Politicians From Scotland

"The North Korean regime is apparently so bad that even George Galloway has never been there to offer his support. Or maybe that’s because it’s so broke."

"Princess Kate has been missing for almost 80 days. There've been three faked photos and millions of rumours. What are the royals covering up? Is she dead or has she downed tools?"

"[M]ake Rochdale great again."

"So I say to you, citizens of the last Arab country, this is a time for courage, for unity, for wisdom, for determination, to face these enemies with the dignity your president has shown, and I believe, God willing, we will prevail and triumph, wa-salam aleikum."

"Syria is being threatened - because she will not betray the Palestinian resistance, because she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, because she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and above all - more than any of these others - because Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq."

"For me he is the last Arab ruler, and Syria is the last Arab country. It is the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs, and that's why I'm proud to be here."

"All dignified people in the world, whether Arabs or Muslims or others with dignity, are very proud of the speech made by president Bashar al-Assad a few days ago here in Damascus."

"I think we have generated as much light as we are going to...And as much heat as we ought to."

"What you have witnessed [since Christopher Hitchens’s opposition to the 1991 invasion of Iraq] is something unique in natural history: the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly into a slug."

"Mr Hitchens's policy has succeeded in making 10,000 new Bin Ladens."

"People like Mr Hitchens are willing to fight to the last drop of other people’s blood...How I wish he would put on a tin hat and pick up a gun and go and fight himself."

"You know, Mr Hitchens, you are a court jester - not in Camelot like other miserable liberals before you, but in the court of the Bourbon Bushes. You start off being the liberal mouthpiece for one of the most reactionary governments this country has ever known and you end up a mouthpiece and apologist for these miserable malevolent incompetents who cannot even pick up the bodies of their own citizens in New Orleans."

"Some believe that those aeroplanes on September 11 came out of a clear blue sky. I believe they came out of a swamp of hatred created by us. I believe that because the total, complete unending and bottomless support for General Sharon’s crimes against the Palestinian people."

"[I]t can be said that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony."

"The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters."

"Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will."

"We have worked without rest to remove the causes of such violence from our world. We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings."

"We are determined that we should stop the privatization of basic services of the British people. We are determined to defend the liberty of the British people which is being taken away day by day under the name of anti-terrorism. Ancient freedoms, which we had for hundreds of years, are being taken away from us under the name of the war on terror, when the real big terrorists are the governments of Britain and the United States."

"We want to make reparation to the Palestinian people for the crimes of Balfour which were committed in the building behind me, when one person, on behalf of one country, promised a second people the lands of a third people - the Palestinians."

"I can't mention, I'm sorry to say, any Arab leader... Where is the... Nasser? Where is the Arab leader who will stand up and tell these people the truth? This is what we are waiting for."

"Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolf Hitler."

"I am speaking for tens of millions, and maybe more, around the world, who know the truth about Iraq. Who know that the real criminals are in Washington. Not in the United Nations. The real criminals are in the White House, not in the Elysee Palace. The real criminals are in the Congress, not in the anti-war movement."

"I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his."

"I'm voting #Tory with my first vote for the incumbent MSP. And then for myself and [other A4U candidates] on the list. Now THAT is @Alliance4Unity."

"We are not ashamed of our country's flag. Citizens of other states wave their flags, proudly. Why should the people of Britain not be proud of their state? (on Facebook, 26 February 2021)"

"[Referring to pro-democracy protesters] These people should know that Hong Kong is China. No country, absolutely no country, will allow an existential threat to emerge on its territory, to its own sovereignty, without responding in a way that brings the situation under control."

"The former MP posted on the social media site after the Champions League final between Liverpool and Tottenham on Saturday night. He praised Liverpool's win, before adding: "No #Israël flags on the Cup!" - appearing to reference Tottenham's strong links with the Jewish community...He defended the comment, claiming a number of Tottenham fans were flying the flag of Israel in the crowd and it showed an affiliation to a "racist state"."

"While the so-called European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to recognise a man in the street as President of Venezuela, the African Union voted unanimously to endorse the presidency of Maduro and Venezuelan sovereignty. Just think about that..."

"During my time in Venezuela... when I looked at the news stands it astonished me that the vast majority of the newspapers and the magazines owned by the rich were spewing out their anti-Chavez propaganda... the people who told you that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that we must invade and destroy Iraq... that we must invade & destroy Libya for freedom and democracy... invade and destroy Syria in the interests of human rights & democracy... and many other places in the world. The same people who told you all these lies are telling you to hate Nicolas Maduro... [they] want to march you into yet another disaster... ask yourself.... If they were lying then why are they telling the truth now? ...Viva Venezuela, Viva Chavez, Viva Maduro!!"

"If the Bank of England is “independent” who took the decision to steal Venezuela's gold?"

"The 'All-Asian short-list' hand-picked by Keith Vaz is just not good enough for the people of Gorton, one of the most deprived constituencies in Britain The short-listing, which excluded many better candidates, is the latest in a long line of insults delivered by mainstream parties to local communities."

"[On Nigel Farage] We are not pals. We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin..."

"I've always been a Labour man. I consider myself real Labour. I've never been a Marxist, or a Trotskyist, or any other kind of –ist other than a Labourist. If it weren't for Mr Blair and the Iraq war, I would never have been out of the party in the first place."

"I don’t begrudge the Labour members here their moment of celebration of course [...] But there will be others who are already celebrating: the venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating. The hyena can bounce on the lion’s grave but it can never be a lion and in any case, I’m not in my grave. As a matter of fact I’m going off now to plan the next campaign."

"It was al Qaeda who used the chemical weapons. Who gave al Qaeda the chemical weapons? Here's my theory: Israel gave them the chemical weapons."

"It's not just people with a percentage of the vote who have the right to speak. All of us have the right to speak. What happened to Farage looked ugly in the rest of the country and the rest of the world. And the SNP I fear will take you down a road where grudge is everything."

"I am in the House of Commons every day; I just do not want to vote for Tweedledum or Tweedledee"

"We did not suspend our democracy in our darkest hours why are we suspending it now? the fawning over Thatcher had gone too far... This put the tin hat on it the idea that we should suspend a vital part of our democratic process for a party political and private funeral, Mr Churchill didn’t ask for Parliament to be silenced, for confrontations across the House to be forbidden. When our soldiers were being laid waste in the Norway debate, the House of Commons perhaps rose to its finest 20th Century moment. Nobody said: "Our armed forces have suffered a disaster, the House of Commons cannot meet, the clash of ideas cannot be heard, we must muffle the drums and silence ourselves.""

"Thatcher described Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist". I was there. I saw her lips move. May she burn in the hellfires...Tramp the dirt down."

"I refused this evening at Oxford University to debate with an Israeli, a supporter of the apartheid state of Israel. The reason is simple: no recognition, no normalisation. Just boycott, divestment and sanctions, until the apartheid state is defeated. I never debate with Israelis nor speak to their media. If they want to speak about Palestine – the address is the PLO."

"Are you an Israeli? I don't debate with Israelis. I have been misled, sorry I don't recognise Israel and I don't debate with Israelis"

"It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but whatever else it is, it is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning."

"[One of the women] Claims that she woke up to him having sex with her again. This is something which can happen, you know. I mean not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion."

"Let me tell you, I think that Julian Assange's personal sexual behaviour is something sordid, disgusting, and I condemn it. But ... Even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100 per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don’t constitute rape. At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it."

"Because I don't believe that the government of Iran is a dictatorship I have no problem about working for Press TV in London which is a British owned television station. I'm not responsible for the government of Ahmedinijad. I'm not responsible for the leadership of Press TV."

"Hamas won the only democratic election ever held in the Arab world so how they can be tyrants I really don't know [...] I am not in favour of Hamas but I am in favour of democracy."

"The roots of this problem definitely are in the fact that not enough groups, trends, parties or individual personalities came into Respect [...] Therefore the perception was created that it was an organisation dominated by the SWP, who have form, or dominated by me, or, later, dominated by Muslims."

"Christianity doesn't come into it. George Bush and Tony Blair are not Christians. Religious people believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them. So don't ever confuse this with a war of civilizations."

"These extremist Islamists locked me in a room and threatened to hang me because we are the democratic alternative to them. We say to young Muslims: we know that you’re angry, you’re right to be angry. But the best way to be angry is to hit the government where it hurts, through politics, through the ballot box, through elections, through engaging with non-Muslims to build a broad front to bring about a change in policies at home and abroad."

"Well, I don’t agree that it’s genocide, but I definitely agree that there’s suffering going on there."