When The Gloves Come Off

From The Guardian to the Daily Mail, as you fail to lay a glove on Nigel Farage, then understand that this is also why you have failed to lay a glove on Jeremy Corbyn. In either case, you would never have voted for him no matter what. Nor would the people for whom, and to whom, you are speaking. So who cares what you think? 

Your own preferred parties, respectively Change UK and the Conservatives, are going to win no seats and possibly one seat, the tenth in the South East, which would thus go to Daniel Hannan, no friend of your beloved Theresa May or her beloved Withdrawal Agreement, and in many ways a more extreme version of Nigel Farage.

In similar vein, of the attacks that have been made on Corbyn, every one of them could be made against Claire Fox, only even more so. Spiked and its predecessors have rightly opposed every war of the last 30 years, and they have been a great deal more forthright in the style of their opposition than Corbyn has often been. Spiked has been more sceptical, to put it mildly, than Corbyn has been in public about Russia-bating over Salisbury and other things.

"Marxist" and "Trotskyist" are thrown at Corbyn by people with little understanding of the first word, and with none of the second. But Claire really is a Marxist, and specifically a Trotskyist. Ask her. She'll tell you. Unlike Corbyn, Claire opposed the Good Friday Agreement because it was still not the 32 County Republic. I remember her telling Melanie Phillips on The Moral Maze that "I do not accept Israel's right to exist," a statement that Corbyn has never made, or we would certainly have heard about it by now. And so on.

Claire is going to enter the European Parliament for the party for which the people who had lapped up and regurgitated the attacks on Corbyn are going to have voted. Such lapping up and regurgitation will therefore no longer be possible, or at least not with any moral, intellectual or political consistency.

Next week's triumph ought also to win the Brexit Party the Peterborough by-election, but in itself it is not a long-term option once these Elections are out of the way. What matters is what comes next. Another hung Parliament is coming, 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.