Antidote

We know what, or at any rate whom, Alexei Navalny is against. But what is he for? What does he want instead?

And notice that he is not dead. If Vladimir Putin is the Great Poisoner, then he is not very good at it. If it is not the Skripals doing the hokey cokey across Salisbury Plain, then it is this.

If Putin, or the GRU, or any of that lot, wanted you dead, then you would be dead. Not of some exotic poison that didn't work, anyway. But of a bullet to the head.

Councillor Watch: Day 17

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 52

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 98

It has now been 17 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. 17 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Responsibility

The Americans are whining that we have never taken back Shamima Begum and others who went off to fight for IS in Syria. Apparently, they ought to stand trial here. Trial for what? They went off to fight for the side that we were actively supporting in Syria, and which it is still British Government policy to say should have won. 

In any case, out of all of this has come Shamima's Law. If you would merely qualify for another nationality, whether or not you held it or wanted it, then your British citizenship can now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen. 

Saint Helena has never become independent and it never will, so I am all right this side of Scottish independence. But beyond the fair South Atlantic, most of Britain's former colonies in the Caribbean are independent now. And 50 per cent of people in Britain with an Afro-Caribbean parent also have a white parent. 

If you are in that position, even if your other ancestors have been Anglo-Saxon for as long as there have been any Anglo-Saxons, or even if Julius Caesar heard them speaking the language that is now Welsh, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen.

If you are one of the huge proportion of the population of Great Britain with an ancestral connection to Ireland, or if you are almost any of the current inhabitants of Northern Ireland including all 10 DUP MPs, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen. 

And if you would qualify under Israel's Law of Return, which is considerably looser than the Rabbinical definition of who is Jewish, then your British citizenship could now be revoked at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen. How about that for anti-Semitism?

All this, and the return of the sus law, too. This is the most racist British Government since the term became current. But then, look at the other side. Never mind the sus law. When that lot was last in, then it tried to introduce the pass laws.

Look at Margaret Hodge, who recently called Shraga Stern "a second-class Jew". Look at Nick Cohen, who has demanded that Stern be banished from public life on account of his Yiddish accent. Look at Jess Phillips, who has accused British Pakistanis of importing wives for their disabled sons, and who became famous by claiming to have been rude and abusive towards Britain's most prominent black politician, Diane Abbott.

Look at John Mann, who writes racist material against Gypsy, Romany and Traveller people, and who then distributes it to his constituents. Look at Ruth Smeeth, who organised a lynch mob of dozens of Labour MPs and Peers to march through London and demand, successfully, the expulsion of the immensely distinguished black activist Marc Wadsworth from the Labour Party, not for having lied about Smeeth, but for having been so uppity a Coloured as to have told the truth about her. Look at all of the BAME Labour MPs, not one of whom has defended either Wadsworth or Jackie Walker.

Look at Claire Kober, who sought to emulate apartheid South Africa by bulldozing Tottenham and building an all-white luxury gated community over its rubble. Look at David Miliband, who created the "Chagos Marine Protected Area" in order to prevent the Chagossians from returning to their homeland. Look at Tony Blair, who with George Bush has killed more brown people than any other white man alive.

Look at Hilary Armstrong, who at the same time as she was Chief Whip on the Iraq War was banning me from becoming a Labour District Council candidate in her constituency because I was mixed-race. Look at Laura Pidcock, whose election literature in 2017 featured Armstrong's name, face, and words of endorsement.

And look at Simon Henig, the George Wallace of our time, who is now banned from the Durham Miners' Gala in solidarity with everyone from the Teaching Assistants, to the Palestinians, to me. Henig's attack on the Teaching Assistants is racist at least in effect, and they have been brought to their sorry pass by the treacherous political advice of Pidcock's Political Advisor, Ben Sellout.

One could go on.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Long Two Years

There really should not be any other news than this. Boris Johnson says that Britain could stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union for two years after Brexit, if and when such a thing were ever to occur in the first place. And then another two years, of course. And another. And another. And another. He has never been in favour of Brexit.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Boo To A Goose?

Booing a politician wherever he or she goes is a grand old British tradition, and full marks to Boris Johnson for having revived it. 

He has now been roundly jeered in all four parts of the United Kingdom, and in three of them over the course of the last three days.

But he could have got that without even having needed to leave Downing Street. It turns out that Dominic Cummings hates the Tories as much as Nigel Farage hates Dominic Cummings.

And behind them all is Steve Bannon, a man who is now so important in British politics that he is given 15 minutes without interruption on the Today programme.

But remember, the Prime Minister has only ever met him once, for a few minutes, almost by chance. Oh, yes. Oh yes, indeed.

Drag Queen?

Laverne Cox, you say? Well, without wishing to be indelicate, an encounter with Mr Cox (make your own jokes) would certainly have an "impact" on me.

Has Meghan Markle finally made the monarchy insufferable? Or is she exactly the kind of President that we would get if we ever did away with it? It is one or the other. But which is it, and why?

WhatsApp With This?

Priti Patelaviv here, as if New Labour had never come to an end.

Well, it never has yet.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Neither main party has fought for an overall majority since 1992. Labour got them by default in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Both sides played for a draw and got it in 2010.

In 2015, the Conservatives got the shock of their sweet little lives when an unrepeatable combination of local flukes and local frauds put them over the line. 

Long-term readers will recall that I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 Election was called. I confidently assert that that was also the analysis of everyone at the top of the Labour Party, and of everyone at the top of the Conservative Party who was not Theresa May.

There is going to a hung Parliament next time, too. But the Leader of one or other of the two main parties will have to be Prime Minister. And remember, a Corbyn-led Government would have a sterling crisis. A sterling crisis! I mean, just try and imagine that.

Nonce Sense

Anyone who came to political maturity in what were then the newly-former mining areas will have been made fully aware that the miners in the dock, all the way back in 1984 and 1985, routinely made reference to the proclivities of the Home Secretary of the day, Leon Brittan.

Those proclivities were common knowledge from Fife and the Lothians, to County Durham and the southern part of Northumberland, to South Yorkshire, to South Wales, among other places. Nothing was carried in the papers or included in the court reports, but the pit villages never needed Twitter in order to circumvent that kind of censorship.That was long before Carl Beech.

Margaret Thatcher knew about Cyril Smith when she arranged his knighthood. Jimmy Savile's knighthood was rejected four times by the relevant committee, until she absolutely insisted upon it for the man with whom she spent every New Year's Eve, and on whose programmes she was so obsessed with appearing that her staff had to ration those appearances.

Thatcher's closest lieutenant was Peter Morrison. Unlike the Prince of Wales, she would have had sight of every file on Laurens van der Post. Towering over all of them was Alderman Alfred Roberts. For the man to whom Thatcher professed to owe everything, although there was little closeness between them during her adult lifetime, was notorious locally as a toucher up of young girls. In this day and age, he would have been arrested.

What was so important about Smith, a highly eccentric and largely absentee MP for what was then a tiny minority party? He was a Thatcherite avant la lettre, who had left the Labour Party when he had started to see cars outside council houses. Thatcher's father was also a Liberal until all of that fell apart between the Wars, and he was never a member of the Conservative Party to his dying day. He, she and Smith were politically indistinguishable.

That the Radical Right put out pamphlets demanding the legalisation of paedophile activity was mentioned in Our Friends in the North, which was broadcast in 1996. Our Friends in the North is so integral to subsequent popular culture that one of its four stars is now James Bond, another was the first Doctor of this century's revival of Doctor Who, and neither of the others is exactly obscure.

That Thatcherite MPs were likely to commit sexual violence against boys with the full knowledge of the party hierarchy formed quite a major subplot in To Play the King, the middle series of the original House of Cards trilogy. To Play the King was broadcast as long ago as 1993. No politician or commentator of the generation that is now in or approaching its pomp could possibly have seen anything less than every minute of that trilogy.

Also long before Carl Beech, such allegations dogged Greville Janner for decades while he used the counter-charge of anti-Semitism against anyone who dared to mention them. His family is still doing that on his behalf, as are his friends in the House of Lords.

Janner handed over his Commons seat to Patricia Hewitt of the Paedophile Information Exchange. She it was who told speakers at Labour Conferences, "Do not use the word "equality"; the preferred term is "fairness"." She it was, a mere Press Officer, who, in a sign of things to come, was not told where to get off for having presumed so to instruct her betters.

She went on to help found the Institute for Public Policy Research, and then, soon after Tony Blair became Leader, to become Head of Research at Andersen Consulting. That was a position for which she had no apparent qualification beyond her closeness to the Prime Minister in Waiting. In 1997, she entered Parliament, he entered Downing Street, and the Labour commitment to regulate such companies was dropped.

As was the previous Conservative Government's absolute ban on all work for Andersen in view of its role in the DeLorean fraud. Andersen paid just over £21 million of the £200 million that Thatcher and Major had demanded, barely covering the Government's legal costs. It went on to write, among other things, a report claiming that the Private Finance Initiative was good value for money. That was the only report on the subject that the Blair Government ever cited, since it was the only one to say that ridiculous thing.

As Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Hewitt tried to give auditors limited liability. It took the Conservative Opposition and the Bush Administration to see her off. Hewitt in turn passed on Janner's old seat to Liz Kendall, the Hard Right's candidate for Leader of the Labour Party in 2015.

Do not be distracted by the case of Carl Beech. The Hard Rights of both main parties are so shot through with the sexual abuse of children that they are more or less defined by it. And like illegal drug use, sexual behaviour is never purely "private". Both of them open up the participants to blackmail, and the intellectual contortions necessary to justify them in the minds of those participants have vast philosophical and political consequences, taking those minds from a broadly Labour or Conservative position to an explicitly Blairite or Thatcherite one.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Trash Takes Itself Out

Like Alastair Campbell, I have no desire to be in a party that does not want me as a member. 

The BBC is aghast that Labour "has yet to respond" to Campbell, as if he were anyone in particular. But in fact, if he serves any useful purpose, then it is as an entertaining reminder of quite how trashy the Blair years were.

Every Prime Minister has a little court, but none before or since, at least so far, has been surrounded by quite as undistinguished a bunch as Blair managed. The ear of our Head of Government was had by Campbell, Peter Mandelson, Michael Levy, Carole Caplin, and all that trash.

So no, Alastair Campbell, for all the Labour Party's many faults, it most certainly does not want you back in its ranks. Nor does it feel any need to "respond" to your assertion that you no longer wish to be member of it, anyway.

Councillor Watch: Day 16

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 51

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 97

It has now been more than 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Time To Pull Our Fingers Out

Today, Boris Johnson besported himself on nuclear weapons platforms.

The case against Trident is now unanswerable. The finger on the button belongs to Boris Johnson.

Fix Your Thinking

The Russian Government cannot even fix the elections to Moscow City Council.

It certainly could not have fixed either the EU referendum in the United Kingdom, or the Presidential Election in the United States.

From Start To Finish

A British warship in the Gulf, to deter Iranian piracy?

Well, then, let us see an Iranian warship off Gibraltar, to deter British piracy.

We started it.

"Why Is There No Boycott of Saudi Arabia?"

There should be, and it should take the form of an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country's vast reserves of coal. Proponents of wind turbines, how do you think that steel is manufactured?

Plus, of course, a complete end to this country's "security" relationship with the nerve centre of global Islamist terrorism.

A Hitch In Time

Not even Peter Hitchens could be bothered to mention, either Priti Patel on the capital punishment for which there will never be a parliamentary majority, or The Jacob Rees-Mogg Show on the imperial measurements that a 50-year-old cannot add up in his head, since they have no more been taught at Eton than anywhere else over the last half-century or so. 

The 67-year-old Hitchens, who is practically old enough to The Jacob Rees-Mogg Show's father, is of the last generation that could do anything more than give their height, their weight, and the distance from London to Brighton, in the old system, no matter where they had gone to school. And yet Britain muddles on. Doesn't that make you proud? It certainly should.

As for The Jacob Rees-Mogg Show's real father, Harold Wilson once said of him that, "He speaks with all the authority of a twice defeated Conservative candidate," for so he was. There will never be another sight quite like the face of The Jacob Rees-Mogg Show when Andrew Neil accurately described him as "upper-middle-class", and thus as nothing more than that.

It is clear from Hitchens's views on Carl Beech and on the definition of extremism that he recognises his own status as a dissident, even if he does have a Fleet Street column. Hypothetically, if there were indeed to be some kind of attempt to reintroduce the death penalty, then he would have to oppose it in practice.

He knows perfectly well which of him and a liberal would be far more likely to be charged in the first place, and which would be far more likely to receive the maximum sentence upon conviction, since neither charging nor sentencing is anything to do with a jury.

"We Therefore Endorse"?

The following has just been sent to the people described:

Being a straightforward matter, the following will be sent to the local and national media at 12 noon on Monday 5th August 2019. One trusts that the other MPs for County Durham, and the Chief Whip, will forward it to all other Labour MPs in good time, and that the Councillor for Lanchester will forward it to all other Labour Councillors:

Dear Sir,

We endorse the parliamentary candidacy of Laura Pidcock at North West Durham against David Lindsay and against the Conservative Party. Since each is on 30 per cent, any could be the First Past the Post. 

David Lindsay is a supporter of Brexit, of Modern Monetary Theory, of the Universal Basic Income, of Julian Assange, of Chris Williamson, of the coal industry, and of putting Tony Blair on trial over the war in Iraq. He is an opponent of Trident, of NATO, of Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, of gender self-identification, and of the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. He is a sympathiser with Fathers 4 Justice. He is a practising Roman Catholic. He is a defender of shooting and fishing. He is a mixed-race advocate of immigration controls. He would have Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Independents on his staff. He is still fighting Durham County Council over the Teaching Assistants. He is a friendly critic and a critical friend of George Galloway. We therefore endorse Laura Pidcock.

The invitation to sign this letter was extended to all Labour members of the House of Commons, to all Labour members of Durham County Council, and to all Labour members of Lanchester Parish Council.

Yours faithfully,

Phooey All Round

We could not do anything about Hong Kong, even if we wanted to. But hey, it is a very long way away. 

Put those two facts together, and add in the third that the events there are such that they can be shown on the early evening news, which makes them very tame indeed by global standards. A British Labour Government has inflicted far worse repression on demonstrators there in the past.

In the form of that three-part concoction, you have the latest harmless entertainment for armchair hand-wringers and for people who still say "Keenya" or "Orstralia". Those two categories are far more alike than either of them likes to imagine or to admit.

No Conferring

The Conservative Party is the party of the Windrush scandal and the party that, assisted by the Liberal Democrats, relegalised caste-based discrimination. Boris Johnson calls black people “piccaninnies”, Muslim women “letterboxes”, and gay men “bumboys”. 

His Home Secretary is a close ally both of Narendra Modi and of Benjamin Netanyahu. Modi’s Education Minister has slashed scholarships for Dalits (so-called “Untouchables”), while Netanyahu’s Education Minister has described marriage between Jews and non-Jews as “a second Holocaust”. 

A Conservative Party Conference under Johnson’s Leadership would therefore pose a threat to the physical safety of Black And Minority Ethnic people, of Dalits, of Muslim women and their children, of Jews with non-Jewish partners, of those partners and their children, and of gay and bisexual men. 

Meanwhile, the Labour Party has adopted the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, a silencing of BAME, refugee and migrant voices redolent of Windrush and of Grenfell Tower. Labour submits to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which sacks its black and disabled staff first, which exonerated the Government in relation to Windrush, and members of which profited from Windrush and from blacklisting. 

A Labour Government evicted the Palestinians. A Labour Government evicted the people of the Chagos Islands, at the same time as it was repressing demonstrations in Hong Kong far more brutally than is happening at the moment. A Labour Government sought to banish the Chagossians permanently by creating the “Chagos Marine Protected Area”. And Labour supports gender self-identification. 

A Labour Party Conference would therefore pose a threat to the physical safety of BAME people, of refugees and migrants, of Palestinians and Chagossians, of disabled people, of working-class people, of trade unionists, and of lesbians and bisexual women. 

Accordingly, both the Conservative Party Conference and the Labour Party Conference ought to be cancelled, by court order if necessary.

Housing Benefits?

Conservative voters, at your expense, a married man is now living in Downing Street with a woman who is not his wife.

What do you think that you are voting for?

Unlucky Penny?

As the genius behind the seizure of a British-flagged tanker by Iran, Penny Mordaunt has been sacked.

Not directly, but as a kind of constructive dismissal, by the public offering of her job to someone who was bound to refuse such a demotion.

She, in turn, was bound to refuse to be kept on after that. So out she has gone.

Councillor Watch: Day 15

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 50

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 96

It has now been more than 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Through The Insitutions

And so Munira Mirza becomes Director of Boris Johnson's Number 10 Policy Unit. The Revolutionary Communist Party has now entered Government. Real Trotskyists, who really did support the Provisional IRA.

Look, the old RCP crowd has a colourful history. That ridiculous Aaronovitch creature, who has baggage of his own, once tried to link Jeremy Corbyn to Red Action, but it was in fact the lot who are now around Spiked, and several of whom are friends of mine, who were part of the Red Front electoral coalition with Red Action and others in 1987. Kenan Malik, of The Observer and of The Moral Maze, has come a very long way since he was Red Front's candidate at Nottingham East.

Claire Fox was second only to Nigel Farage, if perhaps jointly so with Ann Widdecombe, as the public face of the Brexit Party's wildly successful European Election campaign. First Past the Post hides quite how many Conservative voters there are at General Elections in the North West, but the huge majority of those 1.3 million in 2017 voted for the Brexit Party in 2019, putting Claire at the top of the poll.

And now, Munira Mirza becomes Director of Boris Johnson's Number 10 Policy Unit. The Revolutionary Communist Party has entered Government. Real Trotskyists, who really did support the Provisional IRA.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Councillor Watch: Day 13

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 48

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 94

It has now been more than 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Not Heaping Up Their Own Funeral Pyre

My dear friends, the American paleoconservatives, are in high dudgeon at the return of the federal death penalty. 

There is a reason why Enoch Powell was so strongly opposed to capital punishment, although of course it is academic in Britain even under the inevitably short-lived Home Secretaryship of Priti Patel. 

Trial by jury is all well and good, but a jury never can and never should decide, either whether or not a particular charge was to be brought, or what the sentence should be once a conviction had been arrived at.

In my ongoing experience of the Crown Prosecution Service, traditional conservatives would be, as Powell might have put it, "mad, literally mad" to have any confidence whatever in it. They tend to like the Police in practice a lot less than I do, too.

My experience of judges has been limited to one who has been, I have to say, scrupulously fair and courteous to me while telling the other side exactly what he thought of its failure to do the paperwork and so forth. 

But no traditional conservative could doubt, when faced with the wildly differential sentencing in this country on class, ethnic and political grounds, that he would be vastly more likely to hang for the same offence than a liberal would be.

Not only, although certainly, because he would be vastly more likely than a liberal would be to have been charged with the offence in the first place.

Neither the charge nor the sentence would be any concern of a jury. And capital crimes would be far more likely than crimes in general to have a political dimension at all.

Therefore, it is no wonder that my dear friends, the American paleoconservatives, are in high dudgeon at the return of the federal death penalty. 

And although of course it is academic in Britain even under the inevitably short-lived Home Secretaryship of Priti Patel, there is a reason why Enoch Powell was so strongly opposed to capital punishment.

Ostensibly Old Right figures who are keener on this practice may have larger popular followings, but they are to some extent outside the loop by being inside the Establishment. They do not quite comprehend their own dissident status.

Not Fit For Purpose

William Rees-Mogg was a posh-enough journalist of sufficient distinction to be ennobled at the age of 60. But he was not an aristocrat. Jacob Rees-Mogg is a character act.

I am all for banning "meet with" and "not for for purpose". But Rees-Mogg is trying to ban subclauses, which is horrifying.

As for imperial measurements, rejoice that Britain is the only country in the world that would not have collapsed nearly 50 years after it had started to teach in schools an entirely different system from the one that was used in ordinary life.

But it did do that. We can all give our height in the old system, or weigh potatoes in it, although I for one would pay good money to see Rees-Mogg weigh potatoes. Someone, however, needs to test the 50-year-old Rees-Mogg's precise knowledge of these things at any level higher than that. It will be pretty scanty.

Gulf In Reporting

Last night, the Bahrainis tried to murder a protester by throwing him off the roof of their Embassy.

In London.

Why has the Bahraini Ambassador not been expelled? Why is there any other news in Britain today?

Just imagine that the Russians or the Iranians had done this. Or the Chinese, with whose doings in far Hong Kong our media are obsessed while ignoring the unrest on our doorstep in France.

And, for that matter, the attempted murder in London.

Boris's Billions?

Theresa May tried the same trick, and the answer is still the same. If this money is there, then it ought to be spent, anyway.

In promising 20,000 more Police Officers, Boris Johnson has simply looked at the fully costed Labour promise and doubled it, with that doubling wholly uncosted.

And notice that his new high-speed rail link between Leeds and Manchester will not carry on to Liverpool. Under him, a Conservative Party that was once formidable on Merseyside is going to lose every deposit there, and every remaining council seat. It might as well be led by Kelvin MacKenzie.

Councillor Watch: Day 12

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 47

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 93

It has now been more than 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Not Gammon, Just Ham

Laughable headlines in dying newspapers that old men still buy for the football proclaim this blustering ham to have been "blistering". He was asked dozens of questions, but he failed to answer a single one. He did not know the answers. 

It is all an act, and it will wear thin very, very, very quickly. As Leader of the Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn may yet his see his fourth Prime Minister before the next General Election. He may yet see that fourth Prime Minister before the end of this year. 

Not that it makes any difference. Neither party could win an overall majority under any Leader or on any programme, and that is still going to be the case when I shuffle off this mortal coil in somewhere between 40 and 60 years' time.

Meanwhile, though, look at the beneficiaries of this coup. Imagine, if you will, that John McDonnell had succeeded in getting onto the ballot for Leader of the Labour Party in 2007. Imagine that he had beaten Gordon Brown. 

And imagine that, on the basis of an electoral mandate that had been given to Tony Blair, he had proceeded to fill the Cabinet with the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, while the likes of Andrew Fisher and Seumas Milne had been given key backroom positions. That is broadly where we now are. 

Yet Boris Johnson's domestic investment programme, while it may be watered down McDonnell, is precisely that: watered down McDonnell. On immigration, Johnson is far more liberal than Theresa May was, or than Ed Miliband was in 2015, or than much of the trade union movement is, or than many an article in the Morning Star is, or than George Galloway is. And so on. 

But he is in hock to the people who have given him the job purely for the sake of a Brexit in which, unlike Fisher, Milne, Galloway, or the Morning Star, he does not believe. He will never do it. That is why he will not promise to resign if Brexit had not happened by 31st October. He is really not even trying to bring that about. Notice how he has gone out of his way to humiliate Steve Baker.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Penalty Points

Well, it is the Silly Season. From Donald Trump to Priti Patel, the death penalty is somehow news again.

It is not going to come back in Britain, of course. It stopped being polled here years ago because it no longer provided the Establishment's desired result. That was the ability to point to the apparent views of the plebs and opine that, "If you left it them, then they'd bring back hanging."

Had the polls still shown much support for capital punishment, then David Cameron would never have held a referendum on membership of the EU.

But since the debate is being had for a few days, then look at the wide differences in existing sentencing based on class, ethnicity, and political persuasion. Then ask yourself, for the same offence, who would be hanged, and who would not be.

It was ever thus.

Serious Failure To Comply

Ofcom has fined RT £200,000 for something or other, even though Ofcom's findings in this case are currently subject to Judicial Review in the High Court.

Is the imposition of a sanction under these circumstances not a contempt of court? It certainly ought to be.

Look at the guests on Going Underground, on Sputnik, on The Alex Salmond Show. Not only from around the world, although there is that, but also from right here in Britain.

Listen to their voices. 

Agree with them or not, but when you get to hear them anywhere else, then anyone else gets to criticise RT.

Councillor Watch: Day 11

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 46

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 92

It has now been more than 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Most Diverse Cabinet Ever

Brown millionaires alongside white millionaires, and female millionaires alongside male millionaires. Most Labour MPs will be at a loss to see what the problem is. Their only complaint will be that their own frontbench was not like that. And that is really a complaint that they themselves are not on it. If they were, then it would be.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Do Or Die

No, of course we are not leaving the EU on 31st October. Boris Johnson's persistent refusal to promise to resign if that had not happened speaks for itself. But who even cares, in this heat? Sweltering away, the infernal word "Brexit" is the last straw.

No, the main thing about Johnson's speech today was that it showed that support for huge State involvement in the economy was the natural position of anyone who had not been ruthlessly trained out of it. Most Conservative and Labour MPs, and all Lib Dems, have been so trained. But no one like that seems to become Leader of either main party these days. Unfortunately, though, those Leaders do then have to contend with those MPs. Thus, Theresa May entered the Premiership with much the domestic programme of Johnson this afternoon. Three years later, and where is any of it?

But hope is at hand. It has nothing to do with who leads either party, it has nothing to do with either party's programme, and it has nothing to do with Brexit, that at the next General Election, and at every General Election for as long as any of us who were now over 40 were still alive, Labour and the Conservatives will each win between 250 and 270 seats, leaving them evenly matched but far short of an overall majority. That is just what this country now looks like, and there is nothing that can be done about it. What matters, then, is to hold the balance of power.

A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

All Systems Go

It is clear from this afternoon's appointments by Boris Johnson that the General Election campaign has now begun. 

Anyone in a position to help my candidacy at North West Durham (campaigning, funding, signing nomination papers, telling us what the issues are in each community, anything), please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. 

Very many thanks, and spread the word.

Councillor Watch: Day 10

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 45

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 91

It has now been 16 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. 16 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Reading The Ruins

Three things to take away from Geoff Norcott's programme last night, How The Middle Classes Ruined Britain.

First, the State is much better at primary education than the private sector is, so the real gaming of the system is for primary school places, and presumably nobody proposes the 5-plus.

Secondly, the "free" market in housing turns city centres into playgrounds for the rich and into property banks for absentee speculators, with the worst offenders being right-wing Labour Councils.

And thirdly, he interviewed Harriet Harman's son. In the light of all of the foregoing, make of that what you will.

The working class needs to bypass both the municipal Labour Right and the Liberal Establishment both in education and in the media, and it needs to develop ways of doing so in housing and in other fields.

The EU referendum result has confirmed that the workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, are now the key swing voters who deserve direct representation on local public bodies, on national public bodies, in the media, and at the intersection of the public and media sectors.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so.

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

By Jove, At Last

A First in Classics from Oxford would be impressive, but a 2:1 in anything from anywhere is just a 2:1. Boris Johnson is just one of us, and the streets are lined with us.

Like many mediocre Classicists, Johnson believes that Christianity overthrew a superior civilisation. Jeremy Corbyn is a fairly typical secular humanist of his generation. Jo Swinson's wedding was a humanist ceremony. Corbyn is onto his third marriage. Johnson is between his second and his third, and he does not know how many children he has.

Frankly, we ought to welcome all of this. It looks and sounds like Britain, and it has looked and sounded like Britain for a very long time. As a regular churchgoer, it boggles my mind that, until today, all six Prime Ministers of the last 40 years had been regular churchgoers who were still in their only marriages. Denis Thatcher had been divorced, but most people did not know that. 

I cannot for the life of me see what there is in Britain today to show for this apparently long reign of piety and domestic stability. Now we can stop pretending that this is "a Christian country", and instead get on with turning it into one.

"But We Would Have Accepted A Remain Result"?

Speak for yourself. What do you mean by "accepted it"? The people who think that the EU only went to the bad at some point in the very late 1980s might have said, "Oh, well, that's that, then." But not those of us who had been right all along. 

If you would just have "accepted" a Remain result at that constitutionally meaningless opinion poll in 2016, then you never really believed in Brexit at all. I do not agree with people who take the same view in reverse, such as Jo Swinson and Caroline Lucas. But I entirely respect them.

The people who think that the EU only went to the bad at some point in the very late 1980s like to claim that they were deceived, and that it was only ever supposed to have been "a free trade area" called "the Common Market". They are, frankly, liars.

I am a Brexiteer to my core, but there was no deceit. No one in any kind of position ever said that it was "a free trade area" called "the Common Market", and its true character was made clear from the moment that the Attlee Government refused to consider joining it at the start on the grounds that it was "the blueprint for a federal state".

That view on the part of its opponents continued to be articulated all the way up to the 1975 referendum by the likes of Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, and all the way up to the 1983 General Election by the likes of Benn and Michael Foot. The other side never contradicted it. They just said that the federal state was a good thing. 

They were wrong. But they never deceived anyone. Find the specific lie. You would have done better than every specialist in the field if you did. If you voted Yes in 1975, or Conservative in 1983, or both, then you need to face up to what you did. You were not deceived into some "Common Market". That simply never happened.

And if you would just have "accepted" a Remain result at that constitutionally meaningless opinion poll in 2016, then you never really believed in Brexit at all. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Standing? Ovation?

Now that it has happened twice, it must be considered a tradition for an outgoing Prime Minister to call on Jeremy Corbyn to resign. Boris Johnson would be churlish not to observe that tradition when he himself resigned on Friday.

But the BBC falsely labelled Ian Austin a Labour MP when he joined in with that call. There is no such position as "Mother of the House". The sex of a politician, including a Party Leader or a Prime Minister, is entirely the wrong question. 

And the praise for Gavin Barwell, the Butcher of Grenfell Tower, was as sick-making at the standing ovation for Theresa May was bad form. No applause in the chamber, please. At least Labour did not join in. The Conservatives did join in with the first of these ovations, for Tony Blair in 2007. As the Lib Dems and, of course, the DUP did on this occasion.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

In The Other Direction

Jo Swinson and Caroline Lucas are entirely correct, and they make an important point against a second referendum on EU membership.

I would not have stopped campaigning for Brexit if there had been a vote to Remain, any more than people like me stopped doing so after the 1975 referendum, or after the 1983 General Election.

The case for Brexit is the case for Brexit. It has nothing to do with the result of an opinion poll in 2016.

When Swinson and Lucas express the same view in the other direction, then I entirely respect them for that.

What I do not want is for them to hold the balance of power in the coming hung Parliament. I want our people to hold that balance. A new party is now in the process of registration. 

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. 

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

New Labour, New Britain

Today marks the supreme triumph of Tony Blair.

25 years ago, on frankly class grounds, he knifed Gordon Brown, who had taught him everything he knew, and then he elbowed aside John Prescott and Margaret Beckett, who were also far better qualified than he was.

25 years later, a caricature of a public school buffoon will today become Prime Minister. Try and imagine that a generation ago. You can't. Of course you can't. Thank you, Tony Blair.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. 

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. 

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

A British Trump?

Would that were indeed about to get a British Trump, at least in the form that Donald Trump took when he won. In 2016, the American Democratic Party was defeated in the person of the most economically neoliberal and internationally neoconservative nominee imaginable. 

The lesson should have been learned, but instead still needs to be. The workers are not the easily ignored and routinely betrayed base, with the liberal bourgeoisie as the swing voters to whom tribute must be paid. The reality is the other way round. The EU referendum ought already to have placed that beyond doubt.

There is a need to move, as a matter of the utmost urgency, away from the excessive focus on identity issues, and towards the recognition that those existed only within the overarching and undergirding context of the struggle against economic inequality and in favour of international peace, including cooperation with Russia, not a new Cold War. 

It is worth noting that working-class white areas that voted for Barack Obama did not vote for Hillary Clinton, that African-American turnout went down while the Republican share of that vote did not, and that Trump took 30 per cent of the Hispanic vote. Black Lives Matter meant remembering Libya, while Latino Lives Matter meant remembering Honduras.

None of this, alas, has anything in the least to do with Boris Johnson. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Councillor Watch: Day Nine

I hereby invite all Labour members of Durham County Council who believe me to be guilty of the criminal charges against me to email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com and say so.

I would not be able to reply to those emails, but every day the names of those who had sent them to me would appear here. So far, I have received none.

The Laura Pidcock Drugs Challenge: Day 44

I have never taken any illegal drug, and I challenge Laura Pidcock MP to say the same.

This post will appear here daily until it has received an answer.

Healthy Discharge Watch: Day 90

It has now been more than 15 weeks since the jury in my trial, the third attempt at one, was discharged. The previous day, the star prosecution witness had been sent away to come up with the only piece of evidence, a single email that no one had ever asked to see until then.

As soon as they did, then he never reappeared on his video link from the United States, and the jury was discharged. More than 15 weeks later, and that email, a perfectly simple thing to find, has still not turned up. It does not exist.

Be at Durham Crown Court at 10 o'clock on Monday 2nd September, to hear that there is still no case against me. That will not be a trial, but just another hearing as to the evidence or lack of it. 2nd September 2019. I was arrested on 14th March 2017.

This post will therefore continue to appear every day until further notice. Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Not So Yellow After All

Jo Swinson says that she would not accept the result of a second referendum, if that result were to leave the EU. She should be applauded for that. She thinks that Britain should be in the EU, she won't stop fighting for that no matter what, and the party that she now leads will be led in that way. I don't agree with her, but at least she's honest. And there are plenty of votes in this. Not mine. But there are. 

You see, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Barking No More?

Shagra Stern, who is a member of the Labour Party and who met Jeremy Corbyn in that capacity, has made a formal complaint against Margaret Hodge for anti-Semitism, pointing out her long history of hostility towards Orthodox Jews.

In that context, ponder the fact that on last night's Newsnight, entirely uninterrupted by the interviewer, Tony Blair directly equated anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. The cat is out of the bag. Of course, although he told people to vote for other parties in 2017, for which anyone else would have been expelled, Blair is presumably still a Labour Party member. Therefore, he is now obliged under the IHRA Definition to define anti-Semitism in those terms.

Making it all the more remarkable that that party received only 1,106 allegations of anti-Semitism between April 2018 and February 2019, of which 433 did not involve its members at all. 220 of the remaining 673 were rejected for lack of evidence, leaving 453 allegations to be investigated. Even if those had each been against a different individual, then that would have added up to 0.08 per cent of the membership.

200 allegations, more than one in six, came from just one MP, Margaret Hodge, who has had a feud with Corbyn for decades. Those turned out to relate to 111 individuals, of whom only 20 were Labour Party members. It is absolutely imperative that Jackie Walker contest Hodge's seat at the next General Election, just as it is that Marc Wadsworth put up against Ruth Smeeth, who was doing her tiresome Ruth Smeeth impersonation on the Today programme this morning. Getting Tony Greenstein into Parliament would also be a great achievement.

By the way, no BAME MP has defended Walker or Wadsworth. Not one. When it comes to that kind of thing, and to the de facto proscription of the Black Left, as well as of the Jewish Left, by means of the IHRA Definition, then I am keeping my powder relatively dry for the entry into electoral politics of someone very specific.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Star of India?

I am very pleased for the Indian space programme. But India continues to receive aid from Britain.

We do need the specification in the Statute Law that the United Kingdom's aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country's own, but with the money thus saved remaining within the budget of the Department for International Development, and with the 0.7 per cent target still resolutely intact. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

How I'm Missing Yer?

"It's a pity that only one of them can lose," said Henry Kissinger of the Iran-Iraq War. That is my favourite quotation. I find it endlessly useful. But never more so than in reference to Hilary Armstrong and Laura Pidcock. It's a pity that only one of them can lose.

With Alex Watson as one of my Campaign Patrons, my own core support is, I suppose, the formidable machine, then-Labour and otherwise, that used to run the greatly missed Derwentside District Council.

It had absolutely no time for Armstrong; while she was a Cabinet Minister in that there London, senior Labour Councillors and their Officers in Consett used to put the phone down on her staff, and possibly also on her. As for Pidcock, those same people now refer to me as "Speedboat": "Here's what you could have won."

Bringing me to a stalwart of those glory days, the very longstanding Councillor for Lanchester, Ossie Johnson, whom I have known for, what, 40 years? It is not quite that. But it is not very far off. 

Anyway, Ossie has been moved from the County Council Cabinet to the Vice-Chairmanship of the Council, giving a boost to his pension entitlement if he were to retire from the Council with that position. Reelection in 2021 would leave him in office until he was over 80. Two and two together, and all that. Standard stuff, and universally expected.

Except that then came Friday's Annual General Meeting of the Constituency Labour Party, right here on Ossie's patch. Would he be prepared to give up his seat to a member of Pidcock's entourage, and perhaps even to her very bedfellow (who is still a good Lexiteer, by the way, but even so)? Watch this space.

Pfeffel

Raise a glass to the one in eight paying members of a major political party who, when given the chance to vote directly for the Prime Minister, decided not to bother.

Boris Johnson has been elected with only half as many votes as Owen Smith managed in 2016. But those who did support him have won. The Hard Right is now the Government. For the first time in at least 29 years, it can no longer blame anyone else.

Beyond that, another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Blair's Heiress?

It is probably nothing, of course. But rumour has it that Tony Blair is preparing to endorse Jess Phillips for Leader of the Labour Party.

Oh, please let it be true. Please, please, please let us have the likes of Oliver Kamm, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Harry's Place forced to support a candidate who, at least in the Authorised Version, had resigned from the Labour Party in protest at the Iraq War.

I told George Galloway that he ought to stand at Birmingham Yardley. But anyway, Laura Pidcock fanboys of both sexes, has your heroine endorsed George at West Bromwich East? Well, there you are, then. If George is still one of my Campaign Patrons here at North West Durham, and the MP here has given him no reason not to be, then, while I think that he has picked the wrong seat and the wrong opponent, loyalty is a two-way street.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Winning Here?

Jo Swinson introduced the £1200 charge to take your employer to an Industrial Tribunal. This is the person over whom The Guardian will be gushing tomorrow. Well, of course it is.

At least as notably, however, she only narrowly won back her seat last time, and she could easily lose it again. 

It is also perfectly plausible that Boris Johnson might lose the seat that he has single-handedly turned into a marginal. His majority is now even smaller than Swinson's is.

Still, he does at least have any majority there. We are now hours away from a Prime Minister who will enter office more than 100 seats short of an overall majority in the House of Commons.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so.

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Mandate

The Chinese have made no bones about the fact that they are enforcing in Hong Kong the laws that they inherited there from the British. One country, two systems, indeed. 

For that matter, the Chinese are enforcing those laws a great deal less brutally than the British did, above all under the same Labour Government that so grievously wronged the people of the Chagos Islands.

But "We are only enforcing the laws from the Colonial Period" is a familiar refrain the word over. If people wish to indicate their distaste in Hong Kong by unfurling the old flag, then the same might pointedly be done in Sur Baher, the demolition of which began today.

Let those whose homes are being demolished march under the flag of the British Mandate of Palestine, and see how much the "Anglosphere" fantasists, who hated the Hong Kong Chinese viciously when it mattered but who love the Israelis more than they love their own children, can bring themselves to dare to hate them then.

Flagging Up The Facts

It may have had a British flag, but the tanker seized by Iran had a crew of 23 men, of whom 18 were Indians, three were Russians, one was a Latvian, and one was a Filipino. Of course they should all be set free. But this is is no pretext for war. Let the two seized tankers, this one and the one that we seized off Gibraltar, be exchanged for each other.

No one in Parliament is saying any of this. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Dire Straits

Michael Burleigh wants to know why we seized an Iranian tanker in the first place.

And Mark Curtis sets out the "exceptionally close", but almost never mentioned, relationship between Britain and Oman, "in effect, a giant British military and intelligence base."

Don't Go Yellow At The Edges

This afternoon, we shall discover who the new Leader of the Liberal Democrats is going to be.

Both candidates were Ministers in the Coalition, both continue to defend the austerity programme, and both continue to defend the war in Libya.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so.

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Specific Forms

It is too late now, but Jeremy Corbyn should never have indulged any of this nonsense.

The Labour Party received 1,106 allegations of anti-Semitism between April 2018 and February 2019, of which 433 did not involve Labour Party members at all.

220 of the remaining 673 were rejected for lack of evidence, leaving 453 allegations to be investigated.

Even if those had each been against a different individual, then that would have added up to 0.08 per cent of the membership.

200 allegations, more than one in six, came from just one MP, Margaret Hodge, who has had a feud with Corbyn for decades. Those turned out to relate to 111 individuals, of whom only 20 were Labour Party members.

And yet, here Corbyn is.

By the way, so what that 40 per cent of Labour members, or thereabouts, want rid of him? 40 per cent of Labour members, or thereabouts, voted for Owen Smith. This is not new.

Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up.

I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so.

In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.