Galloway

Galloway and his greatest show on earth may not be to everybody's taste, but if nothing else he's probably done for Milliband 2. And there is a lot else that has shifted!

Everybody has gone over the figures now, and talked about the death of the main parties or of Bradford West's unique oddness. Leave aside idiots. (Some Labour leaders talked of Galloway's use of traditional Asian community leaders to guarantee the vote - it was the exact reverse. That has been Labour's standing tactic throughout the country and was again in Bradford. That's what got Labour into hot water in the voting scandals about the misuse of postal ballots in the Midlands.  A cynical approach that has now been seen to have failed.)

What has changed is that the collapse in support for mainstream parties - because they offer the same policy - has levered forward a notch. And now a section of the mass of the people (a small section) have broken from their monopoly hold and will vote for credible candidates (those they know, who are against austerity and the wars and who might win.) This is news. England is coming into line with Scotland where a significant section of the mass of the people have broken out of Labour's corral and today, vote SNP.

White lower middle class and working class people voted for Galloway; as well as thousands of young muslims - of all levels of religious commitment. (Most extreme religious muslim sects oppose voting.)

What does it show?

It shows, for one thing that Livingstone's chances in London, if he was independent rather than Labour, would be better in May. He was against the wars. He opposes austerity. He is well known. Yet he has joined the Labour Party, fatuously, and despite their 'austerity-extra' policies, because he thinks it will help him win. It may well provoke his failure.

It also shows that if some reasonably well-known people get to work now in a range of working class constituencies, on a programme of opposition to austerity and a plan for an alternative and have opposed the wars, they too will have a good chance at the next election.

What alternative, if you have decided that's your schtick, is there to Labour? Small bands of unknown sectarians setting up unknown national organisations, then parachuting into constituencies: or perhaps the prospect of key Labour MPs declaring an open faction that will break the whip, combining with the best of the trade unions and heading for a new formation at the next election? Perhaps you believe in the Damascene conversion of the Labour leadership, because? Well because ... there is no alternative BUT reforming Labour!

These notions don't make much sense to me. If only because seeing the future in such detail is best left to prophets. Instead it might be best to start with what we know; including what we now know about the way some? many? people are thinking about politics.

We know we need a militant mass movement against austerity; building to represent the majority. Everything starts from that point really. Nothing (at least nothing on the left of the Labour Party) will be possible without that. And now we know something else. There are perhaps millions of voters out there (in England and maybe in Wales) who would be interested in election candidates that they have heard of, that are opposed to austerity and war, that are independent of the main parties and who appear credible.

Best wishes to Mr and Mrs Galloway.