Keith, I know and understand yours and Reg's political history well from reading about it many times on here
As much as we all would like to see some Independents and some genuine independent thinking amongst MPs it would be wrong to class Galloway as one. His party is very much a one man band but he has had other candidates stand in General Elections, and some even come second behind Labour.
What he has done is court a particular sector of the voters in a way that Ken Livingstone is also doing in the London Mayoral election, giving Boris a bit of warning about what might happen in that vote of he doesn't respond. Lots of finger pointing and blame apportioning going on in Labour this morning, apparently the bookies even stopped taking bets on a Galloway win yesterday but no-one told Ed Milliband.