Galloway and Paxman, head to head
Paxman v Galloway (transcript and video)
Election coverage highlight for many must surely be the acrimonious exchange between the BBC's Jeremy Paxman and George Galloway of Respect, moments after the latter had been declared the winner in a bitter election battle against ?Blair Babe? Oona King in Bethnal Green & Bow, one of Britain's poorest constituencies.
King had been one of Tony Blair?s closest supporters over the war in Iraq, and Galloway ? who had labelled Blair a ?liar? long before it became equivocally fashionable in Tory circles ? had targeted the constituency, which has a substantial Muslim population, in a heated campaign that had highlighted latent tension in Tower Hamlets, traditional deep Labour territory.
Despite King?s increased majority in 2001 after her initial win in 1997, Respect?s essentially traditional Socialist platform (with a well-rounded manifesto including rail re-nationalisation, an undoubted Good Idea that for some reason was endorsed elsewhere only by the Green Party) and Galloway?s largely single-issue campaign over the war resulted in the Labour candidate losing to Respect by 823 votes ? a remarkable 26% swing, overturning a majority of over 10,000 in 2001.
Paxman launched into his ?interview? by asking Galloway if he was ?proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament.? Needless to say, Galloway reacted angrily. ?What a preposterous question,? he retorted. ?I know it?s very late in the night, but wouldn?t you be better starting by congratulating me for one of the most sensational election results in modern history?? Galloway refused to answer and asked Paxman to move on, but the interviewer dug his teeth in, repeating the question. A couple more attempts to get a response and Galloway replied, ?If you ask that question again, I'm going, I warn you now.? ?Don?t try and threaten me, Mr Galloway, please,? Paxman responded.
The interviewer-initiated verbal sparring continued in much the same vein. Whatever one thinks of Galloway, it could certainly be argued that Paxman?s approach was unnecessarily combative. Exciting television no doubt, but did it contribute to our understanding of the issues? Not really. It would have been more useful to have employed a more traditional interviewing technique in which we might have learned more about how Galloway felt about King, the campaign and the future. How did he intend to serve his new constituents in the coming term, having won arguably on the basis of one single topic? What about the rest of the Respect platform? We were regrettably not to learn.
Watch the footage and judge for yourself.
