Hat In The Ring

George Galloway knows perfectly well that there is not going to be a single Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidate at Rutherglen and Hamilton West.

The Conservatives and the Lib Dems hardly feature in that constituency. The Labour candidate is going to be the man who lost the seat to the awesomely impressive Margaret Ferrier, or it is going to be someone who was no better than that. That man, Ged Killen, resigned from Jeremy Corbyn's front bench in order to vote in favour of the Single Market.

I still hope that George will unseat the Leader of Durham County Council, although that matter is now largely out of my hands and in the hands of our people in Chester-le-Street.

But George was supposed to lose his deposit at Bradford West in 2012, when he took 55.9 per cent of the vote in an eight-way split, and when he topped the poll in every ward, including those which were more than 90 per cent white.

This will be the first by-election since Keir Starmer had become the Leader of the Labour Party. It will be for a seat that Labour had lost by a mere 5,230 votes as recently as last December. There are scarcely the words to describe how much we must long, and how hard we must work, for it to be won by, of all people, George Galloway.