IN BETTER TIMES HE'D HAVE SWUNG:

Support for War Puts Labor MP's Seat in Jeopardy: Blair's Party Falters, Even in Stronghold (Glenn Frankel, April 18, 2005, Washington Post)

For Britain's ruling Labor Party there are few more loyal strongholds than the Bethnal Green and Bow district in London's East End, a blue-collar enclave of public housing complexes, small shops and recent immigrants. But this time around the party's candidate is in trouble here, and the reason is simple: the war in Iraq.

Two years ago, Oona King, the Labor incumbent and one of only two black women in Parliament, backed Prime Minister Tony Blair in supporting the war. King, who is Jewish, survived a subsequent attempt by her constituents in the party to depose her as their candidate, but now she faces a stiff challenge from a Labor heretic who has come to Bethnal Green for the express purpose of evicting her from office.

George Galloway, a colorful dissident who sports impeccable left-wing credentials, tailored suits and the nickname "Gorgeous George," was drummed out of the party two years ago after vituperatively denouncing Blair over the war. He helped found a splinter party called Respect, which has decided its best chance to win a House of Commons seat in the May 5 general elections is here in Labor's urban heartland, where more than 40 percent of the population is Muslim.

The result has been an increasingly nasty contest. Galloway has branded King "a new Labor stooge" and claimed at a recent debate that "100,000 people lie dead as a result of the decisions she made." King responded by citing Galloway's two trips to Baghdad to meet with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president, in the years before the war led to his ouster. "When I come across someone who is guilty of genocide I do not get on a plane and go to Baghdad and grovel at his feet," she said.

Analysts say the contest is too close to call...

Well, they survived Mosley...

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 18, 2005 12:00 AM