George Galloway wins shocking by-election

Respect Party candidate George Galloway gestures from an open top bus outside his campaign office in Bradford, northern England, March 30, 2012. Galloway, an anti-war campaigner in the small, left-wing Respect party, beat Labour's Imran Hussain with more than 18,341 votes in a byelection.

Agence France-Presse:

Bradford - Britain's mainstream parties were reeling Friday after firebrand George Galloway, a fierce critic of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, won a sensational return to parliament.

The Scottish politician becomes his Respect party's only lawmaker after crushing his former party, Labour, in Thursday's by-election in the ethnically mixed city of Bradford in northern England.

Speaking ahead of a celebratory open-top bus tour around the constituency on Friday, Galloway dubbed his victory a "Bradford Spring," akin to the popular uprisings that ousted regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

"This is the most sensational victory in British by-election history," he said, although the celebrations were marred when a protester threw eggs at his bus before it set off.

Official figures show Galloway secured more than half of the votes cast, on a better-than-expected turnout of just over 50 per cent. He took more than 10,000 more votes than Labour candidate Imran Hussain.

Nicknamed "Gorgeous George," Galloway gained international notoriety in 2005 when he appeared in the U.S. Senate, while in Britain he famously starred on "Celebrity Big Brother," at one point pretending to be a cat lapping up milk.

"This is a rejection of the mainstream parties," he told reporters after his victory. "It was people saying they want political leaders they can believe in, who say what they mean, do what they say and don't lie to people."

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