Question 472

Which 472 Teaching Assistants, exactly, will still be losing money? Who are they? Are they activists? Are they related to activists? I strongly suspect so. This is very well worth looking into.

Pat Glass is a friend of mine, and my only real political difference with her was over whether the EU was a help or a hindrance to the objectives that we both shared. I was proud to vote for her in 2015. 

But seeing Alex Watson on television this week, I recalled my regret that in 2010, when the all-women shortlist and other issues were still raw, neither he nor Mike Malone had yet felt able to break with the Labour Party. Whichever of them had contested this seat would have been the First Past the Post.

I voted for Owen Temple for Parliament this year, despite enormous political differences with him and even though I longed to be able to vote for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, because he was one of the two County Councillors to have done the most for the TAs. The other was Alex Watson.

I shall never forgive the Labour Party in County Durham for having made it impossible for me to share in the epoch-making Labour surge of 2017. Other things will lessen or fade with time. But not that.

Like George Galloway, Alex Watson remains one of my Campaign Patrons.