Lesson from history.. be careful what you wish for

THOUGH, like Mark Twain, his death has often been exaggerated, barring a real sandstorm it looks like we'll be seeing the demise of Colonel Gaddafi very soon.

Many have predicted that Tripoli will be a Stalingrad fight from house to house but I don't agree with that myself.

Others think that the Colonel - 42 years the supreme ruler of a state which officially had no rulers at all - will fight to the last drop of his own as well as other people's blood. I don't believe that either.

Zimbabwe en route to Venezuela sounds like the Dunroamin retirement home most likely for a man who would most certainly frighten the horses.

George Galloway on Syria

The news this morning that the Syrian navy were shelling the water-front of Latakia - including the Palestinian refugee camp there - shook me to the core.

Not just because I lived in that camp last year, on that water-front, when the then dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was stalling about letting the Viva Palestina 5 convoy sail for Gaza (after more than a fortnight of Syrian hospitality the convoy sailed though I was banned). The people of Latakia, a beautiful seaside holiday resort, were good to me. I cannot be silent about their suffering now.

George Galloway: Leaders playing with fire

I have already written here that our old Etonian government of white-tied Bullingdon Club multi-millionaires would set the country on fire while they fiddled and now they have.

Tottenham, like many parts of the country, is a toxic pyre of seething resentment against racist policing, bigotry, institutionalised discrimination, savage cuts in public services, mass unemployment and hopelessness. No meaningful political leadership exists in such places; no constructive channel exists for such rage to be heard. But everybody has heard them now.

Without leaders, the youth of Tottenham have cried out from beyond the political graveyard and said, "We exist. And you will listen to us."

The last time Tottenham rose up, in 1985, a friend of mine, Bernie Grant, was the political dynamo on the streets there. New Labour's face is that of David Lammy MP.

His identification with most of those rioting on Saturday night and those who suffered the damage begins and ends with the colour of his skin.

Bernie and his widow Sharon lived among their people. They felt their pain. Lammy is more likely to be found in The Hamptons than up the High Road in Tottenham.

It's going to be a long, hot summer in Boris Johnson's London and in David Cameron's Britain.

It's a long way from the high life to the High Road. But however uncertainly, the people have begun to move.