Tuesday 14 July 2020

Copied In?

Ben Sellout’s latest bromatic partner, Oliver Kamm, has had me kicked of Twitter, and since that is within his power, then I consider it no loss. So I have only just been alerted to the tweet that has been posted here and here, from what turn out to be the accounts of two of George Galloway’s closest associates, a further five of whom have retweeted it, and more of whom may have tweeted it themselves:

We need this tweet from you immediately, @georgegalloway: 

"At next year's elections to @DurhamCouncil, I will contest whichever ward that [the Leader of Durham County Council] did. @WPB_NorthEast @TAs_Durham @county_assoc @eddygraham39 @Michael45759951 @paperbhoy @TheNorthernEcho @BBCLN @CoDurhamLabour"

@WPB_NorthEast is the branch of George's Workers Party of Britain here in the North East. @TAs_Durham and @county_assoc are the redoubtable County Durham Teaching Assistants. @eddygraham39 is a nationally and internationally well-connected trade unionist and Left activist right there in the North Durham constituency that contains the Leader’s current ward. @Michael45759951 signed my nomination papers for the General Election. @paperbhoy is a splendid left-wing journalist in County Durham. Durham County Council, the principal local newspaper, the BBC’s 6:30 regional news bulletin, and County Durham Labour Party, have all been copied in.

George has said nothing to discourage any of this. Like Dave Thompson, he is right that voting the same way at constituency and at list level for Holyrood is a waste of the second vote. I wish the Alliance for Unity well. But George is clearly open to the idea that he himself needs to be looking for something else next year.

Since he is certainly not going to become First Minister of Scotland or anything like that, he has not rebuffed the opportunity to exercise a pivotal role in the complete reorganisation of a major local authority once it had passed to No Overall Control after a century of the right-wing Labour machine. In 2017, it took 749 votes to win a seat on Durham County Council for Chester-le-Street West Central, and 854 for the Leader of the Council to top the poll. Turnout was 1,870. George would get that just by being on the ballot paper.

The defeat of that Leader would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, George is just the man to do this. We would need only to get him registered to vote in County Durham, and preferably in Chester-le-Street, in time to be a candidate on 6th May 2021.

Eric Joyce once described George as having stepped beyond what was “reasonable and acceptable for Labour MPs”. Any Labour electoral opponent of George’s, including the present Leader of Durham County Council, has therefore been endorsed by Eric Joyce, and may look forward to being described as such. They would dance in the streets of the annexed Jordan Valley at George’s election, and not least at his election against this opponent.

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