It wasn't Galloway who unseated Oonagh King but the Bethnal Green electorate. And I'd be interested to know on what basis John MacKenzie thinks she was an excellent MP unless it was that he knows little about London politics.

Gorgeous George did overdo the sycophancy in his encounter with Saddam, but in clinging to that moment John should also remember that many western politicians maintained cordial relations with Saddam even after he had perpetrated his most notorious atrocity, but before he had been downgraded from ally to monster. On the question of John's accusation that Galloway has a Lebanese wife, I'm afraid Galloway is guilty as charged.

The Bradford result was extraordinary, not least because Labour didn't see it coming, and were not remotely prepared for it even by the time the poll closed. Regardless of any questions about policy raised by this defeat, it is plain that something was drastically wrong with Labour's campaign management and intelligence.

In an article on the Labour-supporting Labour List website, John Mann MP, who helped canvass the constituency, said one of the main problems was the inability of Labour activists to communicate with Urdu-speaking voters. It might be useful if this re-opened a debate about multi-culturalism.

Galloway is an intelligent and homourable politician and I'm glad he's back in parliament. But his targeting of a specific issue in Bradford bordered on the cynical. The issue is that the constituency includes significant communities of Pakistani immigrants and their descendants who have resisted all encouragement to assimilate into the native society. They retain their own languages and endeavour to protect their children from "western values." Several years ago this gave rise to Bradford's "Honeyford affair" in which a headteacher was villifed as a racist for advocating assimilation, and which in turn gave rise to a salutory article by Theodore Dalrymple. Dalrymple's article still makes alarming reading, not least because so little has changed since it was written.