An Attack On One Is An Attack On All

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Charter does not say what a lot of people think that it does; no United States Senate would ever have ratified that. But even as phrased, Belgium should invoke it following the Israeli bombing of its development agency building in Gaza City in retaliation for the continued Belgian funding of UNRWA, to which please donate here. Unless "in Europe or North America" would preclude invocation after an attack in most of Turkey, including Ankara and much of Istanbul, then this has to be worth a try. 

A Norwegian Labour MP, Åsmund Aukrust, has nominated UNRWA for the Nobel Peace Prize, but the British Labour Party is preparing to withdraw the whip, which would then be extremely unlikely to be restored in time for the General Election, from any MP who continued to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, even though that is ostensibly the position of its candidate at the Rochdale by-election.

Not that they will, which is telling in itself, but bodies such as the Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists ought to expel the British Labour Party. Rochdale should elect George Galloway, not least against a Green candidate who was strongly pro-genocide.

And when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

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.