Nice job of going through the manifesto, useful and illustrative. It'd have been easy just to take the media appearances and dunk on Galloway so it's good to see some policy critique.
Yeah I noticed an absence of just looking at the stuff they publish themselves, so I wanted to take a look. Turns out it was all as bad as everything else.
Excellent video Sinan, solid analysis of Galloway's (at best) pandering to conservative social forces but I do think you could have mentioned that before Blair became leader of the LP, "Gorgeous George" was seen as a contender for leadership of the *right* of the party - his leftism is very much a later phenomenon. And for Assange fans - what he's accused of doing is not "poor sexual etiquette" it is non-consensual unprotected sex aka rape, I don't think he should be extradited to the USA or a third country where he will be passed on to the USA, but he absolutely should have faced those charges and either been convicted or exonerated.
It's odd how many of this particular type of high profile "leftist" who's all in on the Galloway/Worker's Party train has that kind of past. Chris Williamson who's one of the three deputy leaders was a Blairite council leader in Derby and is also just as much of a latter day leftist as Galloway. Nothing wrong with coming to it later, it just means you're under more obligation to demonstrate good instincts on issues. Possibly a type of guy to examine another time in another video.
@@SKTheCrusader So what? Pretty much a straw man, isn't it? It's what they are now that counts! Tony Benn was also a career politician before he saw the light. Again, so what?
@@stephendavis5530 That's not what a straw man is, but I'll bite. The Benn example only highlights why demonstration of good instincts is important if you've been a melt before. Something neither Galloway nor Williamson demonstrate across the whole of their politics. If you're fundamentally okay with "Nationalisation, but also marginalising certain groups, climate change denial and pandering to an imagined bigoted working class" then that's I guess bad, but you have a right to make that bargain and others including people in the groups affected have a right to judge accordingly. It's the fact that they don't have consistently good instincts that means that scrutiny of their earlier careers is important to understand what the root of the flaw is and whether it's something that they can be pressured to correct (I don't think so in their cases) or whether it's something fundamental to their political constitution that means we should regard them with suspicion.
@@SKTheCrusader That's rather a word salad to try and cover for a point that actually doesn't matter. It's a textbook case of straw manning. Who gives a crap what they were like a few year back? It's now that matters! And what's your beef with Williamson? I hope it's not what I think it could be, because I'm definitely not taking you seriously.
@@stephendavis5530 It's not my fault that you neither know what a straw man is, or can read more than 10 words. So I'll keep it simple. My problem with Williamson is that he's deeply unpleasant and goes out of his way to take points that are legitimate and express them in the dumbest way. He's also in a socially conservative party that denies climate change, so that's pretty sub-op- oh excuse me "bad" I'd say.
@13:30 Bradford West census results for 2011 had the Muslim population at 51.3%. With a turnout of 50%, I'm not ruling out that the significant majority of the 56% vote share he got in 2012 was from muslim voters because he specifically targetted them. I don't think he would have won on policy alone had he not done this.
I think if you put a gun to my head I'd say that the majority of his votes probably came from the Muslim community, but I think when you're winning more than 50% of the vote you can't put victory down to a single factor. Especially given what we know about how minority voters tend to turnout (correlates with wealth etc, but generally they turnout less). Though obviously you have to caveat with "does anyone ever try to get them to turnout?" but I just don't see it as The Only Way He Wins when that's just not plausible or credible to me. Certainly a significant factor, but it's important not to overstate for a few reasons. Oddly of all his victories I'd say Bradford West is the one where you just have to say he cleaned Labour's clock really effectively and even if he hadn't concentrated in that way I think he wins. Maybe by significantly less. Though I'll concede that's speculation at 1AM from me.
@@SKTheCrusader @SKTheCrusader I don't necessarily disagree, and at 2am I'm maybe not going to do some statistical analysis to dive into it any further. I'll admit though, that my view is probably coloured by the fact I am from Bradford and have lived in that constituency (before Galloway mind), which puts a very subjective lens on my view on this, which I know I shouldn't really extrapolate further. But some of his comments around "baradari" and his opponents non-muslim drinking habits are an example of how I think that there is a pattern of Galloway utilising conservative religious views to drum up support. My biggest concern with Galloway now is he is using (and subtly always has used) anti LGBT sentiments within conservative religious views to drum up support. Anti LGBT sentiment that I personally associate with growing up in Bradford (a bias that's not necessarily fair to extrapolate from though, I understand).
@@SKTheCrusaderSorry I've not seen the whole video, but as a Batley resident, living through Galloway's previous attempt to get elected. One thing I did notice is that he was not only appealing to the Muslim base (Batley has a slightly lower % of Muslims Vs Bradford) he was appealing to the working class white folk as well. They seemed to buy his "stick it to the establishment" sales pitch. I was initially surprised as I thought he was only here for the Muslim vote, but it makes sense he was casting a wide net, and those in low economic situations responded to him, regardless of religious or ethnic backgrounds.
