GG headbutted John Reid

[faceless]

Labour are in a right mess
George Galloway
May 24, 2010

Diane Abbott, who threw her hat into the ring in the fight for the Labour leadership, has a long history with me. We entered parliament on the same day, at exactly the same age, although we were both considerably slimmer at the time. We've been pals ever since. As long ago as 1991, many wars ago, Diane literally stepped in to stop the rearrangement of the features of Celtic chairman "Doctor" John Reid, who, at the time, was both a thirsty frontbencher - the deputy to the Labour spokeswoman on children in Neil Kinnock's shady Cabinet - and a belligerent advocate of war in Iraq.

Looking back, it was the beginning of his long march from residual supporter of Irish republicanism and countries behind the Iron Curtain to, well, wherever he is now. In the "no" lobby, one sun-dappled afternoon, swaying gently in the nonexistent breeze, Reid breenged at me, a breenge answered with one of the sweetest Glasgow kisses of my career. Reid blundered on and I, having the benefit of being as sober as he is now, shaped up to give him the mother of all thrashings but we both reckoned without Big Di. The Labour left-winger no doubt sympathised with my side of the argument - about the first Iraq war - but she was not going to watch blood spilt in the Mother of Parliaments.

Physically interposing herself, and in so doing knocking Dr Reid to the floor, Abbott imposed an armistice which has lasted between Reid and me ever since. Fewer words are required to dispose of Ms Abbott's challengers. Someone called Andy Burnham, about whom the nation knows nothing, other than that he's quite good looking, has thrown what purports to be a flat cap into the ring.

He has discovered New Labour was too relaxed about the filthy rich - something he hadn't noticed in the Cabinet until lately. Toothy Ed Miliband emerges from the pages of Andrew Rawnsley's epic study The End Of The Party as a sherpa of the early Brown period. An egghead and policy wonker he may be, a credible Prime Minister he is not. Brother "Dave", bananatoting gunman for the notorious Tony Blair gang, is scarcely more so. An elegant, spectral presence, he has risen without trace.

If it hadn't been said already - Churchill of Mr Attlee - I'd put it this way: an empty recalled Toyota Prius ministerial car drew up at Westminster and Mr Miliband Major got out.

The only man with a fight in him is born-again, anti-war Ed Baws, as we know him in Lanarkshire. He has at least had the courage to tell the truth about the Iraq war, that it was a mistake, that it shouldn't have happened because there was no evidence for it, while Burnham and Miliband try to argue that while the past is another country, ravaged and brutalised, it shouldn't be revisited. Baws bears a facial resemblance, at least to me, to the late, great Nye Bevan. Unfortunately he can't speak like him. But he's a bruiser rather than a cipher, which must make him favourite among the trade unionists, who will cast a third of the votes in the contest, the remaining party members, if not the among the ranks of the more effete Labour MPs who cast the balance of votes.

The left, among whom Ms Abbott is the only credible challenger, will be lucky to even get on the ballot, such are the absurdities of New Labour's gerrymandered election rules.

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I wish there'd been video cameras to catch the moment when he nutted Reid. What a moment.