Unmarked

It is shocking, and it should be, to white, bourgeois people in Portland that they are being attacked by riotous law enforcement officers who are wearing no identification numbers, who are going around in unmarked vehicles, and so on.

But black America has been experiencing all of this forever, not merely with the connivance, but as the expression, of the liberal Democratic Party machine that is now railing theatrically against Donald Trump and William Barr while endorsing Joe Biden, of all people.

At least the right-wing Labour machine has never had the gall to pretend to object to the Police riot against the miners at Orgreave, or to the general policing of the Miners' Strike, which likewise featured extreme violence by Police Officers, if they really were, who had no identification numbers and who went around in unmarked vehicles.

There was no inquiry in 13 years of Labour Government, under Prime Ministers who sat for County Durham and for Fife, and the commitment to one has now been dropped under a Leader who, as a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has identified himself with the people who took selfies alongside the bodies of murder victims.

Theresa May did initially promise an inquiry into Orgreave, and under Boris Johnson the Conservative Party now represents the constituency in which it occurred. All that we really need to do is ask. And then, what on earth would Keir Starmer say? The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on.