Community? Security? Trust?

This is so utterly shameless as to be, in a whole new way, a thing of beauty. Its message is, "Because we can." The simple use of the phrase "Free Palestine" has become an anti-Semitic attack, since it has, "become a formalised, almost anthemic slogan of anti-Jewish abuse, which offenders know will offend or intimidate their target." At 12.55pm on 7th October, "A vehicle with a Palestinian flag attached, and with the occupant shaking their fist in the air through an open window, had driven past a synagogue in Hertfordshire." Driven past. Who knows what was on the radio while this fist was being shaken. And so it goes on. And on. And on. And on. And on.

What have gone up have been reports, rather than actual instances, of impertinences such as the display of the Palestinian flag, not to the Police, to which any anti-Semitic incident would and should be referred, but to this thing, the Community Security Trust. That is a uniformed political organisation, which is illegal in itself. It is noted for following black men home for having dared to walk up the streets that it thought that it owned. It is no wonder that it presumes the right to dictate who many drive up them as well.

Although words are not really its handsy thing, the CST once published a cult classic of a pamphlet called Engine of Hate, in which people were branded anti-Semitic for supporting Jeremy Corbyn while having large numbers of followers on Twitter, and on no other basis whatever. Sinister connections were suggested between people who hated each other's guts. But it was no laughing matter, and nor is this.

The CST puts me in mind of the Bullingdon Club, which exists specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members can prove their ability to pick up the bill. For nearly 20 years, I have been asking people to imagine that a group of youths the same age, but on a council estate, were to organise themselves into a club, complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works, all for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly go to prison, and I do not say that lightly. Likewise, imagine that a militia in the mould of the CST were to be set up in any other community at all.

Especially, imagine that it were to be set up in an ethnic minority community that experienced economic marginalisation and other structural racism, as at least Ashkenazi Jews, as such, simply do not in Britain today, where other Jews do, but not for being Jewish. Even if the CST's figures had been capable of being meaningful, then they would still have been meaningless unless they had been set in the context of trends within racism in general, and trends within racism against those structurally marginalised communities in particular.

For example, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, which still await an apology from Kim McGuinness, whose apology, unseen by anyone else, the Labour Party has presumed to accept despite not being the injured party, so to speak. At least she did not criticise Israel, or the CST would be following her home. One of the many, many reasons to want to return Andrew Feinstein at Holborn and St Pancras is that his CV would make him the hardest MP to have been elected east of the Irish Sea since the departure of the War generation. Good luck with him to the lower-upper-middle-class bullyboys of English suburbia.

Meanwhile, for the second time, we must depend on the SNP to divide the House of Commons on a ceasefire in Gaza. So be it. Is that party being opportunistic, seeking to embarrass Keir Starmer? That's politics. Starmer richly deserves to be embarrassed, and could not be if he did not. Beyond that, 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 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.