I do not have the right symptoms for Covid-19, but the ones that I have are bad enough. I had thought that I had made it through this winter without a coronavirus infection, an extremely rare achievement on my part, but my most virulent in many a long year has turned up in the middle of March. If I were to be exposed to Covid-19, then I would certainly contract it. So several books are on order. As if I did not already have enough. Of course, one can never have enough books.
If the General Election had not ended the economic era that began with the Budget of December 1976, then Covid-19 has most certainly done so. Even the Universal Basic Income is well on the way to being mainstream by the middle of this year. Renationalisation, which had already begun with Northern Rail, will also soon be common sense to everyone who participated in the formation of such.
The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, including the Single Market and the Customs Union, already provided a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States. The Conservative Party was already moving in those directions. We are entering a new pro-business age.
The pro-business tradition came down to the Attlee Government from the ultraconservative figures of Colbert and Bismarck, via the Liberals Keynes and Beveridge, and it held sway in Britain until the Callaghan Government's turn to monetarism. That tradition corresponds closely but critically to the Hamiltonian American School as expanded by the American System of Henry Clay, a pro-business tradition that between the 1860s and the 1970s worked to make the United States the world's largest economy, with the world's highest standard of living, culminating in the glorious achievements of the New Deal, which in turn made possible the rise and triumph of the Civil Rights movement.
That was achieved, by Democrats and Republicans alike, through the strict division between investment banking and retail banking, with large amounts of federal credit (in Britain, that would be central government credit), at low interest rates and over a long term, to build great national projects, notably enormous expansions in infrastructure, which then paid for themselves many times over. There were pro-business tariffs and subsidies, and there was a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.
And here we are. Good will come out of this. It is already beginning to do so. But alas, this year's Durham Miners' Gala will probably not be held, depriving us of the opportunity to be dazzled by Keir Starmer. Tony Blair famously never used to turn up to it, even though his constituency began less than a mile from the venue. But that was hardly his worst offence, real though it was. Blair gave a Labour peerage to one of County Durham's worst war criminals against the miners.
And it is under this Conservative Government, supported by three of the six MPs for today's County Durham and by several more within the historic county boundaries, that the fabulous Miners' Hall at Redhills has been saved, while coal mining has returned, both in general, and to County Durham in particular. There was none of that under Blair.
Boris Johnson ought to use what would have been this year's Big Meeting Day, Saturday 11th July, to announce both the resolution of Mineworkers' Pension Scheme dispute in the miners' favour, and the resolution of the County Durham Teaching Assistants' dispute on the terms required by the County Durham Teaching Assistants Activists' Committee.
The cancellation of this year's Gala will spare Starmer from having to explain enormous local election losses, and it looks as if those elections themselves are going to be put back a year. In that case, they will be held on the same day as next year's English county council elections, at which, among other things, Labour is going to lose Overall Control of Durham County Council. Plus all the losses that would have happened this year. Let's hear Starmer explain that night a few weeks later.
A year, however, is long enough, even under the present circumstances, to enact legislation to hold all English local elections on the same day, beginning on Thursday 6th May 2021, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the requisite number of Councillors for that Ward elected at the end. There would be a few Conservative losses as a result of this, but by far the biggest loser would be the Labour Party, and these days that means that by far the biggest winner would be the Conservative Party, together with their Independent allies or at least cooperators in areas such as this one.
A certain sort of Blairy Boy used to rant on that the Independents were "Tories", as if the inhabitants of the old steel towns and pit villages that elected them had somehow been unaware of that fact where it was the case. The seeds of recent developments were planted a long time ago. Richard Holden is building very much the sort of bridges to the Independent Councillors, Tory and most emphatically not, that I proposed during my parliamentary candidacy. I am delighted that that is the case.
Richard ought to make, as I would have done, the same offer to the Liberal Democrat Councillors. And he ought also to make the same offer to the Labour Councillors, if only to have it on the record that they had knocked him back. (By the way, I have no idea for whom I shall be voting next year. But I shall almost certainly not be standing.)
In addition to this change to the manner of local elections, Johnson ought to emulate Disraeli's brilliant doubling of the electorate, the effects of which can still be felt and always will be. He should legislate so that parliamentary candidates would have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there would be no nationality requirement for voting, or indeed for standing in local elections.
Why would people not vote for the party that had given them the vote, rather than for the party that had never done so? That worked for Disraeli, and it could work for Johnson. In 19 per cent Other White, 4.9 per cent Black African, four per cent Other Asian, 2.9 per cent Chinese, 2.3 per cent Other, 1.7 per cent Other Black, and 1.6 per cent Arab Camden, then Starmer's own seat of Holborn and St Pancras could fall. The ageing Afro-Caribbean and South Asian grandees who back him are irrelevant to the BAME Britain of the 2020s.
Countries join and leave the Commonwealth quite frequently. The present system enfranchises Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, but not Americans or Israelis. Is that what those who write above the line in the Daily Telegraph want? It says that Ghanaians are more "like us" than Germans are, and that Swazis are more "like us" than Swedes are. Is that what those who write below the line in the Daily Mail want?
And speaking of Disraeli, I was correct yesterday when I said that the Conservative Party had never adopted the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. Jeremy Corbyn is now going, and being 70 he will soon have to go into self-isolation, while the Government has adopted his economic programme. So expect to hear no more about this issue.
And if the Government did greatly increase the Conservative electorate as I suggested, then Labour's adoption of the IHRA's hierarchy of race, with the top spot given to the white adherents of a religion to which anyone may convert, would be just another point in Labour's disfavour with the people whom it had never enfranchised.
Now, some very strong medication beckons.
The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, including the Single Market and the Customs Union, already provided a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States. The Conservative Party was already moving in those directions. We are entering a new pro-business age.
The pro-business tradition came down to the Attlee Government from the ultraconservative figures of Colbert and Bismarck, via the Liberals Keynes and Beveridge, and it held sway in Britain until the Callaghan Government's turn to monetarism. That tradition corresponds closely but critically to the Hamiltonian American School as expanded by the American System of Henry Clay, a pro-business tradition that between the 1860s and the 1970s worked to make the United States the world's largest economy, with the world's highest standard of living, culminating in the glorious achievements of the New Deal, which in turn made possible the rise and triumph of the Civil Rights movement.
That was achieved, by Democrats and Republicans alike, through the strict division between investment banking and retail banking, with large amounts of federal credit (in Britain, that would be central government credit), at low interest rates and over a long term, to build great national projects, notably enormous expansions in infrastructure, which then paid for themselves many times over. There were pro-business tariffs and subsidies, and there was a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation.
And here we are. Good will come out of this. It is already beginning to do so. But alas, this year's Durham Miners' Gala will probably not be held, depriving us of the opportunity to be dazzled by Keir Starmer. Tony Blair famously never used to turn up to it, even though his constituency began less than a mile from the venue. But that was hardly his worst offence, real though it was. Blair gave a Labour peerage to one of County Durham's worst war criminals against the miners.
And it is under this Conservative Government, supported by three of the six MPs for today's County Durham and by several more within the historic county boundaries, that the fabulous Miners' Hall at Redhills has been saved, while coal mining has returned, both in general, and to County Durham in particular. There was none of that under Blair.
Boris Johnson ought to use what would have been this year's Big Meeting Day, Saturday 11th July, to announce both the resolution of Mineworkers' Pension Scheme dispute in the miners' favour, and the resolution of the County Durham Teaching Assistants' dispute on the terms required by the County Durham Teaching Assistants Activists' Committee.
The cancellation of this year's Gala will spare Starmer from having to explain enormous local election losses, and it looks as if those elections themselves are going to be put back a year. In that case, they will be held on the same day as next year's English county council elections, at which, among other things, Labour is going to lose Overall Control of Durham County Council. Plus all the losses that would have happened this year. Let's hear Starmer explain that night a few weeks later.
A year, however, is long enough, even under the present circumstances, to enact legislation to hold all English local elections on the same day, beginning on Thursday 6th May 2021, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the requisite number of Councillors for that Ward elected at the end. There would be a few Conservative losses as a result of this, but by far the biggest loser would be the Labour Party, and these days that means that by far the biggest winner would be the Conservative Party, together with their Independent allies or at least cooperators in areas such as this one.
A certain sort of Blairy Boy used to rant on that the Independents were "Tories", as if the inhabitants of the old steel towns and pit villages that elected them had somehow been unaware of that fact where it was the case. The seeds of recent developments were planted a long time ago. Richard Holden is building very much the sort of bridges to the Independent Councillors, Tory and most emphatically not, that I proposed during my parliamentary candidacy. I am delighted that that is the case.
Richard ought to make, as I would have done, the same offer to the Liberal Democrat Councillors. And he ought also to make the same offer to the Labour Councillors, if only to have it on the record that they had knocked him back. (By the way, I have no idea for whom I shall be voting next year. But I shall almost certainly not be standing.)
In addition to this change to the manner of local elections, Johnson ought to emulate Disraeli's brilliant doubling of the electorate, the effects of which can still be felt and always will be. He should legislate so that parliamentary candidates would have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there would be no nationality requirement for voting, or indeed for standing in local elections.
Why would people not vote for the party that had given them the vote, rather than for the party that had never done so? That worked for Disraeli, and it could work for Johnson. In 19 per cent Other White, 4.9 per cent Black African, four per cent Other Asian, 2.9 per cent Chinese, 2.3 per cent Other, 1.7 per cent Other Black, and 1.6 per cent Arab Camden, then Starmer's own seat of Holborn and St Pancras could fall. The ageing Afro-Caribbean and South Asian grandees who back him are irrelevant to the BAME Britain of the 2020s.
Countries join and leave the Commonwealth quite frequently. The present system enfranchises Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, but not Americans or Israelis. Is that what those who write above the line in the Daily Telegraph want? It says that Ghanaians are more "like us" than Germans are, and that Swazis are more "like us" than Swedes are. Is that what those who write below the line in the Daily Mail want?
And speaking of Disraeli, I was correct yesterday when I said that the Conservative Party had never adopted the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. Jeremy Corbyn is now going, and being 70 he will soon have to go into self-isolation, while the Government has adopted his economic programme. So expect to hear no more about this issue.
And if the Government did greatly increase the Conservative electorate as I suggested, then Labour's adoption of the IHRA's hierarchy of race, with the top spot given to the white adherents of a religion to which anyone may convert, would be just another point in Labour's disfavour with the people whom it had never enfranchised.
Now, some very strong medication beckons.
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