Didn't see that coming

The Respect party's vote in Bradford West went from about 4% in the 2010 election to 56% in 2012. Labour went from 45% of the vote to 25%.

That is an absolute ass-kicking out of the blue.

I wonder if Galloway's "Bradford Spring" could be the catalyst that sees Yorkshiremen finally shake off the shackles that have bound us since 1485?

Nice to see Ed "Wallace" Milliband making progress in opposition. A real spanking for Labour this one. He'll be back at Aardman Productions by November.

Galloway is an opportunistic, unprincipled, ultra-leftist. That's all been known for years. In the BBC report online, he's also quoted as this being a massive vote against the previous governments warmongering. So he's probably also been going around doing his 'I'm almost a Muslim' routine - which, in the past, has included u-turns on equality issues for women and LGBT people.

But the scale of the vote suggests that this win is beyond that and that there is at least also an element of Labour's inability to re-connect with its historic supporters and offer any sort of meaningful alternative to the orthodoxy (in the main political parties) of neo-liberal economic policies.

Living in Bradford is an interesting experience - the fact Labour put up a pillar of the ethnic community and still got walloped must be shock.

The Tories have proved to be the most inept government since Callaghan and still Labour get hammered in seat they have held since 1974?

Maybe Labour need to show their true colours and provide us with a real alternative to the wishy/washy stuff of Cameron/Clegg. Maybe they could just make McCluskey leader and let the rest of country be exposed to the thoughts and actions of the barmiest union leader of them all rather than his puppet!!

Politicians being oportunistic? Well you could nearly blow me down....If only he was a little more mainstream, like the present, and last incumbents!

Not really bothered about Galloway, but can't help wondering if this signals good times to come for other opportunists such as the BNP.

I love the way you and others still portray Labour as being in thrall to the unions. What is surprising is that the unions continue to bankroll the party, considering what has (not) been coming the other way.

It will certainly make for interesting times if Lliam Byrne forces another by-election in Hodge Hill. Anything but an increased Labour majority there would see the back of Miliband as leader. I just hope the focus group that will have convened to discuss Bradford West has managed to complete their navel-gazing by then.

Labour has never had a better time to re-connect (or in some cases to simply connect), with the voters. There are millions out there who feel disenfrachised and who can blame them with the politics we've been subjected to over the last 30-odd years? The worrying aspect is that for every Galloway-style seat won, there is equal opportunity for far more insidious right-wing groups to do the same

Whitechapel is just a 20-minute walk from here, so we were near enough to appreciate the full joys of Galloway's campaign there - and then the local annoyance with his subsequent antics pretending to be a cat licking cream out of Rula Lenska's hands while wearing a red leotard.

He was so determined to appeal to the more fundamentalist Muslim voters down the road that he suddenly started making announcements about how bad abortion was and how LGBT rights were not actually far less important than the Middle East.

Of course, his Trot backers were helping with all this too - including suddenly deciding that they were going to start holding pickets outside a strip club that had been around for years and was not in the Muslim area of Whitechapel.

Galloway is little more than a Trot puppet who is entirely prepared to play with the rights of women and LGBT people to win the votes of religious fundamentalists.

That doesn't win an iota of respect from me. And that is not dependent on how other politicians behave.

A leotard, a leotard, my kingdom for a leotard ...