If the Respect candidate George Galloway is chosen as a Glasgow list MSP, he will be a force to be reckoned with at Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament.

This article titled “Scottish critics shouldn’t write off George Galloway” was written by Kevin McKenna, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 22nd April 2011 15.30 UTC The sun was out for George Galloway this week as he campaigned vigorously in Buchanan Street, Glasgow’s main shopping thoroughfare. And so too were a few hundred of his fellow citizens. Karen Millen and Hugo Boss could wait for a while, for here they were witnessing a rare thing: a Scottish politician who could speak without notes for 15 minutes, and whom they all recognised. Galloway on a soapbox and with a megaphone in his hand can be irresistible and the handful of curious passers-by had swelled to a throng by the time he had finished a rodomontade which excoriated Labour and the Conservatives for neglecting his city. “The life expectancy of people in parts of this city is 10 years worse than in Kabul,” he bellowed. “The people who purport to represent you have let you down. But if you send me to Holyrood I will make you proud of me.” It was the usual mixture of braggadocio and grandiloquence we have come to expect from a politician who was born on the edge but probably found it too comfortable. Several of the seeming vast army of psephologists and political academics – the only industry that has grown in Scotland since Holyrood came into being – dismiss Galloway. He is an incurable self-publicist, they howl and cannot be taken seriously, especially after his antics in a leotard with Rula Lenska on Big Brother. More people though, still remember what they were doing when they saw Galloway eviscerate a three-man senate sub-committee in Washington in 2005. They had been sent to hang him but suffered their very own TV execution when this chippy Scot destroyed the defence of US foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Galloway reckons he needs around 12,000 second preference votes on May 5 to make it into Holyrood as a Glasgow list candidate. It would be foolish to write him off or dismiss him as a political force. Few remember now that Galloway was chairman of the Scottish Labour party at 27. A few years later he was taking Hillhead from the redoubtable Roy Jenkins. His victory in Bethnal Green for his new Respect party in 2005 was simply astonishing. His expulsion from the Labour party came after he had condemned Tony Blair for Iraq one too many times. Yet just a few years previously the late John Smith would have made him minister for youth in his first cabinet. But Smith’s death and the accession of Blair meant Galloway’s marriage to the party would soon be over. There are even some, like the Daily Telegraph’s formidable Scottish editor, Alan Cochrane, who, while despising Galloway’s politics, have stated they would welcome his presence in parliament. The Holyrood debating chamber can be a sterile and soulless place when there is business to be discussed. As a succession of civic Scotland’s finest rise to speak, blinking and stuttering their way through a prepared address, you wonder how they ever got elected. Of what few articulate and genuinely bright MSPs there have been in post-devolution Scotland, the SNP has had the vast majority. A characteristic of the last nationalist administration is how easily their cabinet stars lord it over Labour’s hapless and inarticulate front bench. If Galloway gets in they will have to start printing tickets for the occasion that he first takes on Alex Salmond in debate. Each of them was a lion in debate at Westminster and the prospect of them locking horns at Holyrood is a spicy one. If Iain Gray, Labour’s increasingly vulnerable Scottish leader, had even half of Galloway’s recognition factor he would be Scotland’s first minister after May 5. An insistent press photographer is trying to persuade Galloway’s campaign manager to pose beside the statue of Donald Dewar that stands atop Buchanan Street. Wisely, he resists the snapper’s entreaties, for surely that would hint at hubris. George Galloway could have led his party too but no statue of his would ever remain vandal-proof for more than a week.

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A story from Paris about the President’s election campaign being financed by Libya. Saif al-Islam threatens to publish details of bank transfers to punish Sarkozy for backing Libyan rebels

This article titled “Sarkozy election campaign was funded by Libya, claims Gaddafi’s son” was written by Kim Willsher in Paris and Ian Black in Tripoli, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th March 2011 12.01 UTC Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s son has claimed Libya helped finance Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful re-election campaign in 2007 and wants the French president to give the money back. In an interview with the Euronews TV channel, Saif al-Islam said the Libyan regime had details of bank transfers and was ready to make them public in a move designed to punish Sarkozy for throwing his weight behind the opposition forces in Libya. Asked what he felt about Sarkozy’s unsuccessful efforts to muster international support for military intervention against the regime in Tripoli, Saif said: “Sarkozy must first give back the money he took from Libya to finance his electoral campaign. “We funded it. We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything. The first thing we want this clown to do is to give the money back to the Libyan people. He was given the assistance so he could help them but he has disappointed us. Give us back our money.” The Libyan regime has yet to release any incriminating documentary evidence. A spokeswoman for the Élysée Palace told the Guardian she had no information or comment about the claims. Libyan sources have separately told the Guardian that substantial funds were paid into accounts to fund Sarkozy’s presidential campaign in 2007. Sources in Tripoli have made clear that the leak of this information is direct retaliation for France’s leading role in a diplomatic campaign to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and its unique recognition of the Benghazi-based rebel Libyan national council. The Guardian has been unable to confirm the claims independently. “Sarkozy is playing dirty, so we are playing dirty too,” said a well-placed Libyan source. French law places strict limits on party donations to candidates. Last year, Sarkozy was rocked by a political scandal involving alleged illegal donations to his party funds by France’s richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt.

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Socialist Party candidates win seats in both Dublin North and Dublin West. Joe Higgins and Clare Daly (Socialist Party, CWI Ireland) elected to the Dail (Irish Parliament) along with up to 3 other candidates from the United Left Alliance. Ireland’s new government is headed for confrontation with Brussels after the country’s ruling party was wiped out on Saturday by voters in a huge popular backlash against a European-IMF austerity programme. Fianna Fail have paid the political price for the EU/IMF bail-out, the first of many ruling governments world wide during this crisis. Joe Higgins said: “We will now set our minds to that with our colleagues in the United Left Alliance and others about launching a new movement. We will be putting up the real opposition and the real alternative, not just inside the Dáil, but outside as well. I anticipate movements of people power, movements of workers, movements in communities in opposition to new attacks that will come – perhaps water charges, perhaps a home tax – that these new parties are committed to, which are all simply more burdens on working class people.” Joe Higgins

This article titled “Fianna Fáil trounced as Fine Gael and Labour set to form coalition” was written by Henry McDonald, for The Observer on Saturday 26th February 2011 21.38 UTC Ireland’s next government will be a coalition between Fine Gael and Labour, it has emerged, as initial results from the general election indicated a crushing defeat for the main ruling party, Fianna Fáil, and the best electoral performance from centre-right opposition party Fine Gael since 1982. Richard Bruton, enterprise spokesman for Fine Gael who will be on the incoming government’s front bench, told the Observer that, despite its successes at the polls, the party was heading towards a power-sharing arrangement after Labour made impressive gains in the capital, Dublin. Asked about the prospect of coalition with Labour, Bruton said: “Yes, I think that is the likely outcome. I know that there was a brief flirtation with the idea of an overall majority. I certainly see that the public didn’t want that. If it ever was likely, it is not happening now.” In an election dominated by fear and anger over the financial implosion that led to an €80bn bailout by the European Union and International Monetary Fund, Ireland’s once most successful political party Fianna Fáil suffered a historic and devastating defeat, with its support estimated at only 15%. Just months after agreeing to the bank bailout it was on course to be beaten into fourth place by a slew of independent candidates – its worst performance since Eamon De Valera founded it in the 1920s. The disaster engulfing the party, until last month led by the outgoing Taoiseach Brian Cowen, is far greater than the Tories sustained in the 1997 Blair landslide and marks a sea change in Irish politics. For seven decades Fianna Fáil has been the dominant force in Irish political life and had enjoyed 14 years of unbroken rule until this humiliating general election result. Meanwhile, support for Sinn Féin was projected to have reached a record 10% in an RTE exit poll, with Gerry Adams, the party president, on course to be elected in the border constituency of Louth. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny is set to be prime minister and will be tasked with persuading his fellow European leaders that the interest rates charged on loans to Ireland should be lowered to prevent the Republic from defaulting. Bruton issued an appeal to fellow EU nations to “cut Ireland some slack” in a crucial summit next month at which Europe will discuss Ireland and other debt-ridden nations’ finances. “There is no interest in Europe jeopardising the very genuine efforts the Irish people are willing to make to correct our economic problems. If Europe just loads up the camel too much the camel will collapse,” he said. One of the first candidates to be elected was in the politically significant constituency of Dublin Central – the home stronghold of former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. In the last general election four years ago Ahern topped the poll with a huge surplus and his transfers under proportional representation brought another Fianna Fáil colleague into the Dail alongside him. But this time around, and for the first time in 14 years, Fine Gael not only won a seat but topped the poll in Dublin Central. Speaking outside the Royal Dublin Society counting centre in Dublin, Fine Gael’s newly elected TD for the area, Paschal Donohoe, said: “It is a great honour and I am very humbled with the support the people have given me. Now it’s time to rebuild the country and restore the nation’s reputation.” Donohoe said he believed the resurrection of Fine Gael demonstrated the people of Dublin and the whole of Ireland “desired stability above all else”. The scale of the Fianna Fáil losses across the country were so great that for the first time in history an outgoing deputy prime minister, Mary Coughlan, was on the verge of losing her seat. Coughlan’s outgoing ministerial colleague Mary Hanafin was also facing the prospect being unseated in her Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown constituency. The election also saw the end of one of the famous Irish political dynasties with the son of the late Taoiseach Charles J Haughey set to lose his Dail seat in Dublin North Central. According to an RTE exit poll published yesterday morning, Fine Gael took 36.1% of the vote, with Labour coming second with 20.5%. Independents and others got 15.5% of the vote – a high figure which was thought to have pushed Fianna Fail into fourth place. Where those independent votes are transferred could be crucial to the final outcome of counts across 43 constituencies. The last RTE exit poll in 2007 proved to be 99% accurate when compared to the actual number of votes cast.

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Diane Abbot entered the Labour Party leadership contest live on radio 4 this morning. Taking the Today programme interviewer completely by surprise she said “I’m going to run”. After looking at the field she asked herself “If not now, when?” and “If not me, who?’”. So suddenly the contest is transformed from one which started off promising to be the least controversial in history, with a series of sharp suited new labour apparatchiks exchanging pleasantries, a bit like the tedious TV debates between the party leaders for the general election, and with none of them much different to the two similar stuffed shirts leading the new coalition government, into an open contest which may even see mention of the socialism word from time to time, if we hold our breath long enough. Renowned for being on the supposed left wing of Labour, Diane Abbot will inevitably make political capital out of being female and black, so that at least they don’t field a set of candidates who “all look the same” but she will also be in a position to voice an alternative perspective on issues such as immigration, tackling the budget deficit by taxing the rich instead of cutting services that hit the weakest hardest, and regaining a defensible policy on civil liberties instead of being in the embarrasing position where it is the Tory and Liberal coalition government cancelling Labour’s hated ID card plans. Diane Abbot’s surprise entry into the leadership race appears to have ambushed previous left candidate John McDonnell who has been criticising the curtailed procedure which requires potential candidates to garner support from at least 33 Labour MPs by Thursday May 27th for an election which will run until September 2010. Diane Abbott

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