It Wuz Broon Wot Dun It

We're tagged, they're split

Do you want to try and explain what is currently going on in the current Respect Galloway/SWP fall out? Quick, hurry up and post otherwise there'll be a new post at the Socialist Unity Blog or Dave's Part or Liam Mac Uaid or . . . or . . . from that bloke in Manchester to both up the ante and to contradict what everyone else has been saying in the previous 15 minutes. (Even Lenny's climbed down from his pole to opine again and again.)

The best I can do for myself at this moment in time is to post once again the tags of the main blogging participants, and maybe a few months down the line some sort of sense can be gleaned from them all:

Socialist Unity Blog

Liam Mac Uaid's Blog

Dave's Part

Neil William's Respect Supporters Blog

Lenny's Punchlines

Splintered Sunrise Blog

I'm sure there are other sources worth checking out, but it's difficult enough to keep up with the blogs listed above.

As a funny aside it's patently obvious that the Weekly Worker/CPGB crowd are seriously pissed off with the fact that their niche has been temporarily stolen by various blogs covering these unfolding events. One of their members who regularly posts on UK Left Network recently came over the wrong side of peevishness with the one liner: 'The Socialist Unity Blog is for Christmas, the Weekly Worker is for life'. I think what he meant to write was 'Weekly Worker is for five minutes on a Thursday, Socialist Unity Blog is for every day.' It's all good stuff.

PS - What's the post title all about?

I can't remember on which blog I read it, but I think a particular commentator on the current car crash hit the nail on the head when s/he wrote that what precipitated this bust up between Galloway and the SWP was the fact that Galloway - like the rest of the political class - was expecting Brown to call a snap General Election this autumn and he was seeking to correct what he considered were organisational deficiencies in time for that election.

Remember it is/was Galloway's intention to stand against Labour's Jim Fitzpatrick in Poplar & Limehouse, and there was an outside chance that Respect could retain the seat Galloway was vacating in Bethnal Green and Bow. Add into the mix the strong possibility that Salma Yaqoob could win a parliamentary seat in Birmingham, and we are talking about big stakes on the fringes of British politics.

If the General Election had been called as expected, compromises would have been reached in the fullness of time for the campaign to be fought by a united Respect. By Brown not calling the election as expected, tensions and contradictions that had always existed between Galloway and the SWP in their mutually beneficial lash up have come up for air and there wasn't a readily available external enemy to smother them out.