Dear Prime Minister, 

I’m sure on reflection you will realise that your answer to me today was beneath you and unbecoming for a British Prime Minister. I will deal with the complete absence of a substantive reply in a moment. But let me deal first with the vulgar abuse. 

I do not support any Arab dictatorship, unlike you. It is you who is selling weapons to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia and providing military training there. It is you who is supporting the Bahraini dictatorship. It is you who supported the Mubarak dictatorship until its last hours. Ditto the late dictatorship in Tunisia, Yemen etc. It is you who has the warmest possible relations with the dictatorships in the Gulf. I could go on, believe me. I, on the other hand, have spoken, written and broadcast against all Arab dictatorships. Perhaps your staff, in preparing your reply, will provide you with the evidence of this. I also read Frankenstein until the end. 

I told one of your predecessors, Lady Thatcher, on the eve of the triumph of those whom your party routinely described as ‘Afghan freedom fighters’ that she “had opened the gates to the barbarians…. And that a long dark night would now descend upon the people of Afghanistan”. I warned repeatedly against the folly of the creation of the Arab-Afghan force which became Al Qaida. Immediately after 9/11 I said in the House that “I despise Osama Bin Laden, the medieval obscurantist savage. The difference is that I have always despised him. I despised him when you (pointing at the Tory benches) were giving him guns and money”. 

I find it genuinely inexplicable that you are doing it all over again. This is a tragedy which begins to look farcical when one considers the issue which I raised today with you. We are now killing Al Qaida in Mali and helping Al Qaida kill in Syria – killing Christians, killing Shiites, killing Kurds, killing Druze, killing Sunnis who won’t join their jihad, and soon, trust me, they will be killing each other. 

There may be “key differences” between Al Qaida in Mali and their counterparts in Syria. I asked you to explain these to the House today. You refused. But it is a question which will not go away before a puff of vulgar abuse. 

I look forward to your reply. I am seeking to publish this letter. 

Yours sincerely, 

George Galloway MP

He didn’t take Dave’s smackdown well then…