Wickedly enjoyable encounter leaves press both humiliated and satisfied
WALKING to the “Galloway’s Back” press conference, I bumped into the man himself – instantly recognisable in his handsome black fedora. Few politicians are so famous they could be a Hallowe’en costume.
“Remember me?” I asked George, casting his mind back to Cambridge, 2003, when he addressed the People’s Front of Medieval Historians Against the War. “I remember your face,” he replied, a phrase one associates with picking a mugger out of a line-up, but I detected a comradely twinkle in those piercing blue eyes. Or I hope I did. When Galloway’s revolution finally comes, I fear we journalists will be the first ones against the wall.
He made us stand outside Parliament in the freezing cold, his wife shivering in white boots and a fuzzy shawl, as he delivered opening remarks that proved, contrary to what the liars say, that he knows the name of his new constituency perfectly well. George correctly identified both Rochdale’s football team and postcode.
On to questions: How does he feel about Israel? “There is a genocide,” he claimed, adding that none of us will have the courage to print the word. Should Hamas be allowed to run Gaza? The question was deemed to be “dripping with imperialist condescension”. It’s not for George to say, he being famously reticent on foreign affairs. “I’m an Arafat man myself,” he added, “have been since the 1970s”, evoking a better age when you could hijack a plane and still get change from a pound.
Listening to Galloway is akin to flicking rapidly between the pages of
The Morning Star and The Telegraph
– his socialism is so old school it is practically nostalgic. In the Commons, he didn’t “affirm” his allegiance to the King – the Lefty option – he “swore” it. At his chilly presser, he bemoaned the lack of a “Mr Churchill” to unite the country, and proclaimed himself a “Roman Catholic”. He wears the hat, he told us, because he was attacked in 2014, causing one journalist to ask: “Is it made of steel?” Nasty. But there’s no love lost between the press and this politician. He denounced us, mocked us. Those eyes, as cold as the River Tay, picked out faces as he noted down names – “who are you?” – his voice rising to new heights of indefatigability, before finally exploding into a dark truth.
“The next election will be about Muslims,” he said. He might be right. After all, the PM reacted to Galloway’s victory as if he’d invaded Kuwait, and thus put “extremism” on the agenda. Sectarianism looms. “There’s at least 15,000 supporters of my point of view” in Angela Rayner’s constituency, said George. Fifteen thousand who? Quakers? Militant Unitarians?
Journalists staggered away from the event humiliated, amused and satisfied, all the emotions, a Tory MP tells me, that one feels after a good session with a Chelsea dominatrix. The Galloway press conference is so wickedly enjoyable, it ought to be illegal – and no doubt Sunak is drafting the legislation as we speak.