Bradford West Respect MP George Galloway (pictured) has been criticised for suggesting that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was accused of nothing more than “bad sexual etiquette”.

Mr Assange is wanted in Sweden to face allegations – which he denies – of sexual assault against two women.

He is holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London but the UK has said he will not given safe passage to the Latin American country.

Mr Galloway said the women’s claims were “totally unproven” and the Wikileaks founder had been “set up” in a 30-minute podcast on YouTube.

He is quoted as saying it was “an extraordinary coincidence that public enemy number one, Julian Assange, somehow gets inveigled with two women with incredibly complex political backgrounds who just, at the right time, come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him”.

“Let me tell you, I think that Julian Assange's personal sexual behaviour is sordid, disgusting, and I condemn it,” he said.

“But even taken at its worst, if the allegations made by these two women were true, 100 per cent true, and even if a camera in the room captured them, they don’t constitute rape.

“At least not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it.”

But on his Twitter account, a tweeter named @redrenie24 tweeted: “The women of Bradford West won’t be happy with you come 2015, now that you’ve shown your true colours on rape”, to which Mr Galloway replied: “let’s leave that to them then”.

Rape charity Crisis said that said Mr Galloway’s comments were “offensive”.

The MP said one of the women had claimed she invited Mr Assange to her flat, had consensual sex with him and then “woke up to him having sex with her again – something which can happen, you know”.