George Galloway: "Party conference 'rigged'"

The Glasgow Kelvin MP said the conference was "stuffed full of apparatchiks" whose job was to bring the crowd to an "orgiastic climax" on the American political convention model.

He was suspended by the party in May for his comments about the war in Iraq, which included calling Tony Blair a "wolf".

Speaking to BBC Scotland's Holyrood Live programme on Wednesday, he insisted he stood by everything he had said before, during and after the war.

Mr Galloway said the conference, taking place in Bournemouth, was "rigged".

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Referring to the prime minister's speech on Tuesday, he went on: "I think it was the only 2,000 people in the whole country who would have cheered Tony Blair... in the sea of troubles in which Britain and the Labour Party now finds itself."

It was suggested to Mr Galloway that he was making the event sound like the Nuremberg rally, to which he replied: "I do think it was like a Nuremberg rally and in fact the leader's speech had a lot of the leader principle, the Fuhrer princip, about it."

Asked if he was equating Mr Blair to Adolf Hitler, he said: "No, but I'm equating the Labour Party conference these days with a Ceaucescu-ish desire to suppress any sign of political life and to subjugate the party and its democracy to a kind of follow-the-leader idea.

"I think it's entirely alien to Britain, it's entirely alien to the Labour Party and I don't think it will go on for very much longer for these were the only 2,000 people in Britain who really feel that way about Tony Blair."

The Labour Party is absolutely full square behind Tony Blair whatever Mr Galloway or anyone else wants to believe Tom Harris Glasgow Cathcart MP

The MP is due to go before a disciplinary hearing later this month and was asked if he expected to be removed from the party.

"That depends if the Labour Party want to make their problems worse or if they want to make them better," he stated.

Another Glasgow Labour MP, Tom Harris, distanced himself from Mr Galloway and sprang to the defence of Tony Blair, who he described as "the best prime minister we have ever had".

"I don't really want to lower myself to comment on something like that," he said in reference to the comparison with the Nuremberg rally. "No-one takes that seriously."

"What we want to talk about is the future of the Labour Party and as you saw yesterday (Tuesday), the Labour Party is absolutely full square behind Tony Blair whatever Mr Galloway or anyone else wants to believe."