Still Live

North Durham Constituency Labour Party has apparently never heard of Luke Akehurst, and the Northern Echo can do nothing more than reproduce the national party’s press release as if it were copy. But the Wayback Machine has all of his thousands of recently deleted tweets, while Metro has noticed that he asked whether Jews were politically black, and contended that the United Nations was anti-Semitic. It has not escaped the attention of The National that, “in posts on social media which are still live, Akehurst has claimed that video footage appearing to show child victims of an attack on Al Shifa hospital in Gaza was “staged”.” That is the stuff of Alex Jones and Sandy Hook.

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.

The Workers Party of Britain is not contesting North Durham, so I am, and matters are now too far advanced for me to stand aside for that party, or for Laura Pidcock as is rumoured without a word from her, or for a Palestinian as is also being mooted, or for anyone else. Unless the Workers Party had come up with a candidate by Sunday, then the fact that I was always going to contest this Election had been in the public domain for five years. I am not standing against Akehurst. He is standing against me. The Workers Party would be standing against me. Laura would be standing against me. A Palestinian would be standing against me. Anyone would be standing against me. Please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, including if you might be able to help with money. But I will be on that ballot paper, come what may.

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.