Vaz Automatic?

Keith Vaz was much in evidence at last month's Labour Party Conference, and he has continued to maintain two staffed offices in Leicester. All week, he has been organising to make himself the candidate at the Leicester East by-election. If there were an all-women shortlist, then his daughter has been lined up.

Since Vaz is a solicitor, on which make your own jokes, he knew that Claudia Webbe could not have been acquitted. The crime of harassment consists in having made the complainant feel harassed. If she says that she was, then she was. My barrister confirmed that to me at my Sentencing Hearing. In any case, magistrates do not acquit. That was not why they became magistrates.

As so often, what matters is to be sufficiently well connected that your case will be taken up by the Crown Prosecution Service. When you are Keir Starmer, then that is not a problem. If you are Starmer, then you can have the belt and braces put on it by having even a single charge of harassment tried by a District Judge, who is a salaried employee of the same State that has brought the prosecution.

He alone determines guilt or innocence, and then he alone passes sentence. In this case of a single charge of harassment, then that was the Senior District Judge (Chief Magistrate) of England and Wales, no less. The belt on the belt, and the braces on the braces. A bellow of "Do you know who I am?" from the office of the Leader of the Opposition even as his party's membership collapsed and its poll rating fell through the floor.

If my own experience, which I assume is typical, is anything to go by, then sentencing will be delayed until it was too late to lodge an appeal against the conviction itself. Now there's a word. Lodge. They did that to little old me at Durham Crown Court, so the Senior District Judge (Chief Magistrate) of England and Wales could never quaff at another of the best parties if he had not done it to someone whom Starmer had wanted out of Parliament.

The removal of Webbe from the House of Commons would create a Labour vacancy on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Watch out for who was given that. It may even be Vaz, who is a former Foreign Office Minister. But it is quite clear that George Galloway is going to contest Leicester East. Take as deep a breath as you need to take, because we are going to have to do this.