"Isn't It Time To Come Home?"

Andrew Neil asked George Galloway that on The Daily Politics. It is hardly Tony Blair's Labour Party now.

Indeed, it is not. But Galloway, wholly conceding that, expressed the desire to hold "the casting vote" in a hung Parliament.

He has tweeted a list of five conditions, all locally populist to Bradford apart from the last, the recognition of Palestine, which is already Labour policy and for which far more Conservative MPs voted than voted against it.

He has never been anything like as left-wing as both many of his supporters and many of his opponents have liked to pretend. He was never a Campaign Group member. He was never even a Tribune Group member.

Based on the sheer modesty of his demands, he is a great deal more moderate than I should have been in the same position. Heavens, there's a thought.

A specific problem in each ward (in the case of this constituency, in each of the former district wards), to be solved by Christmas or I should vote in favour of a Motion of No Confidence. The same number of national policies. The same number again of international policies.

Not as my terms. But as comprising my term, in the singular. If that term were met, then I should vote for the Queen's Speech and the Budget that met it. If it were not, then I should vote against the Queen's Speech and the Budget that failed to meet it.

I should be interested to hear Sylvia Hermon's terms. Why does no one ever ask that question?

In 2010, when this longsuffering constituency gained an MP who is one of the best in the House and whose majority is rightly on course to double on Thursday, the man who could nevertheless have been the above kind of MP for this seat was still determined not to leave the Labour Party.

The combination of local anger, his own position and machine, and the all-women shortlist, would have made him the First Past The Post on the day.

That anger, that position and that machine have since given him a startling municipal victory outside Labour, much as it pained me that the other councillor elected by that ward on the same day was a Lib Dem rather than another of my political godfathers.

Getting them both in next time would be the true Consett Spring, gladdening my heart to an extent surpassed only by the inevitable re-election of the one Labour and one Independent Councillors for Lanchester.

S.O. Davies in 1970, Eddie Milne in 1974, Peter Law in 2005, Dai Davies in 2006, and up to a point even Dick Taverne in 1973 and 1974, as well as Galloway now, really in 2012, and arguably even in 2005: such figures have wanted a Labour Government, but they have disagreed to an irreconcilable extent with certain aspects of current Labour policy or procedure, the latter especially with regard to candidate selection in the constituency in question.

But Labour does not do deals, or pacts, or anything like that. It just doesn't. It simply does not think like that. When Labour is the largest party after this General Election, then Ed Miliband will present exactly the Queen's Speech that he would have tabled if Labour had won an overall majority, and he will put it to a division of the House.

The SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, the SDLP, Galloway, Lady Hermon and anyone else can then vote for that or not as they see fit, but be prepared, if it fell, to go back to their constituents and explain that they had put David Cameron back into Downing Street.

As for a second General Election, why? There are countries where no party ever wins an overall majority, and their electors are not expected to keep voting until they give that "correct" answer.