Worse yet when they contrive to present the only significant party standing in BG&B not playing up to "communalism" as doing precisely that. Compare any of Respect’s public statements or its literature with, say, New Labour’s claim in "white" areas that Galloway was "stirring it up" amongst the Bengali community, or New Labour’s use of two different leaflets – one mentioning Muslims repeatedly, the other not – for different parts of the constituency. Fortunately, none of these unpleasant and divisive tricks worked.

Really? I’ve not seen much textual evidence for this. Going by the ratio of posts on his website, I would assume that a Galloway win would piss him off approximately ten times as much.

In any case, I’m apparently much less scared than the rest of the blogosphere by the Big Bad BNP. As far as I can see, of all the things that British fascists might be doing with their time, electoral campaigning is about the least harmful. Furthermore, it’s not just a matter of people off; if Mrs Kamm turned out to be shagging the milkman then I would imagine that would piss Oliver off greatly but would give me no particular pleasure. The point about Galloway winning is that those people who it winds up are, in general, being wound up for the right reason; that reason being that they had invested a great deal of their self-esteem in a particularly irritating and self-righteous approach to a contentious political issue, and backed the wrong horse.

I’ve got a post up on Crooked Timber if you want to be a bit more saddened and disappointed, btw, Jimmy.

Oswald Mosley arrived in the East End to attack immigrants. Galloway arrived to defend them. See the difference?

Me neither but I suspect that if Oliver Kamm had been around in those days things might have turned out differently.