Galloway by the establishment who know that if you sling enough some of it sticks. Look beyond the crap though and you see that you're only being told half the story.

Whatever he said [iabout[/i Saddam will never mitigate what he said [ito[/i Saddam. The video is there on youtube, and it's not remotely ambiguous.

...which is much more heinous than selling him poison gas and missiles, then training him to use them of course.

No. No, it is not. But it does cast more than a little doubt on your view of Galloway as 'principled' and 'having the courage of his own convictions'.

This speech (which is quoted out of context of Galloway's mission at the time anyway) does not detract from the fact that Galloway was trying to stop deaths (the mission was specifically about trying persuade Saddam to give up weapons and to end sanctions), whilst for decades Saddam himself and the imposers of those sanctions had cause tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths.

But that of course is not why the establishment turned on Galloway so viciously...the reason for that is that he co-founded and was at the head of a movement that built the biggest demonstration in British political history in an attempt to stop the hundreds of thousands of deaths that were to come.

And of course this one speech (which incidentally in Arabic was correctly translated as 'salute the Iraqi people') is of course soooo much more important than any of that.

Oh, come now. Galloway stood in front of a man responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of his own people and said."

He also said

Correctly translated? WTF? So Galloway decided to toady up to Saddam safe in the knowledge that it would be 'correctly translated' in Arabic to mean something entirely different? Even Galloway himself wouldn't be disingenuous enough to come up with that.

I don't pretend that Galloway is any worse than some of the mainstream politicians, but to present him as some sort of beacon of virtue, the one principled MP in a sea of corruption, is, frankly, boIIocks.

..with weapons and expertise supplied to him by the very people that slated off Galloway for this visit. Deals that Galloway always opposed while the mainstream politicians and the media praised Saddam constantly.

And yes it is out of context. The arabic translator understood this and translated in a correct idiom. The context is one of negotiation with a tyrant in a bid to end Western-imposed sanctions that had killed many more thousands of people (mainly children) than Saddam could ever aspire to. Would you rather Galloway had said "Get over it Saddam...we're killing your children by their thousands every day and we're buggered if we're gonna stop now" which is what most British politicians at the time would have had to say if they were honest?

You are very quick to lambast Galloway on the basis of one speech (and a rather ridiculous TV charity stunt), but I don't see you jumping to criticise the people who cynically and deliberately armed and groomed Saddam to slaughter those many hundred thousand people.

When it comes to that moral balance sheet the question of principles is IMO a virtual irrelevance.

You're missing the point. Perhaps deliberately, I don't know, though I thought I'd made it clear in my last post. I'm not saying that the mainstream politicians are [ibetter[/i than Galloway. Of course they were wrong to arm a tyrannical dictator. Of course they were wrong to then invade Iraq at the behest of the US when their years of arming him all went tits up.

But that the UK and US governments acted appallingly doesn't alter Galloway's obvious character flaws.



Rubbish.

In no way does...

"Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability, and I want you to know that we are with you, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-nasr, hatta al-Quds ntil victory, until victory, until Jerusalem]."

...accurately translate to "I salute the Iraqi people". It's utterly ridiculous to suggest that it does.

Quote: Chief Stinkwort "The context is one of negotiation with a tyrant in a bid to end Western-imposed sanctions that had killed many more thousands of people (mainly children) than Saddam could ever aspire to. Would you rather Galloway had said "Get over it Saddam...we're killing your children by their thousands every day and we're buggered if we're gonna stop now" which is what most British politicians at the time would have had to say if they were honest?'"

There's a whole spectrum of stuff he could have said between your extreme example and his own nauseating licking. It is possible to negotiate with someone without 'conveying heartfelt fraternal greetings and support'.

Quote: Chief Stinkwort "You are very quick to lambast Galloway on the basis of one speech (and a rather ridiculous TV charity stunt), but I don't see you jumping to criticise the people who cynically and deliberately armed and groomed Saddam to slaughter those many hundred thousand people.'"

The post that I responded to was about Galloway, specifically your assertion that he is 'principled'. Had you said that you thought Tony Blair was 'principled', I could/would have responded to that in a similar manner. Or do you think I should balance every criticism I ever make of a politician with an acknowledgement that other politicians have acted in an even more deplorable manner?

Quote: Chief Stinkwort "When it comes to that moral balance sheet the question of principles is IMO a virtual irrelevance.'"

I'd tend to agree with that. If I wasn't responding specifically to your description of Galloway as 'principled'.