The Right Time

What an old trouper David Tennant is. The whole series had been planned around Rishi Sunak, but tomorrow's Coronation Street will be up against his actual coronation. So here we are.

It has never been more important to make the case for the levelling up that is made possible by permanent withdrawal from the Single Market and the Customs Union. That has never been more important, both in this Parliament, and with a view to the coming hung Parliament. If Keir Starmer looked good, and he never has to a lot of us, then that was only by comparison with Liz Truss.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Here at North West Durham, the process of selecting a Labour parliamentary candidate has still not begun. The Constituency Labour Party posts Facebook photographs of its "campaigning", but that campaigning is on behalf of no one. It is purely performative, and for the sake of the pub afterwards, like an historical reenactment society.

I am quoting from memory, but his sympathetic biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, said something to the effect that JRR Tolkien's writing did not belong to the world of literature and the arts, but to the world of people who did things with model railways in their sheds.

Make of that what you will, but dear though some of the stalwarts have been to me for 30 years, North West Durham Constituency Labour Party no longer belongs to the world of politics, but to the world of people who do things with model railways in their sheds.