Last week I was guilty of something familiar to politicians up and down the country – of underestimating George Galloway
The first thing I did online this morning was ping a grovelling email in the direction of my talented young colleague, Helen Pidd. After reading her report in Tuesday's Guardian on the Bradford West byelection I sent her a note saying what a vibrant piece of work it was, but that, surely, it contained a basic error: George Galloway could not possibly win.
I'd looked at the result of the general election in 2010 when Labour's Marsha Singh, who resigned this month due to ill-health, took 45% of the vote against the Tories' 31%. The best Galloway could do, I suggested, was split the Labour vote, let in the Tory candidate and therefore provide yet another reason for ex-Labour colleagues to dislike him.
Well, that pompous verdict from afar underlines the eternal value of reporters leaving their computer terminals, getting out there and reporting what they find on the ground. That's one reason why I have always liked doing byelections, it gets me out of London to places I may not know and forces me to make a judgement on what's going on.
I like to think I'd have spotted what Pidd spotted had she not beaten me to Bradford West. But who knows? No fool like an old fool, as my many online detractors keep reminding me.
So what happened to cause a 36.5% swing against the Labour candidate, Imran Hussain, and the surge to the former Labour and now-Respect MP? I'm not there, so I must be more cautious than I might otherwise be if I hadn't got it so wrong from London on Tuesday. Something happened in Bradford and, whatever it was, it is very damaging to Ed Miliband's modest hopes of driving David Cameron from Downing Street.
Forget coalition squabbling over the petrol and the pasties – this wasn't their seat to lose and the rejection is personal, as Patrick Wintour's report suggests. It will give Cameron and Nick Clegg some comfort: if Miliband can be discomfited in this way by a battle-scarred old retread he is not doing the business with voters that he needs to be doing.
"All most people know about Ed is that he stuffed his brother," one ex-No 10 veteran told me midweek – not unkindly, more matter of fact. Labour apologists this morning – MPs like Keith Vaz – dismissed it as a "one-off": the first byelection win by an independent since another Labour maverick, Dick Taverne, resigned as MP for Lincoln in 1973 and won it again for the embryonic SDP. Margaret Beckett took it back the following year.
In a real sense it is a one-off because the winner was George Galloway. I know him slightly and last spoke to him in the back streets of east London: a tanned, brooding presence, black suit and shirt, trade mark beard, smoking a small cigar, as I recall, in the back seat of what was (I think) a battered black Merc.
I do not warm to him but he is an extraordinary man, and one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers – perhaps the most gifted of them all – that I have heard in Westminsterin 30 years of listening to some pretty dull stuff.
Put it another way: when he went to Washington to face a Congressional hearing about his somewhat fawning relationship with Saddam Hussein's regime I emailed a chum at the Washington Post – this time more presciently.
"Be sure to watch this man, he'll wipe the floor with a bunch of stuffed-shirt Congressmen," I warned my friend. He certainly did and you can still catch his powerfully articulate performance on YouTube – along with his pussycat antics in Channel 4's Big Brother house.
Here's Galloway speaking before the official result was declared:
By the grace of God, we have won the most sensational victory in British political history … Labour has been hit by a tidal wave in a seat they have held for many decades and dominated for 100 years. I have won a big victory in every part of the constituency, including in areas many people said I should not even compete.
Well, that's Gorgeous George for you: modest, self-effacing, not a bit bombastic, ho ho. It helps explain why, for all his talents, he's never thrived in major party politics. He's not a team player, but a maverick who both outshines the colleagues and infuriates them in countless ways.
"Why does everyone take an instant dislike to me?" goes the old Labour joke. "Because it saves time, George."
I spent yesterday afternoon in Birmingham listening to Michael Heseltine and others debating the pros and cons of elected mayors – plenty of scepticism in Brum and nearby Coventry – and Galloway is exactly the kind of one-off who might make a brilliant elected mayor – a charismatic leader who could put a city (Bradford?) and its urgent local agenda on the map as Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson and Alex Salmond (I'm currently thinking of him as the mayor of Scotland) have done so effectively.
Here's Galloway's Wiki CV. He was first elected an MP when he defeated Roy Jenkins in the university seat of Glasgow Hillhead in 1987, was expelled for his stance on the Iraq war in 2003 and later won Bethnal Green and Bow for Respect in 2005-10. Except that I'm not sure that Galloway has the discipline to do the hard graft or would be trusted enough. A whiff of sulphur has always followed him, allegations made, narrow escapes engineered, the reputation of a less than fastidious demagogue clinging to him.
And yet he keeps bouncing back Still only 57 and an MP again, a man who will rake both front benches with his penetrating criticisms of mainstream politics. It's hard to dismiss his critique of Labour: you can't take your supporters for granted, you have to fight for them and many of them regard the Opposition's policies merely a pale version of the coalition's austerity which is helping pile up unemployment among young people in places like Bradford. "It's an anti-austerity message," Respect is saying this morning.
In Galloway's case his appeal to young Bradfordians of Kashmiri Pakistani heritage is further fired up by his attacks on Tony Blair – not just for his New Labour revisionism, but for his role in the Iraq war. He should be on trial at the Hague, Galloway insists. As MP for a diverse east London seat – lost back to Labour in 2010 – he knows how the dynamic of Pakistani village politics works transposed into British cities.
How exciting it must have been for the students and workless young people caught up in his campaign. The fact that Imran Hussein was apparently a poor speaker will only have served to underline his message of disdain for the big parties.
The Westminster citadel will not fall because George Galloway (he tried to become an MSP at Holyrood last year) has boldly got his ladder up and scaled the wall. But politics constantly needs shaking up and his return will shake it up at an unhappy time when all the main parties are in the doldrums. That can never be a bad thing. I can't wait to hear his maiden speech and I don't say that very often.
Memo to self: be sure to invite Helen Pidd.