Andy McSmith's Diary: Labour's female MPs wary of George Galloway's 'ugly track record'

Galloway's commentary on the rape allegations hanging over the head of Julian Assange are not forgotten or forgiven

Jeremy Corbyn is not in favour of letting George Galloway back into Labour (Getty)

George Galloway is not going to be able to rejoin the Labour Party without causing an “almighty row”, not least from female MPs.

Ken Livingstone suggested last week that there might be a place for the old renegade in the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party, if he were prepared to follow the rules.

While the arguments around the Iraq war that led to his expulsion 12 years ago might be consigned to the past, his commentary on the rape allegations hanging over the head of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are not forgotten or forgiven. He argued that if a woman consents to sex once, and then wakes up to find the same man having sex with her again without her consent, that is not rape. “Not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion,” he said.

A more recent memory is of his ferocious attacks on Naz Shah, the Labour candidate who unseated him in Bradford West this year. He accused her of lying about being forced into marriage at 15, claiming that she was 16. She produced a document that backed her claim, and in her maiden speech to Parliament described Galloway as “misogynistic, vitriolic [and] very dangerous”.

Writing on the website of Progress, a Blairite pressure group, the Labour MP Dawn Butler, who chairs the Women’s Parliamentary Labour Group, warned: “Galloway has an ugly track record in opposing Labour women. I have spoken to Jeremy Corbyn and he has told me he is not in favour of letting Galloway back in. Suggestions that George Galloway should be readmitted… are rather bewildering. I am sure that there would be an almighty revolt.”

Clegg gets to the bottom of it

Nick Clegg is writing a book which, according to the publicity, will reflect on “how the politics of reason, evidence and compromise can survive at a time when grievance and unreasoned populism are on the march”. He does not say so, but I assume that the Liberal Democrats stood for “reason, evidence and compromise” in his world view; but who are the forces of “grievance and unreasoned populism” now running rampant, I wonder? He promises to pepper his analysis with “candid stories and observations from my time at the top and the bottom of the political ladder”.

Some facts were doctored…

Junior doctors have been exhorted by Daniel Finkelstein, a commentator on The Times, to break ranks with the leadership of their British Medical Association union, which is in dispute with the Government over working hours. Finkelstein reminded, in a fiercely worded opinion piece, that in 1945, the BMA opposed the creation of the NHS.

Curiously, Finkelstein quoted Alfred Cox, as if he were the secretary of the BMA at the relevant time, when actually his term of office ended in 1931. But never mind, Finkelstein’s Times article so impressed Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, that he has tweeted a link to it. Finkelstein has also gone on Twitter to denounce claims made by doctors as “totally untrue”. The Health Secretary retweeted him.

Nowhere in The Times or on his Twitter feed does it mention that Daniel Finkelstein is not just any old commentator: he is Lord Finkelstein, a Conservative peer.

Slash and Burns

Jackie Burns, the South Lanarkshire Labour councillor who announced in May that the council was closing all its public toilets because of budget cuts imposed by the Scottish Parliament, has received a £40 fixed penalty notice because, waiting at a taxi rank in Hamilton, he was taken short and nipped down a quiet lane to have a slash. “I am embarrassed,” he said.