Bradford West by-election - 29th March

[YL]

Galloway is on Sky now saying he won "every part" of the seat.

[You kip if you want to...]

George Galloway talking up leadership coups against Ed. SHUT UP YOU ACTUAL TOOL.

[Insula Dei]

Twitter sez 50.92% turn-out. Hardly a 'victory for political apathy', is it?

[You kip if you want to...]

50% turnout.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's really no way that this can be sanely blamed on the Party leadership; if blame can be apportioned it would have to be in the direction of someone at the local level (and quite possibly not in an official Labour Party context). But perhaps that would miss the point: most of the local headlines to do with Galloway related to stuff he's said on the campaign trail about Afghanistan. The Antique Monk suggests that the answer to this is probably related to that. Of course there's another word we could mention (especially given the surprisingly high turnout and the reports about postal votes), but that would be grossly inappropriate in the absence of evidence and wouldn't explain the whole story anyway.*

What's irritating about this (other than the fact that that prick will get to stick the initials 'MP' after his name again; unless he's changed his ways greatly he won't actually do much with his new office) is that this has come at the end of a very good weak for the leadership. Oh well.

*But there have been issues with it in this part of Bradford in the past, for however much that's worth.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Mr Galloway is a notoriously litigious fellow, so I would strongly recommend that no one goes any further than remarks about the raising of eyebrows in the absence of extremely strong evidence or widespread reporting in the media.

Diolch, etc.

[Insula Dei]

Well, this is certainly one to remember whatever happens next.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Probably best if we don't speculate too much on that either in the absence of evidence.

[MaxQue]

Can I suggest than that could be prevented if Labour did the right thing and took a strance against Afghanistan War after they lost power?

[Insula Dei]

Can I suggest than that could be prevented if Labour did the right thing and took a strance against Afghanistan War after they lost power?

Yeah, but wouldn't the ensueing intraparty civil war  have hurt them a lot in all of those other non-muslim majority constituencies?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Can I suggest than that could be prevented if Labour did the right thing and took a strance against Afghanistan War after they lost power?

Yeah, but wouldn't the ensueing intraparty civil war  have hurt them a lot in all of those other non-muslim majority constituencies?

The result (given where in the Party the Leader is generally seen to stand; if he was a tad to the Right it wouldn't be quite as much of an issue, probably) would have been a massive Right v Left punchup; the early 1950s and early 1980s all over again (and over the same sort of issue).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This (presumed) result makes sense to me as a Sunderland fan. We're doing rather well (by our standards) in general, and then we lose to fycking Blackburn the other week.

[RogueBeaver]

OK, so BW decided to troll the country. Not like Galloway will be doing much with his new seat. Had a no-name won this seat from Lab then it might've been a BFD, but that's not the case.

[You kip if you want to...]

I don't even think Labour've reached 10,000 votes...

[You kip if you want to...]

I wish Jon Craig would stop doing the Tory's spinning for them.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Console yourself by remembering that most people will react to this will 'lolwhut?!!?!!'

I don't even think Labour've reached 10,000 votes...

If there was a massive vote for Galloway in the Muslim areas and if turnout was less than entirely glorious elsewhere, that's quite possible.

[You kip if you want to...]

EDL tweeting about Bradford West. Now that's too far.

[You kip if you want to...]

Salma Yaqoob accusing Labour of "patronising and ugly sectarianism". Nice to know that Respect can do irony.

[You kip if you want to...]

Labour are spinning this as: "Well, we won a general election the last time George won anything."

[netzero19]

10,000+ majority for George.

[You kip if you want to...]

My mouth hit the floor.


NB: that's a 10,140 majority (30.9%)

[netzero19]

Why does he seem to hate returning officers? IIRC he picked a fight in 2005 at the Bethnal one.

And wtf is he talking about treason?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Did anyone turn out in the suburban part of the constituency? Looks like the Tower Hamlets mayoral election.

[Phony Moderate]

Galloway's vote share is the highest for this constituency since at least 1970 (Wikipedia doesn't have the figures from 1955-1966).

[netzero19]

37% swing. Record?