Crucial? Surge?

Imagine that a Labour MP, especially one supportive of Jeremy Corbyn, were being paid far more than his or her enormous parliamentary salary to do little more than appear on the headed notepaper of a conscience-salvaging charitable front for a fraudulent company. Yet Johnny Mercer still has the gall to whinge that he is being hounded or what have you. I would say, "Welcome to politics, Johnny Boy." But based both on your treatment and on your response to it, you still do not know that you are born. 

You were never going to get anywhere in politics, anyway. The British have never cared for military politicians, even in better days than these. No one who had ever been a member of the Armed Forces has led either main party into a General Election in 40 years, and he was defeated. No one like that has led a party to victory since as long ago as 1970, the only defeat of electorally the most successful member of the War generation, a perfectly healthy man who had never worn a uniform, yet who had still managed to come out of the War with the OBE before he was 30.

Alas, those who are equally unblooded, but who have a weird Beta Male crush on it all, remain powerful within both main parties on the floor of the House of Commons, if nowhere else. On their watch, Britain has moved from a country that was never very good at voluntary military recruitment or at looking after veterans, to a country where neither public schoolboys nor the sons of the Daily Mail reading classes will even join up anymore, where staunchly Conservative businessmen will not employ veterans, where staunchly Conservative landlords will not house them, and where Conservative councils in places like the West End and the South Coast will neither employ nor house them, even when that leaves them sleeping on the streets.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.