I promise I’ll shut up about Galloway soon enough but I couldn’t let this pass:
GEORGE Galloway was accused last night of trying to split the political left in Scotland after publicly trying to woo Tommy Sheridan to join his Respect party and run alongside him for the Scottish Parliament.
….In a newspaper article yesterday, Mr Galloway said: “Tommy and I would be a great double act, a dream ticket, and people would vote for us. Tommy is still fighting his corner in the SSP but I fear he will have to accept that they have betrayed him and move on.”
Mr Galloway added: “The SSP made a catastrophic blunder. The idea that these unknown Trotskyite apparatchiks who have done him down are going to get the same kind of vote that they did when led by Tommy seems to me inherently improbable.
“These people who have done him down are not fit to tie his shoelaces.”
Mr Sheridan was ousted as SSP leader by the party’s hierarchy last month amid allegations about his private life.
The SSP have responded with a statement on their website.
We are disappointed that George Galloway has launched this astonishing attack on the SSP, based on ignorance and misinformation. We are angry that George Galloway has launched this attack in a right wing newspaper with a tawdry track record of promoting racism and virulent anti-trade unionism. “George Galloway has made no attempt to contact any member of the SSP executive to clarify the facts behind Tommy Sheridan’s resignation.
Do they mean that before the allegation was printed in the Mail on Sunday the SSP “did not, therefore, have a fair or reasonable opportunity to make inquiries or meaningful comment upon them before they were published.”?
In defence of Galloway he really had little choice over which paper to make his attack. After all he gets paid £90,000 a year for his comments in the Tory Mail on Sunday.