Daily Mail up in arms over Ed Milliband meeting GG

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'Naive' Miliband is attacked by his own party over secret George Galloway meeting
Brendan Carlin
21 April 2013
dailymail.co.uk

Ed Miliband last night faced an angry backlash from Labour MPs after it emerged he held a secret meeting with George Galloway, who was thrown out of the party ten years ago. The Labour leader invited Respect MP Mr Galloway to his Commons office, where they had a ‘cordial and friendly conversation’ for nearly an hour. It has sparked rumours that Mr Miliband is considering allowing Mr Galloway to rejoin the party. But Labour MPs warned their leader against taking such action. ‘Galloway is a traitor,’ said one. ‘It’s naive lunacy for the leader to have anything to do with him. I thought he wanted to get rid of the Red Ed tag. He will rejoin Labour over my dead body.’

Mr Galloway was expelled from Labour after he was accused of inciting foreign forces to rise up against British troops invading Iraq – military action he strongly opposed. Last year, Mr Galloway humiliated Mr Miliband by triumphing over Labour in the Bradford West by- election by a thumping 10,000 votes. If he returned to his former party, it could give Mr Miliband an extra seat at the next General Election in 2015. Mr Miliband believes that winning seats in Labour’s northern stronghold is key to him ousting David Cameron from No  10.

Senior Labour sources denied there were plans to let Mr Galloway rejoin the party, saying it was ‘merely a get to know you’ meeting. But friends of Mr Galloway said he was ‘taken aback’ to receive the invitation. ‘Obviously it was an olive branch,’ said one. ‘It is hard to imagine why Ed would want to see him unless he is thinking of letting George back in. They had a very friendly chat and agreed to stay in touch. At one point in the meeting, Mr Miliband asked Mr Galloway why he had left the party. He replied, ‘I didn’t leave, I was thrown out.’ Both men laughed.

News of the meeting, said to have taken place a few weeks ago, was leaked days after Mr Galloway greeted Margaret Thatcher’s death by saying: ‘May she burn in the hellfires.’ Labour last night confirmed the meeting took place but insisted there had been no attempt to bring Mr Galloway back into the party as many of his views were ‘unacceptable’.

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A Labour MP called him a traitor? I wonder who that was? Or if it actually happened at all...

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from Ron McKay, GG's right-hand man.

GALLOWAY MEETING WITH ED MILLIBAND

You may have read a story in today's Mail on Sunday about a meeting between George and Ed Miliband. This was clearly leaked to the paper by the Labour leader's enemies within his own party, probably wistful and vengeful Blairites. The timing is significant.

The facts are these: This meeting took place around two months ago. It was at Miliband's invitation, it was in his office and was a convivial and entirely social meeting. Nothing was offered, there was no discussion of what-ifs or fanciful hypotheses. "It was a get-to-know you meeting, the kind of thing that happens day in and day out in the parliament," George said. "We talked politics, of course we did, in the broadest terms. He did not sound me out, or I he. We agreed that we would meet again in the future. So far we haven't done."

George went on to say that in the week that he had made such an impact over the funeral of Margaret Thatcher it was clear that the leak was a calculated attempt at destabilising Ed Miliband - which could only have come from a New Labour insider.

"I didn't leave Labour, Labour left me, taken over and flown to destruction by Tony Blair and his crew. Blair is intent on staging a comeback, however unlikely that may seem, his comments in the last few days have been a criticism of Miliband's leadership and politics and this is clearly another attempt at wounding him," George said.

He added: "In the last few weeks I've had meeting with senior Tories, including David Davis and others, and that clearly doesn't herald any kind of dalliance or alliance with the Conservatives or the Con-Dem coalition. I'm in Respect, I'm staying in Respect, I'm building Respect. End of."

Ends

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George Galloway: Ed Miliband lied about meeting
bbc.co.uk
26th April 2013

Respect MP George Galloway has accused Labour leader Ed Miliband of lying about a meeting between the two men. Mr Miliband said he had met the MP to talk about a vote on boundary changes. But Mr Galloway said this was "a lie" and called the Labour leader "an unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba".

Reports of the meeting prompted rumours that Mr Galloway could rejoin Labour. Mr Miliband has denied this and says he does not want Mr Galloway to be an MP. After 16 years as a Labour MP, Mr Galloway was expelled from the party in 2003 over comments he made on the Iraq war. Since then he has twice defeated Labour to win a seat in Parliament.

Reports of a meeting between George Galloway and Ed Miliband surfaced last week. Speaking on BBC Radio Five Live, the Labour leader defended the meeting, saying he had met all the leaders of the minor parties, including Mr Galloway, ahead of a key Commons vote in January.

But in a tweet, Mr Galloway said: "Miliband's claim that he repeatedly pursued me for a one hour meeting about "boundary changes" is, quite simply, a lie." He added: "I realise now that I showed poor judgement in finally agreeing to meet Miliband. An unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba." It comes after more positive comments from the Respect MP.

On Wednesday he told the London Evening Standard that he found Mr Miliband "quite impressive, physically and intellectually" during an hour long meeting at the Labour leader's offices. Mr Galloway said the Labour leader had told him "we should do this again". He told The Evening Standard he wanted to see Mr Miliband as prime minister "the sooner the better" and would encourage his supporters to vote Labour in the forthcoming local elections where there is no Respect candidate.

The Labour leader rejected the MP's comments and denied that Mr Galloway would be rejoining Labour, telling the BBC: "I think George Galloway's views are awful. He might want me to be prime minister, but I don't want him to be an MP. George Galloway isn't coming back to the Labour party. We want to defeat him at the next election in his Bradford West seat." Pressed about reports that people within his party were unhappy about the meeting, Mr Miliband said: "I don't think people in my party are concerned. I think people in my party understand it.

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I really didn't think that Miliband would be such a duplicitous weasel, but there you go.

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George Galloway Doesn't Need the Labour Party - The Labour Party Needs Him
John Wight
huffingtonpost.co.uk
22/04/2013

So here we go again: another week and another attack on Respect MP George Galloway; this time over the personal meeting it has been revealed he had with Labour leader Ed Miliband a few weeks ago.

The original story appeared in the Daily Mail in the form of a criticism of 'Red Ed' for daring to meet with Galloway, the bête noire of the political establishment and cosy Westminster consensus. The thrust of the Mail story is that the purpose of the meeting was to pave the way the MP for Bradford West's readmission into the party he was forced out of back in 2003 over his opposition to the war on Iraq. George Galloway, it should be recalled, was a member of the Labour Party for over 30 years prior to his expulsion.

There followed, predictably, a backlash from certain quarters of the Labour Party, with adjectives such as 'unacceptable', 'traitor', 'untouchable', and so on deployed to discredit the Respect MP. Someone by the name of Mark Hughes from the Labour supporting blog, Labour List, wrote a piece for the Guardian in which he opines

'Ed Miliband knew exactly what he was inviting into his office that day. And while a small part of me admires his hard-headed pragmatism and determination to win a crucial Commons vote, a larger part of me thinks - it's Galloway, what were you thinking, Ed? That man - after everything he has said and done - doesn't even deserve your courtesy.'

Let's be clear about something. One of the very few of the nation's MPs who can walk through the Commons with his head held high is George Galloway. Consistently, and unwaveringly, this is a man who speaks truth to power, and has done regardless of any personal cost to himself. Whether it is his stance on illegal and immoral wars in the Middle East, the suffering of the Palestinian people, the anathematization of the Muslim community here at home, or his refusal to abandon real Labour values of social and economic justice for the poor and working people, he continues to stand head and shoulders above his peers, deservedly gaining an international reputation that ensures he speaks to packed out audiences wherever he appears in this country and overseas.

This, in truth, is the reason for the disdain in which he his held by the assorted careerists, sell outs, and Tory-lite opportunists that have defenestrated the Labour Party of everything it was formed to represent since Tony Blair assumed the leadership back in 1994.

Who could argue that Galloway's recent intervention in one of the most shameful acts of political cowardice ever witnessed in this country - namely the manner in which the current Labour leadership acquiesced in the unprecedented recall of Parliament to pay tribute to Margaret Thatcher after her death and the £10 million of taxpayers' money that was spent on a state funeral - was exemplary and an inspiration to the millions of people in this country who despise everything Thatcher stood for and whose voices would not have been heard otherwise?

Furthermore the repeated ad hominem attacks directed at him over his meetings and dealings with former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and current Syrian president Bashir al-Assad see obfuscation raised to the level of art.

In his attempt to ease the suffering of millions of Iraqis being punished by a sanctions regime that was medieval in scope and barbaric in effect - responsible for the premature deaths of 2 million human beings, half a million of those children - George Galloway met with Saddam Hussein in the context of the Mariam Appeal, which he spearheaded to highlight what US senator David Bonior described at the time as 'infanticide masquerading as policy.' Further meetings with the Iraqi leader were held in an attempt to persuade him to allow US inspectors into the country to forestall a war which, as it turned out, took place to devastating effect, leaving a broken society and a mountain of bodies in its wake. Which right thinking person in the country now disagrees that Tony Blair took the nation to war on the false premise that Iraq possessed WMD? And who could now disagree that the net result of the war unleashed on Iraq has been disastrous, both for the Iraqi people slaughtered, maimed, and left traumatised and impoverished, and the families of those British troops who paid with their lives, limbs, and/or mental health and well being?

This is the disaster which George Galloway, well nigh alone in the Commons at the time, extended himself in opposing, and which the current Labour leadership and its supporters believe can be swept under the carpet as a 'mistake' - on the same metaphorical level perhaps as misplacing a few pencils from the stationary cupboard, or spilling a cup of coffee on the carpet of Ed Miliband's office.

When it comes to Assad, this is the man who once occupied a spare room at Buckingham Palace on an official visit to Britain in 2002, when he was greeted by the then Labour leadership, prompting the Syrian leader to speak of his 'warm personal relations' with Tony Blair.

Galloway's relations with Assad were conducted with the objective of aiding the plight of the Palestinians, who were then and continue to suffer the depredations of a decades-long Israeli occupation in violation of international law and multiple United Nations resolutions. As with the Mariam Appeal, Galloway was not satisfied with merely marching, petitioning, and making speeches. Instead he decided to intervene directly by organising not one, not two, but five humanitarian aid convoys to Gaza in defiance of a siege that had reduced 1.5 million men, women, and children to the de facto status of inmates of an open prison.

Does anyone with an ounce of decency think that delivering humanitarian aid to a half starved people can be described as anything other than a principled act of human solidarity? And given that this aid had to be transported through a variety of countries en route, including Syria, and given that you have to deal with the regimes and governments that exist in this world, and not those we might prefer to exist, how else was George Galloway to effect the passage of this aid through those countries without first establishing positive relations with their respective governments?

The Labour Party of Attlee, Bevan, Morrison and Cripps is no more. In its place is a party that has betrayed its values and traditions, along with the millions it was formed to represent in the process.

Being scorned by such a party can only be a badge of honour.

Follow John Wight on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/johnwight1

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MPs' fury as Miliband praises Galloway for his by-election victory over Labour
Simon Walters
28 April 2013
dailymail.co.uk

Ed Miliband faced a growing revolt last night over his secret meeting with Respect MP George Galloway after it emerged that Mr Miliband had congratulated him on the way he beat Labour in a by-election. The controversy over Mr Miliband’s talks with Mr Galloway – who was thrown out of the party in 2003 for his attacks on Tony Blair over the Iraq War – intensified after full details of the meeting in the Labour leader’s office were revealed for the first time.

Well-placed sources have told The Mail on Sunday that: Mr Miliband said he wanted further meetings – but in a secret location so Labour MPs did not find out about it. The two discussed Mr Galloway’s fierce criticism of US foreign policy and opposition to British troops in Afghanistan. They had a ‘warm’ chat and talked about Mr Galloway’s friendship with Mr Miliband’s late father, Marxist academic Ralph Miliband. The Labour leader said he admired Mr Galloway’s campaigning skills and his ability to woo ethnic minority voters.

Mr Galloway said yesterday: ‘I am shocked by the way that Ed Miliband has misrepresented our private meeting. And I regret the fact that he has not felt strong enough within the Labour Party to defend a meeting which he himself asked for. It was perfectly respectful on both sides. He asked me if I knew his father and I said I knew him well and respected him very much.’

The new account of the meeting in Mr Miliband’s Commons office makes a mockery of claims by the leader’s aides that the two men met briefly to discuss boundary changes in parliamentary constituencies. In fact boundary changes took up less than five minutes of the friendly 45-minute talk, with the rest of the conversation covering a wide range of political and personal issues. At one point Mr Miliband congratulated Mr Galloway on his by-election victory over Labour in Bradford West last year by more than 10,000 votes. The Labour leader praised Mr Galloway’s social media campaign and his success in reaching minority voters

A source said: ‘It is absurd to say it was over a Commons vote on parliamentary boundaries. Galloway had already told Labour’s Chief Whip that he would support them over it. They talked about the British and international situation. Galloway said Labour should do more to resist austerity measures. He urged Miliband to press for a faster withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan and to distance himself from American foreign policy.’

An ally of Mr Galloway said: ‘George is very angry at the way Miliband has lied about this meeting. It was clear that he was interested in George’s views and took them seriously. He was surprised to be invited to Miliband’s office and still isn’t sure what his motives were.’ A Labour spokesman said: ‘As we have always said, this meeting was about constituency boundaries.’

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Seems like the Daily Mail is desperate to string this out. You'd almost think they hate everything and anyone that isn't a tory cunt...

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