He's been on the political scene for
nearly 20 years. First as a Labour MP
and then as leader of the Respect Party
for whom he won a sensational
bi-election victory in Bradford West
back in 2012. He lost that seat in the
election this month. And now George
Galloway has announced his next move. He
will stand for Mayor of London. He joins
me now in the
studio. George Galloway, thanks for
coming in this evening. Now, when I
heard that you were standing for mayor
of London, I thought when a door closes
somewhere, a window opens. Why mayor?
Well, I was in parliament for almost 30
years. In fact, uh um I was very much
hoping that there would be a hung
parliament in which an individual member
can make a difference. There wasn't a
hung parliament and I wasn't reelected.
But I had expressed uh an interest in
running for mayor of London over the
last couple of years. It became clear
and it's become abundantly clear in the
last 24 hours that there's a lot of
support there. More than 13,000 people
have already signed up to my campaign in
less than 24 hours. I don't know what
the email traffic is now. Uh because
people want a mayor who's a bit larger
than life, an independent-minded person,
not a creature of the party political
machines. And that's true elsewhere in
the world also. It's true in New York.
It's true in Barcelona. It has been true
in London in the shape of Boris Johnson.
Right. Do are you sort of setting
yourself up as the alternative Boris
Johnson? Well, there's only been two
mayors, Ken Livingston and Boris
Johnson, and both of them fit that
criteria that I just outlined. They
neither was a party machine creature.
Both were independent-minded people,
personalities with some leadership
qualities. And the mainstream parties
have to know that if they put forward
mundane mediocre candidates and hope to
have the three cheeks of the same
backside uh dominate the election that
they've got another thing coming. Um the
potential Labor candidates it it include
a list of fairly powerful London
politicians, people like Diane Abbert,
David Lammy who've represented London
constituencies for years and years. Why
are you better than they are? Uh well, I
don't think they'll be the Labor
candidates. Uh the um thinking is that
Dame Tessa Jou will be the Labor
candidate, the woman who said she'd
throw herself under a bus for Tony
Blair. So, I think I won't have a lot of
difficulty persuading traditional Labor
voters that I'm more labor than she is.
a big supporter of the Iraq war who
proitized
uh around the capital in favor of that
war and is a dedicated Blerite. I don't
think that Diane Abbott or David Lame
are at the races. It's between Tessa Jou
and Sadi Khan who was Ed Milliban's
right-hand man until Ed Milliban fell
off his horse uh just three weeks ago.
Do people do Londoners vote for a mayor
on those kind of bases though? Aren't
they more looking at what you'd do for
London? Um, one of the things that you
said you'd do is merge the Met Police
and the City of London Police if you
became mayor. What What What's the
thinking behind? Well, the Metropolitan
Police Service needs to be a London
police force. Policing is not a service.
It's a force. But it must be a force for
all of London, including the whitest of
callers. The City of London Police,
which is supposed to police the square
mile where all the banks and financiers
hang out, might be good at catching
pickpockets in Liverpool Street Station,
but they were oblivious, it would
appear, to the grand lararseny involving
hundreds of millions of pounds that went
missing on their watch in the financial
crash, the financial malfeence and
recklessness that was going on there.
That's a big blemish on London's
reputation and a cause of much
divisiveness in London. You can't have a
square mile where the 1% hang out who
are dripping in gold whilst millions of
ordinary Londoners are pushed further
and further to the edge. All right,
George Galloway, thank you very much for
coming in to talk to us this evening.