George Galloway doesn’t ‘sow division’. He sprays it everywhere

The three most prominent hat-wearing guys in public life are George Galloway, weirdo anatomist Gunther von Hagens, and that rapist who used to own Blackpool football club. Sorry, but case closed. Hang on, Bono once sued a former U2 stylist all the way to the high court for the return of a hat – though of course, there’s nothing there to make one reopen the case files either.

Anyway, shortly after 5am this morning, George Galloway’s hat could be found outside the Batley and Spen byelection count, bobbing along on top of a speech of quite hilarious self-pity. “This was peak Kirklees,” intoned its wearer in that sonorous voice which always implies he’s reading the last rites of democracy itself, as opposed to saying some shit for coins on Putin TV. “Not even enough chairs for people to sit on. Not even a coffee at 4am.”

Oh mate. Waa waa waa. I think we can safely say Donald Trump is going to get a shock today when he looks into his magic mirror and inquires of it: “Who is the biggest man-baby of all?” It’s honestly too pathetic. Tell you what: you’d never catch a cat pretending to be George Galloway.

So then to the Batley and Spen byelection, which saw a narrow Labour win despite Galloway picking up more than 8,000 votes in a campaign you needed a hazmat suit just to read about. This time round Galloway was fronting something called the Workers Party of Britain, but he’s previously been lead singer for Respect, a Labour MP, an independent candidate, and endorsed Nigel Farage in 2019. Let’s face it, he likes nasty elections. And also nasty dictators. Don’t make him pick!

An indefatigable carpetbagger, Galloway’s carpetbag has the capacity of that belonging to Mary Poppins, though sadly not the contents. His carries only bottomless malevolence, while she was famously able to produce a hat stand from hers. Ironically, George would have found that quite useful.

Each time he turns up, it’s as if he’s answered some invisible twat signal. I don’t really care for the phrase “sowing division” as far as Galloway is concerned. “Sowing” implies a sort of precision to the planting, when in fact Galloway just sprays division around like some porphyric roué who can’t be bothered to find the urinal.

As for peak Galloway, will we ever reach it? His odiousness is positively Himalayan. Many foolishly assumed the heights had been hit on Celebrity Big Brother, while Rula Lenska petted him and wiped imaginary milk off his tache and said stuff like: “Pussy pussy pussy, it’s OK, it’s OK.” Incredible, really, that the man who did this on national TV is making waves anywhere other than his own bath. But perhaps the UK is not a country overburdened by self-respect. Take Nadine Dorries, a woman who once simply absented herself from parliament and her obligations to her constituents in order to chase fame on I’m A Celeb, and failed even to declare her fee for huffing ostrich anus and kangaroo testicles. For the entire, era-defining pandemic thus far, this woman has been health minister.

Back on Galloway, some will remember his excruciatingly repulsive antics in Bradford West in 2015, during which he accused Labour’s candidate, Naz Shah, of lying about her forced marriage at the age of 15. According to Galloway, the giant lie was that she was in fact 16, and he produced her nikah (Islamic marriage certificate) at a hustings, having instructed a representative in Pakistan to obtain it. Shah claimed this representative had impersonated her dead father; this was denied. Shah showed the Guardian a second nikah which backed up the earlier date, and eventually won the seat from Galloway.

But at the time, that surely felt like the peak Galloway contortion: some old white guy telling a British Pakistani woman she was wrong about her own teenage forced and abusive marriage, and accusing her of racist slander. Shah was one of Labour’s key campaign architects in Batley and Spen, and was reportedly forced to call the police over allegations of intimidation by Galloway supporters. I imagine seeing him off again feels satisfying, but no doubt he’ll be repeating on her and all of us again soon enough.

As for his own marital status, I’ve lost count of what wife Galloway’s on now. He reminds me of a former football writer who used to get a new one at every World Cup. But I did momentarily tune into George’s livestream earlier to hear him shouting something about his baby. Baby, I wondered? And yet, having now visited the personal life section of his Wikipedia page – almost as good as Nick Faldo’s, and very similar in its way – I note that Galloway has recently welcomed his sixth child. Lovely to see these chaps going on and on, of course. Has Ken Livingstone had any more recently?

The other thing George was ranting about this morning is how, as soon as the lawyers woke up, he was going to take legal action on the result. Then again, when isn’t he taking legal action? He sues like an oligarch, or Richard Desmond. There are few more committed to the hideously bourgeois activity of litigating than Galloway, and no doubt he will find something to hook into in this column, the defence of which will take up far too much of my time over the next few weeks. I’m pre-emptively laying my towel over half the corrections column just in case.

If only his own pronunciations were held to such rigorous account. In a recent interview with Owen Jones, Galloway confided: “I’ll eat my hat if they [Labour] are not third.” In which case, what on earth’s he waiting for – silver service and a Rennie chaser? Time to keep your word, big man, and for God’s sake PUT A HAT IN IT.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist