Don't mention the war if you're Labour

George Galloway is threatened with expulsion from Labour for "bringing the party into disrepute." Which presumably means he's spoiled its reputation. So he must have done something extraordinary, because none of the MPs who provoked one and a half million people to march against their fondness for war have been charged with this at all. And usually, I find that when one and a half million people march against you, that's a sign that you've not done your reputation any good. If there was a restaurant that one and a half million people marched against, you wouldn't say, "oh it has a very good reputation".

The same MPs have also managed to alienate virtually the whole of Britain's Muslim community, most of which previously voted Labour. Then there's the elusive weapons of mass destruction, the David Kelly business and the dodgy dossier, none of which has landed a single Labour member on a charge of bringing the party into disrepute. From the overwhelming enthusiasm that greeted Blair coming to office, the level of disillusionment is now so great that turnout at elections is at an all-time low. And do you know why? George Galloway, that's why. The Labour leaders must have convinced themselves that he's scaring them away at the polls. They've heard his Scottish accent and confused him with Shrek.

Nor has any similar charge been made against David Blunkett, whose response to the BBC programme revealing the racism of police was to attack the BBC. Whereas the police themselves have resigned, leaving Mr Blunkett as a more stoic defender of racist coppers than the actual coppers. The only job apart from Home Secretary that is usually available to someone with Mr Blunkett's attitudes is driving taxis, and he'd probably do less damage than he does in his current one.

The case against Mr Galloway began when he was suspended from the party, after newspaper articles about documents that were found in a burned-out Government building in Iraq. Not only did these documents contain apparently damning information, they must also have been made out of magical flameproof paper as everything else in the place was charred to a crisp. Regardless of what they said about Mr Galloway, they could provide the future of the space programme. No space shuttle would burn up during re-entry if it was made of those buggers.

The documents showed, it was said, that Mr Galloway had been paid thousands, or perhaps millions, of pounds by Saddam's regime. But a former Metropolitan Police forensic expert said "the signatures on these documents are poor attempts to simulate his genuine signature." An Iraqi minister who apparently signed the document misspelt his own name, and the titles of other ministers were wrong as well.

Labour now says the main charge against Mr Galloway revolves around a speech in which he called on British troops "not to follow illegal orders," and another in which he said MPs who supported the war would be "called to account". There were about 140 Labour MPs who opposed the war, but most of them took the view that they were against it until it started, at which point you had to be for it. This is a novel attitude towards rights and responsibilities, that an act can only be wrong if it doesn't happen. It would have left Plato screaming, "aah, such abstract concepts leave me with a blinding headache". Maybe they're planning to apply it to other laws, such as arson. So the policeman's statement will be, "I kept telling him not to set fire to the warehouse, but he ignored me, so what else could I do but siphon some petrol out of the panda and chuck it on. Because once it had started, my duty was to support the inferno".

Mr Galloway was one of the few MPs who continued to oppose the war, and that's why he's been charged. And for a demonstrably vast section of society, the Labour members who acted in a similar way were the only ones who didn't bring their party into disrepute. For example, at the Glastonbury music festival this summer I saw a marquee packed with about 1,200 people, with an average age of 20, eager to listen to Tony Benn. I wondered whether he'd make any concessions to the setting, perhaps by saying, "I see Primal Scream are playing tonight. And of course when they say, 'we're moving on up' this is the same message that was made by the Levellers and the Suffragettes and Nelson Mandela." But he spoke about the war and read bits from Oscar Wilde and enthused his audience.

So his party vilifies him and anyone who shares the stance that makes him popular. So personally, I think anyone with a bit of spark is better off outside the Labour Party altogether, as trying to transform it into a radical campaigning socialist party is as futile as joining the RAC in order to turn it into a radical campaigning socialist breakdown service.