George Galloway, the UK’s most infamous panderer to totalitarian causes (Islamism, Baathism, Stalinism, name an ism, he’s for it), is facing suspension from the House of Commons for 18 days over his links to a charity financed by Saddam Hussein: George Galloway ‘should be suspended’.

The Commons Standards and Privileges Committee, in one of its most damning reports against an MP, said today that Mr Galloway at best “turned a blind eye” to what was going on but was more likely to have been “complicit” in the concealment of the true source of funds for his Mariam Appeal.

Mr Galloway denounced the all-party committee of MPs as a “politicised tribunal” after it concluded unanimously that he had “connived” in the abuse of the United Nations oil-for-food programme which was set up to allow Saddam to sell Iraqi oil to buy humanitarian supplies to alleviate the effects of the long standing trade embargo.

The proposed Commons ban would be one of the most severe imposed on an MP. Any ban - which requires the backing of MPs - would take effect from October when the Commons returns from its summer recess.

The report today by Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary commissioner who began his inquiry in 2003, was delayed because of a libel case brought by Mr Galloway against The Daily Telegraph. Mr Galloway was awarded £150,000 in libel damages.

The standards committee said that Mr Galloway should not only apologise to the Commons for failing to register donations to the fund but also to David Blair, the Daily Telegraph’s diplomatic correspondent, who discovered the documents linking the charity payments to the oil-for-food programme in a room in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs after the fall of the Saddam regime.