George Galloway has now been elected to the House of Commons for a third political party.
Having previously held seats for Labour and Respect, he is now the MP for Rochdale, representing his own Workers Party of Britain.
He has been on a long journey having joined Labour in his teenage years, with appearances on Big Brother and working for Iranian state-funded television as well as his career in politics.
There have been allegations of antisemitism, but Mr Galloway has always denied these.
So who is “Gorgeous George” – and what has his career looked like up to now?
Labour years
George Galloway was born in 1954 and raised in Dundee, Scotland.
He was active in the Labour Party as a teen, and by the age of 26 he was the chairman of the party in Scotland.
In the 1987 general, he first won his way to the Commons, taking the Glasgow Hillhead seat for Labour.
Advertisement
In doing so, he beat the Social Democratic Party incumbent Roy Jenkins, who had previously been the Labour home secretary under Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan.
Shortly after getting elected, he was asked about a conference in Mykonos, Greece, which he had attended.
He said: “I travelled and spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me.
“I actually had sexual intercourse with some of the people in Greece.”
It was this response that earned him the moniker “Gorgeous George”.
He existed on the left of the Labour Party, leaning more towards the likes of Michael Foot or Tony Benn, and rebelling numerous times against the party when Tony Blair was prime minister.
By 1997 his seat had changed to Glasgow Kelvin, but he still controlled it.
He fell out with Mr Blair over the UK’s intervention in Iraq, and was expelled from the party in 2003 over his comments on the issue.
After Labour
Following his expulsion from Labour, Mr Galloway was an independent MP before he joined the Respect Party, which focused on opposing the war in Iraq.
His seat was abolished ahead of the 2005 general election, and so Mr Galloway left Scotland to contest the east London seat of Bethnal Green and Bow.
He managed to win the seat off Labour’s Oona King by just over 800 votes – although Ms King later said the election was the “one of the dirtiest campaigns we have ever seen in British politics”, saying she faced antisemitic abuse during the campaigning.
The election in the seat was run largely on the Iraq War, which as a Blair supporter, Ms King backed.
In 2006, and while still an MP, Mr Galloway was a contestant on reality TV show Celebrity Big Brother, during which he pretended to be a cat and dressed up in a leotard.
In 2010, Mr Galloway stood for election in the Poplar and Limehouse constituency, neighbouring Bethnal Green and Bow.
But his electoral luck ran out and he finished third.
It was just two years before Mr Galloway took another crack at Westminster, and in 2012 he won the Bradford West by-election.
At the next general election, however, he lost his seat.
In 2016, he stood for Respect in the London mayoral election, but only won 1.4% of the vote.
He then stood in the 2017 and 2019 general elections as an independent, but was unsuccessful both times in Manchester Gorton and West Bromwich East.
Come 2021, he contested the Batley and Spen by-election for his own Workers Party of Britain, but finished in third place.
It is for this party that he is standing in Rochdale.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
Mr Galloway has long been outspoken about issues in the Middle East, going as far back as campaigning for Dundee to be twinned with Nablus, a city in the West Bank, in the 1970s.
He says that in 1977, after returning from a trip to Lebanon, he pledged to devote his life “to the Palestinian and Arab cause”.
While he opposed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in the 1980s, he later backed the Ba’athist movement after the Americans withdrew their support in Iraq. He says he was not a supporter of Hussein.
In 1991, he opposed the first Gulf War, where Western forces were deployed to the nation after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded. He later described Kuwait as “clearly a part of the greater Iraqi whole stolen from the motherland by perfidious Albion”.
His book also compared the Iraqi leader to Joseph Stalin: “Just as Stalin industrialised the Soviet Union, so on a different scale Saddam plotted Iraq’s own Great Leap Forward.”
In 1994 Mr Galloway met Mr Hussein, and said: “I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.” The then-Labour MP later said he was saluting the Iraqi people as a whole.
After this, he was given a “final warning” by Labour whips, and issued a “full apology”.
He was vociferously opposed to the second Gulf War as well, and was vice president of the Stop the War Coalition.
In March 2003, he said that Tony Blair and George Bush had attacked Iraq “like wolves”, and called on British troops to “refuse to obey illegal orders”.
It was following this incident that Mr Galloway was eventually expelled from Labour.
As well as speaking out on Iraq, Mr Galloway has also long been vocal on Palestine, including taking part in a convoy to take aid into Gaza.
But he has faced allegations of antisemitism, and was sacked from his role at TalkRadio in 2019 over comments the station called antisemitic.
Since 2008 he has worked for Press TV, the Iranian state-run television channel.
He has also been pictured with two heads of Hamas, including being pictured with current leader Ismail Haniyeh in 2009.
In 2013, while MP for Bradford West, he walked out of a debate with a university student after discovering they were Israeli.
“I don’t recognise Israel and I don’t debate with Israelis,” he said.
The student accused Mr Galloway of “pure racism”.
Rochdale
After the death of Tony Lloyd, Mr Galloway announced he would be standing in the by-election in Rochdale.
Like many of his previous election campaigns, this seat has a high proportion of Muslim voters, and Mr Galloway has campaigned hard on the Israel-Hamas conflict and Gaza.
His campaign material even included the Palestinian flag, and branded Labour “pro-Israel”, adding that the two main parties were “two cheeks of the same backside”.
But after Labour abandoned its candidate following an antisemitism scandal, Mr Galloway emerged as favourite, has now swept to victory once again, and will return to Westminster.
Jay Ricky Villarante, the CEO of Moneybees, said that the decision to ban Binance reflects the importance of regulatory compliance and oversight in the industry.
Humza Yousaf has resigned as Scotland’s first minister after cutting ties with his government’s power-sharing partners.
The leader of the SNP, who only took on the role in March last year, has been at the centre of a chaotic few days in Holyrood after he made the surprise announcement to end his power-sharing deal with the Scottish Green Party on Thursday.
Mr Yousaf cut ties following a bitter row over the SNP’s climbdown on climate targets as he said the agreement between the parties had “served its purpose”.
But as a result, his former Green allies teamed up with the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats to get behind two no-confidence motions, one in himself as leader of Scotland and another regarding the entire Scottish government.
Ahead of any of those votes taking place, Mr Yousaf stepped down as Scotland’s first minister just after midday on Monday as he said he was “not willing to treat my values and principles or do deals with whomever simply for retaining power”.
He said he will remain in post until a replacement first minister is chosen.
Over the weekend, Mr Yousaf insisted he would not resign but by Monday morning his tune had changed and Sky News was told he was considering resigning.
More on Humza Yousaf
Related Topics:
He was due to meet the Alba Party’s sole MSP, Ash Regan, who was set to make demands in exchange for her support during a confidence vote. Her vote could have been the decider but he chose to step down before it came to that.
Announcing he was quitting, Mr Yousaf said he “clearly underestimated the level of heart and upset” he caused the Greens when he cut ties with them.
Advertisement
“To my colleagues in opposition, regardless of political party, genuinely, I bear no ill will and certainly no grudge against anyone,” he said as his voice broke while thanking his wife, children and family for “putting up with me over the years”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:12
‘We stand ready to work with new leader’
Mr Yousaf said it had been “an honour” to serve as first minister of Scotland and it was a role he “could never have dreamt” of as a young boy growing up there.
The politician, whose parents are Pakistani and Kenyan, also said he is evidence multiculturalism has flourished in the UK.
“People who looked like me were not in positions of political influence, let alone leading governments, when I was younger,” he said.
“We now live in a UK that has a British Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, a black Welsh first minister, and for a little while longer a Scottish Asian first minister of this country.
“So for those who decry that multiculturalism has failed across the UK, I would suggest that the evidence is quite to the contrary and that is something we should all celebrate.”
Mr Yousaf said he was proud to have overseen “the most progressive” tax system in the UK and played a part in lifting an expected 100,000 children out of poverty this year.
He added that he will continue to campaign for independence, which he said “feels frustratingly close” and he is “absolutely certain” his successor will achieve it.
The race to replace Mr Yousaf has now commenced, with several names in the fray, although none have officially declared they have thrown their hats in the ring.
Close ally of Mr Yousaf, John Swinney, former deputy leader under Nicola Sturgeon, is being touted as the favourite.
Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has also been mentioned as has Kate Forbes who lost out to Mr Yousaf during last year’s leadership contest.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive Breaking News alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News App. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.