"Be nice to George!" - but how could I not?

It’s when you meet George Galloway face to face that you realise he is a figure defined by the battles he has fought. Though it may be a concession to the cliché that people always look taller on television than they do in real life, the figure at the centre of a gathering of students and supporters in the courtyard of Old College doesn’t do justice to Galloway’s operatic set-piece battles with big business, government, the Labour party, the United States Congress, Jeremy Paxman, and the Celebrity Big Brother viewing public.

Perhaps Galloway’s years in the political arena have finally taken their toll. There is more than a suggestion of a grandfatherly desire to don his housecoat and slippers, pick up his pipe and get cosy by the warming glow of applause on the lecture circuit, rather than to pick another scrap in the frosty Edinburgh outdoors. The polite laughter when Galloway dismisses his personal vendetta with rival candidate George Foulkes, saying he has “more powerful enemies”—certainly the truth—is sympathetic, like a gentle admonition to watch his knees.

But, still, picking fights is what George Galloway does best – as I am to find out. The past decade has often seen Galloway out of favour with the media, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised to immediately find myself in the crosshairs for asking how he plans to win with student political groups, from EUSA to the Tories, rallying around his opponents: “You can’t count the ballots before they’re cast," he admonishes. "Thousands of students will be voting in February, and few of them are going to make their minds up based on the views of a few chairmen.”

“I'll be seeing you at the count on 12 February,” Galloway says. In case I hadn’t got the message, he later adds, “I bet you'd love it if I won.”

The mark of a master political firebrand is the art of mauling your opponent while remaing utterly disarming – and true to form, its impossible not to be charmed as I’m discreetly disemboweled, laughing along with the rest of the crowd at my own ridicule. The whiskers and spectacles may be grandad’s, but Galloway’s claws are still sharp.

He digs them into his opponents, who are unlikely to be as impressed. Veteran journalist Iain Macwhirter is lucky to get off lightly with a dismissal: “This race is going to be between myself and Lord Foulkes,” pronounces Galloway. The local candidate with more student endorsements than any other isn’t invited to this game of political football, it appears.

When addressing the target of his venom, Lord Foulkes, Galloway goes for the eyes. “George Foulkes spends as much time at Westminster as I do,” he says. “I should know, because I’ve looked at his expenses – and if he doesn’t, then he’s in a bit of trouble.”

I once more dare to tread on the ice to ask the MP for Bethnal Green & Bow precisely what meetings Galloway will commit to attending as rector. As with his manifesto this is demanding too much for the time being. There's a sense that the campaign is, so far, somewhat of a hurried affair. As the two bemused university security staff confirm—between taking mobile phone pictures of the candidate—no request was put in to have the event staged indoors. An upstart insurgency this may be, but a last minute one, to be sure.

Galloway’s stump speech consists of the sort of old-left vitriol which brought him fame and infamy in equal measure: “Edinburgh needs more working class students," he argues.

“When George Foulkes attended the University of Edinburgh, he did so for free, using my taxes and those of many other ordinary British people to do so,” he says.

“The moment he and New Labour came to power, they took steps to prevent my children from being able to do the same. I’m very bitter about that.”

It’s compelling stuff, but given Galloway’s earlier assertion that “this election is going to be a referendum not only on student rights, but on the issues young people are demonstrating so clearly that they feel passionately about”—read Gaza—one finds it hard to accept his sincerity.

As the huddle follows Galloway off towards Teviot and a public consultation meeting, I stop some of his campaign staff – all of them students, mostly of politics. “Be nice to George! I think he’s great,” one of them says. But I do too, I protest; it’s just that he clearly needs a rest.