Matt Myers writes for Oxford University’s The Oxford Student on whether the Bradford Spring has taken protest to the ballot box:

A day many of our political and media elite would rather have avoided:  George Galloway’s ‘Bradford Spring’. Galloway, it seems, has never been one for the understatement. He is, and always will, be a divisive political animal.

Yet the perennial underdog has struck an unlikely political victory in a seat seemingly reserved for one of the three major parties. While the upper echelons of the Labour party frantically search for answers, the ex-Celebrity Big Brother contestant resembles the cat that got the cream.

The question that should be asked now is not only why he won, but also what comes next. Is the Galloway political storm simply a one-off, or a symptom of wider change?

To say this was simply down to demagogic populist politics from a political loose cannon would be disingenuous. Similarly the proposition that Galloway won only due to the vote of the Muslim community on a specifically anti-war ticket is equally amiss. The electoral data prove an altogether different story…

Full article here.