By presenting Galloway as the plucky underdog, the BBC put wind in his sails

If you thought England beating Germany was compelling viewing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Take a look at George Galloway being interviewed by the BBC’s Martine Croxall just before yesterday’s Batley and Spen by-election. It’s TV gold.

Is it any surprise Labour only scraped home in a seat it normally wins comfortably? The party may have held sway there for a quarter of a century, but that counts for nothing when you have a man of Galloway’s ruthless charisma and presence scenting your blood, determined to wreck your majority, unwittingly aided by the BBC.

In fact, if Martine Croxall had set out to damage Labour, she couldn’t have done more than to conduct an interview of such absurd hostility with the party’s main rival for much of the vote. All she achieved was to portray Galloway as a plucky, man-of-the-people, anti-establishment underdog. Who knows how many more votes that won him?

And Galloway was right: Croxall’s questions seemed to come straight from the Labour Party’s campaign literature. Here’s one of her openers: “You’re not a local man. Why wouldn’t somebody vote for Kim Leadbeater [Labour], who is born and bred here and knows the constituency very well?”

For comparison, this is Leadbeater’s own eve-of poll tweet: “Vote for an MP who lives and works in Batley & Spen, and who understands the challenges our area faces.”

Spot the difference?

Croxall then put this Labour zinger to Galloway: “If you drive a wedge through the majority that Labour currently hold, surely you’ll be handing this election to the Conservatives. Is that what you want? Are you happy to have the Conservatives in power?”

No wonder Galloway accused her of carrying out a party-political broadcast for the reds. She might just as well have looked straight down the lens of the camera and said, “Vote Labour. And not for this repulsive charlatan”.

How the fedora-sporting Galloway lapped it up, mercilessly toying with Croxall like a cat poking a wounded mouse. He needs no encouragement. We all remember his bravura performance at the US Senate, ripping a startled Norm Coleman to shreds, accusing him of being “cavalier with any idea of justice“. Even Jeremy Paxman came away only with a score draw after asking Galloway, who had just unseated Labour’s Oona King, whether he was “proud to have got rid of one of the very few black women in parliament.”

Croxall stood no chance. She was onto a loser the moment she decided not so much to interview Galloway, but to put him on trial. If she’d engaged in responsible, unbiased reporting, she might have shown him up. There’s enough material. But she couldn't manage it. By attacking in such ludicrous fashion, she gave him all the oxygen of publicity he craved. Cue a clip that went viral. He ended up with more than 8,000 votes from a standing start.

Is the BBC still capable of impartial interviewing? Yes, of course. But altercations like this just feed the suspicion that our supposedly national broadcaster only represents half the country – that when push comes to shove it can’t help but reveal its own elitist, metropolitan views.

You might think Labour would approve. But, as the result in Batley and Spen shows us – Labour clinging on by the skin of its teeth – it merely achieves the opposite of what lefty progressives crave.

Both Labour and the BBC are facing their own existential challenges, but for exactly the same reason: a failure to represent, or even understand, vast swathes of the electorate. And they’re dragging each other down. Far from taking comfort from this by-election, they should wake up and smell some political mustard before it’s too late