Every Liddle Helps

I am delighted to announce that Rod Liddle, Associate Editor of The Spectator and a columnist on The Sunday Times, and formerly Editor of Radio Four's flagship Today programme, has graciously agreed to become a Patron of my Independent candidacy for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham.

Rod has strong local family connections and, while he and I do not necessarily agree on every issue, we are at one that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level. We are at one in refusing to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. We are at one in seeking to give a voice to the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left's traditional electoral base. And we are at one in opposing the neoconservative war agenda abroad and its assaults on liberty at home.

We look forward to welcoming Rod on the stump here as the General Election approaches. In the meantime, we urgently need people who are here permanently and who will campaign, sign nomination papers, know where the vote is, and get that vote out. Furthermore, we are in most pressing need of cash. For those of you who prefer absolute privacy, there is a PayPal button on this blog.

Remember, all that we need to be is the first past the post. Rod, from the perspective of the big league national media, thinks that we can do it. So, let's do it.