This is a guest post by tim
In his recent speech in Amman, Galloway boasted he has sat in the British Parliament for the last 20 years. That’s a bit like claiming you’ve sat on the London Eye for the last eight years, after visiting it occasionally.
Often absent through holidays and pressing “one man shows” George again skipped all the votes on the Embryology and Abortion bills going through Parliament in the last couple of days. This time though, it seems George wasn’t out of the country or out earning. I suspect he was trying to hold his “party” together.
What is left of Respect Renewal is a small clique of Trots and a diminishing number of far right Islamists based around Jamaat and the Muslim Brotherhood. Trying to reconcile the two is proving difficult for George.
When he was in the Labour Party he voted against the whip on numerous “conscience issues” including Abortion and Fertilisation. The Right To Life UK Group described him thus:
“In 1990 he opposed clauses aimed at legalising abortion on demand, with one doctor needed only to certify that the pregnancy has not exceeded 12 weeks. He also voted against abortion up to birth on various grounds, including handicap. He is also against the use of the human embryo for experiments and human cloning … He is completely opposed to euthanasia by omission and euthanasia by commission.”
Everyone knows George has strong views on Abortion
“I’m strongly against abortion. I believe life begins at conception and therefore unborn babies have rights. I think abortion is immoral.”I believe in god. I have to believe that the collection of cells has a soul”
And on the rest of the Embryology Bill
“And the proposals in the Embryo Research Bill before the House imminently blasphemes against the very idea of God. “
So why didn’t George vote?
The answer is simple. He didn’t want to alienate the last bits of left wing fig leaf hanging around his Offices.And it’s rumoured that an agreement was reached that George should not vote.
One of his supporters Andy Newman claimed yesterday.
“It is impossible to contemplate that any broad based party could be built that didn’t allow people to follow their religious convictions.”
When one bit of that party believes in abortion on demand, and one subscribes to a group believing that four male witnesses are required to testify to a rape, it must indeed be a difficult position.
So after years of lambasting everyone in Parliament who he disagrees with as cowards, Galloway disappears.
If his constituents want his views, they can get them when he’s being paid for them. Galloway has a Radio Show. They can tune in.
George has dropped out.
