Caste and Crew

Not least by means of the hashtag #GG4Gorton, through which the posters that are already up may be viewed, George Galloway's by-election campaign is in full swing at Manchester Gorton, using the same means that succeeded at Bradford West, and using much the same pitch, too. 

The Labour shortlist has again been designed to placate the various factions of the Pakistani braderi system, which is in fact the carrying over of ancestral caste into Indo-Islam. Caste itself also persists even among Sikhs, founded though they were in a rejection of it, and among people whose families have been Christian for many generations, even centuries.

Braderi, however, just does not interest second or third generation Mancunians whose first language is English and who easily pass any cricket test (but who are far more interested in football), as it just did not interest second or third generation Bradfordians whose first language was English and who easily passed any cricket test (but who were far more interested in football).

Moreover, the concentration on it alienates everyone else. In 2012, Galloway topped the poll in every ward of Bradford West, including those which were more than 90 per cent white. The seat itself had been a Conservative target only two years before.

The election of Galloway at Manchester Gorton is as important as the re-election of Len McCluskey as General Secretary of Unite, and it is as important as the removal of Labour from Durham County Council, a removal on which depend many thousands of new jobs that would simply never occur to the know-nothing, do-nothing, right-wing-if-anything Labour Establishment here.

As much as anything else, Galloway's return to Parliament would restore the situation that obtained between 2012 and 2015, when members of the House of Commons from outside the Labour Party and to the left of most of its MPs were taking their seats on behalf of all five of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the South of England, and the North of England.

Meanwhile, at least one of my slogans for the 2020 General Election is already "Tony Blair Didn't Dare", and I intend to put out a leaflet under that title which would detail the entire case against him, stating the fact that that was why had not had the courage or the gall to seek this open seat right here in his old County Durham stomping ground.

As to who was the Labour candidate, is there even going to be one worthy of the name? The new boundaries suggest a Constituency Labour Party even more of the local know-nothing, do-nothing, right-wing-if-anything Labour Establishment than North West Durham was in the dark days of Hilary Armstrong.

With no chance of getting lucky a second time, and finding another Pat Glass figure whom they had not realised was there, the all-women shortlist will mean that they really were looking at some girl out of the typing pool, and almost certainly the London typing pool at that.

Beating her would be so easy that it would seem almost cruel. But politics is a rough old trade.