30 March 2012

George Galloway Wins Bradford West With Decisive Victory

Controversial MP George Galloway has won the Bradford West by-election, taking the seat from Labour polling more than 18,000 votes.

Receiving 56% of the vote Galloway, expelled from Labour in 2003, said the win was the "most sensational victory" in by-election history.

Labour had secured the seat in the 2010 General Election with a majority of 5,763 but the new results showed a 20% drop in the party’s share of the vote winning only 8,201 this time.

Conservative candidate Jackie Whiteley was third, with 2,746 votes. Jeanette Sunderland, of the Liberal Democrats, secured 1,505 votes.

Galloway co-founded the Respect Party after being expelled by Labour over comments in opposition to the Iraq war.

Claiming to represent he "Bradford Spring" Describing his victory as "mammoth majority", he said the "mammoth vote" represented a "total rejection" of the three major parties in the British political system.

Urging his former party to turn away from the course set by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said they "must stop imagining that working people and poor people have no option but to support them if they hate the Tory and Liberal Democrat coalition partners.”

He added: "They have to stop supporting illegal, bloody, costly foreign wars because one of the reasons why they were so decisively defeated this evening is that the public don't believe that they have atoned for their role in the invasion and occupation of other people's countries and the drowning of those countries in blood."

Labour had held the West Yorkshire seat since 1974, except for a brief period in the 1980s when the sitting MP defected to the SDP.

(H)