Noteworthy

Historical figures have been on the banknotes only since 1970, and Winston Churchill only since 2016. That’s right. 10 years. Ten. If he is to replaced with wildlife, then let it be the grey squirrel. That would make GB News worth the licence fee on its own, whether for the contributors who insisted that it was an Atlanticist, Anglospheric and Canzukian beast, or for the absence of such, as the case may be. But there is no comparison between a refreshment on the banknote design, and the removal of the hereditary peers, or the assault on trial by jury, or the move towards digital ID, or the ban on the Quds Day march.

Between Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, each side of the debate on the hereditary principle ought to keep quiet for its own good. The Government has always been free to appoint as many life peers as it pleased, and many an hereditary peerage was bought and paid for in the first instance. None of the constitutional changes since 1997 has made Britain any more equal economically or any more peaceable internationally, but before then the hereditary peers had proved no obstacle to Michael Howard’s attacks on civil liberties, and from 2010 to 2024 the remaining 92 of them were no more use against such erosions than they had been from 1997 to 2010, so there is no reason to think that they would have defended trial by jury.

On jury trials, Rosie Duffield voted against the Government, and I have been unable to find outside Parliament any of the feminist clamour that was expressed by the likes of Natalie Fleet. For the first time since Dan Norris lost the Labour whip, the Labour Whips did not cast his proxy vote, but they did yesterday on the Finance (No. 2) Bill, so who knows what is going on? If we abolished almost all jury trials, and the automatic right of appeal from the Magistrates’ Court to the Crown Court, then might Donald Trump be persuaded to impose tariffs?

Then again, those measures are very much integral to the takeover of Britain by the likes of Palantir. Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson may be refusing to hand over key data to the digital ID scheme, but their successors will give way, and the consultation paper itself says that the whole thing will feed into facial recognition by the Police who, having been spooked by the reaction to their fully justified ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv, by the ruling that the proscription of Palestine Action had been unlawful, and by the decision, which they will have been advised to expect, to uphold the dismissal of the case against Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, have demanded and obtained a ban on a march that had been held for 47 years. They have surrendered control to self-appointed “community leaders” who did not understand liberty and democracy.

The proscription of Palestine Action was an all-or-nothing measure that also banned the Russian Imperial Movement and the Maniacs Murder Cult. Similarly, the Courts and Tribunals Bill contains excellent provisions while forcing any MP who wanted to vote for them to vote at the same time for its evisceration of trial by jury and of the right of appeal, which was not in Labour’s manifesto, unlike the abandoned commitments on workers’ rights, on an equal minimum wage, and on the abolition of leasehold. I am proud to say that yesterday, on the anniversary of the Birmingham bin strike that has now cost far more than it would have taken to have settled the dispute, my union, Unite, cut its Labour affiliation by 40 per cent, to the tune of £580,000:

“Unite has made it clear that the actions of Labour against the Birmingham bin workers will not continue to be tolerated. As well as an escalation of the strike in Birmingham, Unite has voted to cut its Labour affiliation by £580,000. This move is unprecedented and shows the anger of Unite members. As streets fill with rubbish in every corner, residents and workers suffer, while the council dither around a deal already scoped out at conciliation service Acas. A deal blocked by government backed commissioners on £1,200 a day. Labour’s incompetent behaviour in Birmingham has come on the back of a failed economic strategy, that has left our industrial base fighting for its life. Oil and gas workers facing decimation, buy British defence promises broken, the public sector undervalued and the elderly and disabled under attack. Prior to the rules conference next year (which decides affiliation) Unite has made the decision to substantially cut its affiliation and will now formally consult with its members to see whether they want to remain in the Labour Party.”