Eddie Barnes: Major parties should heed restless natives

THERE is, says a Tolkein-esque George Galloway, “an army mustering in the north”. It is made up, the new MP for Bradford West argues, “of discontented, alienated people who feel this place has let them down.”

He was referring to the House of Commons, from where Mr Galloway was speaking on Monday for the first time since his extraordinary by-election win last month. “It has failed the country and it has failed the people,” he declared.

The market in Westminster disillusion, into which Mr Galloway is tapping, has been open for as long as politics has existed, one used well by politicians, writers and the odd Catholic fire-raiser over the centuries. There is no doubting, however, that the market is over-flowing at present. To the pot of expenses, Iraq, and the country’s acrimonious divorce from Blairism, has been added a toxic dollop of cutbacks and austerity. Not content with lining their own pockets, now they’re after our pasties. Politicians with long memories talk these days of never knowing a time when resentment with the political firmament has been so high.

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Crucially, the mood is being soured further by the unpopularity of Westminster’s big three, Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband who, thanks their smooth ascent through politics, and their very insidery-ness, all uncomfortably resemble the kind of professional politician the country now suspects so thoroughly. One poll earlier this month showed that the three men now have a cumulating rating of -121 per cent

Mr Galloway’s claim is that this sourness towards the country’s political elite is felt particularly in England’s northern cities, who feel excluded from this Westminster political bubble. Curiously, another Scot – Alex Salmond – has recently argued the same. In a speech in Liverpool earlier this year, he too noted the “sense of disillusionment, or disenfranchisement even” which people felt towards “the Westminster classes”.

As he toured England, he declared he would “back the masses” against them. We are back to Disraeli’s “Two Nations”, but with the question of the Condition of England now being asked by Scots.

Mr Galloway and Mr Salmond are stretching things too far on this one. Mr Galloway will not lead an army of to defeat the Gollums of Westminster. And Mr Salmond’s attempt to lead an English revolution as well as a Scottish one is over-ambitious, even for him.

However, these two astute veterans have seized on something real about the collective resentment towards the London bubble. They know the power of a voice which talks back at Westminster and its accompanying media clique, and gives as good as gets. And they know there are many people across country, eager for that voice to be heard.

Understanding this familiar and ancient resentment and responding to it, will be a key test for all the big parties if they are to regain their standing once more.