And still the shockwaves resound. Labour pundits and offi cials have been deluging the leadership, the media, established and social, with reasons, or justifi cations, about why I won so comprehensively and the party failed so abysmally at the Bradford West by-election at the end of March. Th e latest ‘expert’ is Tony Blair’s former race adviser, Faz Hakim, who gets it at least partially right. Th at the party relied too much – indeed almost entirely in my view – on community, or tribal leaders, to deliver the vote.

Etonian toff s and the cabinet – usually one and the same thing – have the old boy network, Masons their tickly handshakes and hairy legs, Pakistan politics has the baraderie.

So here’s Galloway’s Guide to Elections and How to Win Them (usually).

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. The times really have changed.

I don’t know whether any sociologists or psephologists have done any comparative studies about parental influence on children’s voting – and who’d trust it anyway? – but for me it’s a given that inherited political loyalties have all but disappeared. Young people are much less inclined to vote the way their mums and dads did and are much more influenced by argument, by their friends, by social trends and by their own experiences. Labour in Bradford relied on the corrupt system of entrusting a number of grandees to deliver their extended families and those who owed them, or expected to. In different forms, and in different communities, it’s what they do. The party membership has been decimated so there’s little else they can do, with no real infrastructure, what they used to call grassroots, before it was paved over and a parking lot built on top.

The media aren’t the message, but they are crucial. The role of the social media in my election can’t be overstated. Facebook caught fire, thousands signed up to my site, almost all of them under 30, I’d wager, and their interaction produced meetings, events, ideas and rebuttals, mutual support and the belief that given the numbers and the enthusiasm, it must be a successful campaign. And we didn’t neglect the traditional media, the local papers and channels, firing out a series of withering attacks, principally on Labour, our key opponent in what was supposed to be a safe seat for them. All of it free. Th ey, by contrast, relied on what they believed would be traditional support and voter apathy. Labour clearly spent a fortune on the fl ags and poles they paid contractors to stick on gardens and fences overnight, on those of people who had either voted for them in the past or who their canvasses indicated were supporters.

Big and expensive mistake. Still, they’ll come in handy as kindling over the winter.

Choose your ground and your issues. There’s no point pitching up in an area where the local council(s) is doing a fine job and is popular.

You’re looking for an incompetent, surly, conspiratorial and secretive council but, sorry, you can’t have Bradford because I’ve already got there. Even better when you have one of the leaders of that hopeless council as the candidate because you can have a field day attacking him and his council. I’m sure many people voted