THE prospect of a reconciliation between Labour and George Galloway has evaporated after Ed Miliband branded the Respect MP's views awful and the Scot hit back dismissing the party leader as a coward and a liar.
The war of words erupted after Mr Miliband was asked about his meeting, late last year, with Mr Galloway, which sparked speculation relations could be thawing. The MP for Bradford West was expelled from Labour in 2003 for his remarks on the Iraq War.
After the meeting was revealed, Mr Galloway made clear he wanted to see the Labour leader as prime minister "the sooner the better" and said about meeting him: "I thought he was quite impressive, physically and intellectually." There was even a suggestion the former Glasgow MP would urge people to vote Labour in seats Respect was not contesting.
However, yesterday when asked about the meeting, Mr Miliband dismissed any talk of a reconciliation, saying the encounter was simply part of a bid to garner minority party votes over a vote on boundary changes and that he would be fighting to get Mr Galloway ousted in 2015 from the seat he snatched from his former party in a by-election last year.
"George Galloway's views are awful," declared the Labour leader. "He might want me to be prime minister but I don't want him to be an MP. We were having a big vote on boundary changes; I met all the minor parties."
He added: "George Galloway is not coming back to the Labour Party. We want to defeat him at the next election."
The backbencher tweeted: "I realise now that I showed poor judgement in finally agreeing to meet Miliband.
"An unprincipled coward with the backbone of an amoeba."
He added: "Miliband's claim that he repeatedly pursued me for a one-hour meeting about 'boundary changes' is, quite simply, a lie."
Meanwhile, Francis O'Grady, the TUC general secretary, warned that both Labour and the trade unions had to change to help lift Britain out of economic stagnation.
Delivering the Atlee memorial lecture at University College at Oxford, she insisted both sides of the Labour movement had to learn from the lessons of the past to forge a "new ideological settlement for post-crash Britain".
"For the party, there must be a decisive break with New Labour managerialism, the notion that deregulated markets can somehow be given a human face."
She added: "For us in the trade unions, there can be no retreat into a comfort zone of narrow sectionalism or oppositionism.
"Our long-term viability ultimately rests on our capacity to shape a new economy, not from the sidelines but from within."
Her remarks follow a public spat this week when Unite leader Len McCluskey warned Mr Miliband that if he was seduced by the Blairites he would be "cast into the dustbin of history".
The Labour leader responded by accusing him of a reprehensible attempt to divide Labour and of disloyalty to the party.
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