Bradford West by-election - 29th March

[You kip if you want to...]

I just hope Brum will elect Salma Yaqoob and not George Galloway. 'cause who knows, maybe he'll be continuing his tour of Labour Britain and not stand for reelection in Bradford West?

It'll be Yaqoob in the Hodge Hill by-election. I assume.

[doktorb]

This is one of those by-elections which will go down in history. Nobody remembers Monmouth 1991, everyone remembers Crosby 1981. This will be one to go in the history books

The consequences will be very hard for all parties to fathom out. How Labour deals with the loss of a seat like this, under these circumstances, to George Galloway, will perhaps be the most important.

[Phony Moderate]

This is one of those by-elections which will go down in history. Nobody remembers Monmouth 1991, everyone remembers Crosby 1981. This will be one to go in the history books

The consequences will be very hard for all parties to fathom out. How Labour deals with the loss of a seat like this, under these circumstances, to George Galloway, will perhaps be the most important.

Up there with Bermondsey, yeah.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think only total anoraks remember Crosby.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

With regards to a possible by-election in Hodge Hill, Byrne is not exactly guaranteed the Labour nomination and if there are concerns about a possible repeat of this that would count against him (to put it mildly). He's not very popular with Party members in general, though it might be different in Brum itself.

Yaqoob, though, has supposedly retired from politics on health grounds.

[doktorb]

I think only total anoraks remember Crosby.

I thought mentioning Bermondsey might be a bit obvious of me, but fair point.

[YL]

There is now an article by Galloway on the Guardian website which includes the words "winning across every ward in the constituency".  So did he really carry Thornton & Allerton, and if so what was going on there?

There is another article on the site which claims that "Galloway's result represented the first byelection win by an independent since 1973".  Even if you accept that Galloway is an independent, what about Blaenau Gwent 2006 and North Down 1995?  (UKUP were surely more of a one-man band than Respect, and Davies was Independent on the ballot paper.)

[Silent Hunter]

Media are of course going to portray this as some Labour strong hold - we've never got more than 55% there. There are far safer Labour seats.

[You kip if you want to...]

The media obsesses, but the public doesn't care. The public has more important things to worry about at the moment: pasties and petrol.

Brent East, this is not. It's not going to shift the polls or any votes outside of Bradford West.

The few non-politicos who'll notice will just notice that it's George Galloway, the cat guy from Big Brother, and he's crazy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well even Brent East didn't change much outside of Brent. Boosted LibDem poll ratings for a month or two and that was about that.

[You kip if you want to...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkWzf_yqAAU

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Someone's been courting the BNP vote.

LOL, only the party that gets 8.4% of the vote can stop the party that got 25.0% of the vote from winning. Please never mind that party that got 55.9%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

George Galloway tweet, reported from another place:

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[Phony Moderate]

According to Sky News, Galloway has blamed that on a hacker.

[homelycooking]

According to Sky News, Galloway has blamed that on a hacker.

"Nice try. Password now changed."

[Filuwaúrdjan]

According to Sky News, Galloway has blamed that on a hacker.

lol

[Phony Moderate]

Say what you will about Galloway, but he knows how to run a campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ggGrplL_Hk

[minionofmidas]

Anyways, hadn't Hussain been considered a very strong candidate early on in this thread? Hmmm...

Bump, because I really want to hear some take on this. Because "oh dear, George Galloway. You know what I think of George Galloway" and "Postal Votes OMG lulz" are not appropriate responses.

[YL]

Anyways, hadn't Hussain been considered a very strong candidate early on in this thread? Hmmm...

Bump, because I really want to hear some take on this. Because "oh dear, George Galloway. You know what I think of George Galloway" and "Postal Votes OMG lulz" are not appropriate responses.

I think it's impossible to know what really happened unless you're from Bradford, which I'm not.  But I can make some observations.

There certainly were comments from some quarters that Hussain was a strong candidate, but parties always claim things like that.  I'm not sure that I saw anyone I'd consider neutral saying it.

I think his status on the Council may have harmed him.  Bradford has fairly major problems at the moment -- in particular there's an infamous "hole" in the city centre where buildings have been demolished to make way for a never-built shopping centre -- and some of the stuff about this by-election, and some of what I've seen on the local news, suggests that some of the dissatisfaction which led to this result was connected to that.  If this is right, then the local elections could be very ...um... interesting.

Then there's the whole biraderi thing.  Some reports suggest that there was a bit of a rebellion in the Asian community against it, and Hussain suffered from that.  (This may be related to the above.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

He seemed like a strong candidate on paper, at least according to the usual theories of what sort of candidates play well in places like this. He also gained his seat on the council on a large swing back in 2006. It's fairly clear that he wasn't actually a good candidate in practice; I noticed about halfway through the campaign that he didn't actually have a website, which is not a good sign these days (but didn't really think anything of it, obviously). It's also fairly clear - and I think we can say this - that there was a degree of personal abuse (much of it connected to a claim that he isn't a proper Muslim and drinks alcohol, etc) directed at him during the campaign.

Other things... there have been all kinds of rumours about key people locally switching their support in the last few days. I don't know how true this is. I do know that there were a lot of old men with beards in some of the Galloway victory photos. It's possible that Hussain may have done something to piss them off, but that's just baseless conjecture.

One problem we do have is that the only national journalist following the campaign when it was actually happening is an unethical piece of sh!t who's copy must be automatically viewed as suspect.

[YL]

Interesting article on LabourList by a Bradford Labour activist:
http://labourlist.org/2012/04/bradford-west-a-view-from-the-ground/

[Silent Hunter]

Great article. Thanks for sharing.

[minionofmidas]

I think his status on the Council may have harmed him.  

Yes, that's an impression I got from stuff like this.

Though have a look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okKxC4ZNIqw&feature=related
Not only is he just plain bloody right on Afghanistan, and the voters of Bradford West agree with me, have a look at poor Imran Hussein's fumbling to find an answer that doesn't offend anyone, and fail oh so painfully miserably. In the end, it came down to a choice between a pro and an incompetent amateur.

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Only if Respect can find a slate of credible candidates.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In retrospect it would have been better to have stitched the shortlist in favour of Afzal Khan (who is, whatever else can be said of him, certainly a pro), but then there might have been other issues had that happened.

One thing I do wonder is how long Galloway had been planning to run here. Marsha Singh has been seriously ill for some time and there had been rumours of a pending by-election here for at least six months.

[minionofmidas]

If he laid the groundwork for this campaign early - and it doesn't sound impossible - then Bradford Labour must be incredible incompetents to not have noticed.