IIRC, at the time when GG was setting up the first iteration of Respect he hoped the CPB would sign up, on the basis of their common work in Stop the War, and some in the CPB were advocating this. But the traditional CPB orientation to the established organisations of the labour movement won the day. The fact that GG is a political entrepreneur and that some of his previous enterprises had a definite whiff of scandal about them probably influenced the CPB's decision not to climb aboard the GG bandwagon. In retrospect, the CPB's scepticism was almost certainly well-founded.