I knocked them for six, says Galloway

A triumphant George Galloway will arrive back in the UK today confident he won the showdown with US senators who have accused him of profiting from Iraq’s oil-for-food scandal.

The Respect MP said he was “absolutely” convinced he had been vindicated from allegations that he received vouchers for 20 million barrels of oil from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“These people think they can smear people without them having the right to speak back and this time I got that right and I knocked them for six,” he said.

Making reference to a 1955 heavyweight boxing match in which the British champion lost to the US, he added: “It was Rocky Marciano versus Don Cockell, but this time the British guy won.”

Mr Galloway’s appearance before the US Senate committee on investigations was largely lauded by pundits in the US, who deemed his impassioned defence a success.

“They didn’t have a leg to stand on,” he said. “All they had was my name on a bit of paper and that just isn’t good enough.”

Mr Galloway described the committee’s damning report as a “schoolboy dossier, full of holes and falsehoods”.

He told Senator Coleman he had never even met former Iraqi vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, cited as a source in the documents, and questioned his credibility as a detainee in US custody facing the death penalty.