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Len Tingle
Political editor, Yorkshire
Will George Galloway's Bradford Spring ever blossom?
George Galloway declares the 'Bradford Spring' earlier this year
There must be a mixture of elation and disappointment as Respect party members gather for their first conference since the election of George Galloway to the Bradford West seat earlier this year.
The master orator blew Labour away in a West Yorkshire heartland it had held for 40 years to win by an astonishing 10,000 votes.
There was not much false modesty on display as he stood on his open-topped bus at the victory rally and announced it was the "most sensational by-election victory in political history" and it would herald a "Bradford Spring".
But his promises that the city would be swamped by Respect councillors in the May local elections resulted in just five joining the 90-strong council chamber.
Labour controlBy any standards it was a good performance from candidates who had never stood for election before.
One even took the scalp of the veteran Labour leader of the council, Ian Greenwood.
But they failed to achieve their ambition of holding the balance of power.
What few of the headline writers seemed to notice was that Labour was also making gains away from the inner city wards where Respect has its strongholds.
Respect councillor Ruqayyah Collector admits she is disappointed her party did not secure more councillors
Labour finished up with 45 of the council's 90 seats and the party picked up where it left off by governing with the support of the three Greens in the city.
It has had to find a new leader in former Cabinet member for regeneration, David Green, but it is clear that as far as he is concerned it is business as usual.
"Respect is like all the other smaller parties, including the Liberal Democrats who now have just a few more councillors," he told me when I interviewed him for the BBC's Daily Politics programme.
"We will be listening to what they say but we will be running this city based on the Labour manifesto on which we fought the election."
Ruqayyah Collector, who took the city's Central ward for Respect admits she is "disappointed" that her party did not finish up with more councillors.
"We will be the awkward squad," she told me.
"Our role will be to ask the questions that out constituents feel need answers."
Maintaining momentumThis isn't the first time George Galloway has made the headlines with Respect.
After 22 years as a firebrand left wing Labour MP in Scotland he was famously kicked out of the party for denouncing its policies on Iraq.
He founded Respect and in 2005 he squeaked home in London's Bethnal Green and Bow seat with his now familiar anti-war campaign.
On the face of it Bradford has been a 're-run' of Bethnal Green and Bow
He was in the news again a couple of years later by making what many thought was a somewhat misjudged appearance on Channel 4's Celebrity Big Brother.
George Galloway himself had a completely different view of the value of his time in the Big Brother house.
On the face of it Bradford has been a re-run of Bethnal Green and Bow because Respect also won seats on the local Tower Hamlets Council.
George Galloway's hope is that it will not end in the same way.
In 2010 he abandoned his paper-thin majority and switched to the neighbouring Poplar and Limehouse seat. He came in a humiliating third.
Respect now has just two councillors left in the 51 member chamber at Tower Hamlets Council.
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Comment number 4.
George Brennan17th June 2012 - 18:18
Voting for independents gives electorate a chance to vote against the parties who do have power. All that can be asked of an independent is that he be specific what he would do if he did have power. On most questions, Galloway has been fairly clear.The media rage against Galloway is a rage against democracy among people who would like to dissolve the Bradford electorate and elect another.
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Comment number 3.
TRANSlife16th June 2012 - 14:54
Galloway took the Bradford seat based entirely on parading Palestine flags through the city center and promising things he'd struggle to achieve if he were Prime Minister! As soon as respect left the entrenched Asian communities who care more about the middle east than the state of Bradford they never stood a chance. Give it a year or so and Respect will vanish all over again.
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Comment number 2.
George Brennan14th June 2012 - 23:40
This might suggest to some readers that Galloway “abandoned” his Bethnell constituency because it had merely a paper-thin majority. Galloway had in fact pledged himself to be a one-term only MP in Bethnell. His chances in Poplar were always known to be smaller. To come third would not of itself therefore seem a humiliation. He got 18 percent. Labour, second, got 27 percent.
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Comment number 1.
bloke from herts14th June 2012 - 20:11
I think the election of galloway is no Bradford spring but a phenonmen similar to the Boris Johnson, in which a known public figure gets elected purely because he is known and will put the area on the map.
I blame the modern obsession with celebrity. Will the next mayoral election be a battle between Boris, Alan Sugar and John Cleese, and will Adrian Childs go for the Mayor of Birmingham ?
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