Galloway wins Bradford East: Lessons for all parties

So, George Galloway from the Respect party won the Bradford West by-election.  He won it on a 50.8% turnout, which is pretty high for a by-election, with a majority of 10,100.  That's a pretty impressive performance, no question about it.  In fact, George Galloway's 18,341 votes is just 60 less than Marsha Singh got for Labour in 2010, when the turnout was 64.9%, 14% higher.

So, what does this result tell us?

Well, it shows that George Galloway definitely got his vote out.  His Respect team in Bradford worked their socks off and proved that in a contest invloving the major parties, a minor party can still win.  And it also proved that the other parties didn't really try, including Labour, as they assumed it would be a safe Labour seat.  I remember a work colleague once telling me that when you 'assume' you make an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'.  The major parties assumed it was going to go to Labour and the voters made asses of them all.

But it also shows the value of getting your message out there in any number of different ways. He's had a show on talkSPORT for a number of years, but that show has come to an end, not because of the election result, but because talkSPORT is totally removing the remaining non-sport programming from its schedule. 

In New York, George does a 1-hour show on WBAI, on a Wednesday morning.  The show is produced out of London, like all of George Galloway's shows.

But the shows that are most controversial are the ones that are aired on the Iranian international news channel, Press TV.  One is a Press TV original show, called Comment, where viewers phone in to speak to George and his guests.  The other is a show that originally aired on Raj TV before being transfered over to Press TV, George's own news commentary TV show, The Real Deal. 

The shows are now only available online in the UK after Ofcom revoked Press TV's licence. 

Without a doubt, these shows have helped keep George Galloway in the public eye, and kept his viewpoint in people's minds.

But in a sense, this victory also confirms that George Galloway is a political opportunist.  In 1987, George Galloway unseated Roy Jenkins, who had been with Labour before becoming one of the gang of 4 that formed the Social Democratic Party back in 1981.  In the 1997 General Election, the constituencies had changed, and George had to fight to be nominated for the Glasgow Kelvin seat.  But he won that nomination and served another two terms, firstly with Labour, then when he was expelled from the party in late 2003, he joined a newly formed party, known only as Respect.  But he was not going to be able to contest Glasgow Kelvin again, as the constituency was split amongst three new constituencies for the 2005 General Election; Glasgow Central, Glasgow North and Glasgow North West.

And it was then he began his run as a 'parliamentarian of fortune'.  He would challenge and defeat Labour's Oona King in the Bethnal Green and Bow constitiuency.  He chose not to contest the seat again, and instead contested a newly created seat of Poplar and Limehouse in 2010, but came in 3rd. 

It does leave me feeling that George Galloway is a political opportunist, looking for seats that he feels he can make a strong challenge in, because either the sitting MP is seen as weak, or maybe because it is not felt that there will be any strong challengers so the main parties don't spend a lot of money on the campaign, and then Galloway comes in and organises a grass roots campaign that wins out.

And George Galloway does make a reasonable point in saying that was disenfranchisement with the 3 major parties, and he was able to capitalise on that.  But then so should any minor party, or indeed independent candidate.

Overall, there is a lot for all parties and candidates to learn from this.  I hope this makes other elections in future much more unpredictable.