Faltering, And Not

The head of Israeli military intelligence has resigned over 7th October, and UNRWA has been cleared of any complicity in it. But don't look at that. Look at Chris Cash and Chris Berry, Britain's ruling power couple. Considering what the Chinese already owned that we all used to, then it will be intriguing to discover what this pair of teaboys could possibly have told them that they had not already known. But Cash used to be researcher to Alicia Kearns, who took over and retains his directorship of the China Research Group. And while Kearns has not been great on Gaza, she has been better than most Conservative MPs, and good enough to have barred her from the Labour frontbench. So here we are.

On the Government's side of the House, the CRG should be the least of anyone's worries. The connection between Suella Braverman and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is blatant. That is a party within a party, with, if not a paramilitary wing, then certainly a street violent one. That is the party that is now calling for Sir Mark Rowley to be removed as Metropolitan Police Commissioner, having stabbed nine of his Officers at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day.

The Police are sending out retired senior Officers, as they do when they themselves cannot say these things in public, to point out that the ceasefire marches could and would be banned if there were risk of serious disorder, so Gideon Falter set out to provoke that and should therefore have been arrested. The apology that is due is to the marchers, for the suggestion that it would have been unsafe to have been openly Jewish in their midst. Falter had in fact been in their midst for hours, trying unsuccessfully to stir up trouble long before a synagogue service would have concluded, until in despair he turned his attention to the Police instead. It would be very funny if he were to be charged under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. One-person demonstrations are now illegal. What would be his defence? That he had gone at the head of a gang, one of whom was his cameraman? That would be in addition to the charges of assaulting a Police Officer, breach of the peace, and wasting Police time.

Falter has been allowed to get away with suggesting that the Met would never target a black man. What world does he or any of his interviewers inhabit? But not even John Mann is siding with Falter. Within an Anglo-Jewry that has long been familiar with his stunts and which does not take kindly to a youngish man who tries to short circuit the communal system by getting himself on television to proclaim himself King of the Jews, Falter's only backer is something that calls itself the National Jewish Assembly, which is a one-man vanity breakaway from the Board of Deputies, and notable only for its heavy financial losses.

Falter's Campaign Against Antisemitism is also little more than a sole trader. Yet it can field a two-time Home Secretary to bat for it on the Today programme, it can secure at least a fairly high level meeting with the Metropolitan Police merely by demanding one and despite having called at the same time for the Commissioner to be sacked, and it is lavishly funded by the Jewish National Fund, which is the Israeli State's engine of the settlement activity that His Majesty's Government recognises to be illegal. How, then, is the JNF not illegal in the United Kingdom? Is it only that that has never been tested in court?

The CAA gets away with pretending to the Charity Commission that it is not funded by the JNF, which is a foreign state pursuing an illegal enterprise within the understanding of the British State of which that Commission is an institution. The CAA's accounts claim that the money comes from something called "The Jewish National Foundation". There is no such thing. But Falter is a director of three companies connected to the JNF. He is also the CAA's only employee paid more than £60,000, and as an employee who is also a trustee he is identified as such in the accounts, even though the CAA has otherwise talked the Charity Commission into keeping its trustees' identities secret on grounds of "safety". There is no evidence that anyone has been anything more than made to "feel unsafe", a perception that it is impossible to gainsay, much less disprove. What do the CAA's allies usually think of "snowflakes", "safe spaces", and "hurty words"? Who in Parliament is going to raise the case of the special treatment of registered charity number 1163790? Why has no one yet done so?

But 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.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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. We have made a start.