Storm brewing in the North warns Galloway

Respect MP George Galloway, who won a landslide victory in last month’s Bradford West by-election, was formally sworn in to the House of Commons as members returned from their 19-day Easter break.

Speaking at Parliament’s famous St Stephen’s entrance, Mr Galloway – who lost his previous seat in Bethnal Green in the 2010 General Election – warned that a storm is brewing across the North of England.

He said: “It is good to be back, but I’m just the advance party.

“There’s an army mustering in the North and in the great industrial and post-industrial cities of this country – an army of discontented, alienated people who feel that this place has let them down, it has failed the country and it has failed the people.

“I notice that New Labour is terrified of any further by-elections, and I can understand why because this concept that I have coined – it’s rather rude – that three cheeks of the same backside pretty much sums them up as far as most people in the country are concerned.”

Mr Galloway, 57, who was accompanied by his fourth wife, 27-year-old anthropologist Putri Pertiwi, said he would use his first week back in Westminster to press for Britain’s withdrawal from Afghanistan,.

Mr Galloway described the Afghan campaign as a “frankly disastrous military situation which is becoming like Vietnam 1968”.

He also pledged to fight for his newly-adopted city of Bradford, which he said was “bitterly sinking into a black hole” in comparison to the progress being made in Leeds.

But he smiled as he said that since he has been elected, the “Bradford Bulls have won four games in a row and Bradford City Football Club has won”.

Mr Galloway’s victory in Bradford West last month win ranks as one of the biggest by-election shocks of modern times.

The outsider polled a massive 18,341 votes, dwarfing the 8,201 picked up by second-placed Labour candidate Imran Hussain.

The vote marked only the second time Labour has lost an election in Bradford West in the past 106 years.