The Traditions In Which We Stand

Although, despite several assurances, this does not seem to have made it into print anywhere, it is a matter of record, and it will be pursued:

Dear Sir,

As the proprietor of the whole of Sky, Rupert Murdoch might do some good. We represent positions that the BBC simply ignores. 

The workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, as the key swing voters. Identity issues located within the struggle for economic equality and for international peace. The leading role in the defence of universal public services of those who would otherwise lack basic amenities, and in the promotion of peace of those who would be the first to be called upon to die in wars. The decision of the EU referendum by areas that vote Labour, Liberal Democrat or Plaid Cymru. 

Opposition from the start to the failed programme of economic austerity. Against all Governments since 1997, opposition to the privatisation of the NHS and other public services, to the persecution of the disabled, to the assault on civil liberties, to every British military intervention during that period, to Britain’s immoral and one-sided relationship with Saudi Arabia, and to the demonisation of Russia.

Rejection of any approach to climate change which would threaten jobs, workers’ rights, the right to have children, travel opportunities, or universal access to a full diet. Rescue of issues such as male suicide, men’s health, and fathers’ rights from those whose economic and other policies have caused the problems. And refusal to recognise racists, Fascists or opportunists as the authentic voices of the accepted need to control immigration. 

We respectfully request that Mr Murdoch identify and include representatives of the traditions in which we stand.

Yours faithfully,

David Lindsay, 2017 council candidate and 2020 parliamentary candidate, Lanchester, County Durham; @davidaslindsay

Sean Caden, Leeds; @HUNSLETWHITE

Ronan Dodds, Newcastle upon Tyne, @RonanDodds

James Draper, Lanchester, County Durham

Nicholas Hayes, Durham; @Nicholas_Sho

Connor Hodgson-Brunniche, Cramlington, Northumberland; @Randomaited

Krystyna Koseda, Essex; @kossy65

John Mooney, Lurgan, County Armagh

Aren Pym, West Cornforth, County Durham; @arenpym

Gavin Thompson, Newcastle upon Tyne; @GavinLThompson

Matt Turner, Nottingham; @MattTurner4L

Adam Young, Burnopfield, County Durham; @JustALocalSerf

Summer Lightning

There are three elections to win this summer.

They are the removal of Labour from Durham County Council (including for a very specific post-Brexit reason; watch this space), the return of George Galloway to Parliament at Manchester Gorton, and the re-election of Len McCluskey as General Secretary of Unite.

All within the context of supporting Jeremy Corbyn and of securing the People's Brexit.

At a rally at the Durham Miners' Hall last night, it was confirmed that Len would be joining Jeremy as a platform speaker at this year's Durham Miners' Gala.

Those of us who will by then have taken control of the Council will also march at that, and, if I may, I hope that at least one of the triumphant Teaching Assistants will also speak.

And, while hoping for him on the platform might be a bit much, one very much hopes to see George, one of the two strongest supporters of the Durham Teaching Assistants among national politicians (with Grahame Morris), and the strongest of all those without constituencies in County Durham, at this year's Big Meeting.

In the meantime, see you all on Saturday at the Teaching Assistants' march, which will begin outside the Gala Theatre at 12 noon, and end in what promises to be a fabulous rally at the Miners' Hall.

This Is What A Bad Week Looks Like

For some people, anyway.

 

The thirtieth Conservative U-turn since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour Leader.

 

The abandonment of the Budget's flagship policy.

 

The Police and the CPS knocking on the door over the huge and flagrant electoral overspending by the Conservative Party, involving figures who are now at the very heart of government.

The formal emergence of two rival UKIPs.

 

The damp squib of the overhyped Geert Wilders.

 

The collapse of the pro-austerity Dutch Labour Party, which has been comprehensively outflanked from the left.

 

And the striking down in court of Donald Trump's second attempt at a Muslim Ban.

 

For some of us, this is what a very, very, very good week looks like.

 

Here's to many, many, many more.

Far From Trigger Happy

Article 50 was supposed to be happening tomorrow.

But it is now pencilled in for "the last week of this month", with the BBC duly pretending that it always has been.

And then, when?

A Bore No More

Theresa May should refuse to grant Nicola Sturgeon a Section 30 Order without a referendum on whether or not to have one.

My generation thought that politics was boring. As, domestically, it was.

In the 20 years between the death of John Smith and the accession of Jeremy Corbyn, the only domestic policy dispute in England was over foxhunting.

And even that ended in a ban that absolutely no effort has ever been made to enforce.

Once devolution was in place, then Scotland, Wales and even Northern Ireland were scarcely, if at all, more thrilling than that.

Well, politics is certainly not boring now.

The Cutting Edge

I carry no candle for Michael Heseltine.

He privatised more of the British economy than any other Minister, ever.

And he completed the destruction of the British coal industry.

All in all, and even granting that he opposed the Iraq War, it is no wonder that he loves the EU so much.

But he did say a sensible and important thing this morning.

He accurately pointed out that Copeland had been a "flukey" by-election result based on the unusual prominence of a single local industry.

There is ample time between now and 2020 to set straight the record of both parties on civil nuclear power.

And there are no nuclear power stations in what are hysterically being described as the Conservative target seats from Bishop Auckland to Tooting.

The boundaries of Bishop Auckland are in any case being altered significantly in what would ordinarily have been Labour's favour.

Much of the constituency, rather than purely the town, will be joining us in the new seat of Durham West and Teesdale.

But is perfectly possible, and it is therefore imperative, that all of the County Durham seats elect MPs from within the Teaching Assistants' campaign.

That campaign is itself the focus and the cutting edge of opposition to the regime that is soon to be overthrown on Durham County Council.

Pat Glass is retiring, and while Grahame Morris is a stalwart of that campaign, none of the other MPs who will be seeking re-election has given it any support whatever.

When Heseltine closed the pits after all, then he betrayed the UDM, as Mick McGahey had always predicted.

Its downfall since then has been the kind of thing that could happen only in real life.

But no one knows where its money went.

Meanwhile, a faction with more than one tie to it controls the massively dominant Labour Group on the first council that Labour ever won, a council that Labour has never lost in more than a century.

But nothing lasts forever.

Vote For NATO's Christmas

NATO revolves around Turkey.

It is the only member, other than the United States, without which the wretched thing simply could not function at all, and indeed would have very little pretence to a purpose.

It is to this that NATO membership commits us, and indeed the Dutch.

We must defend Turkey, against whomever.

The Dutch should get out. We should get out. Everyone should get out.

Elect George Galloway at Manchester Gorton on 4th May.

And elect Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister in 2020.

Britain Is What's Left

All three parties have their most left-wing Leaders ever. The Conservative and Labour ones have attracted popular attention in a way that has not been seen simultaneously since the heyday of Ted Heath and Harold Wilson. Moreover, the Liberal Democrats are increasing in membership, in funds, and in vote share.

As the largest political party in Europe, Labour does not even notice the loss of a number of members comparable to the electorate of one parliamentary constituency, but spread across the entire country. That handful of people comprises the sum total of those who were ever New Labour, as such, to the extent that they would leave Labour if it ever stopped being like that, but would not therefore go back to the Conservative Party, since they had never come out of it in the first place.

Of course, they could hardly attach themselves to the Conservative Party now, with its talk of workers' and consumers' representation in corporate governance, of shareholders' control over executive pay, of restrictions on pay differentials within companies, of an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme, of greatly increased housebuilding, of action against tax avoidance, of a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, of a cap on energy prices, of banning or greatly restricting foreign takeovers, and of banning unpaid internships.

Yet that is as far right as British politics, rather than political commentary, now goes. There is no potential electorate to the right of that. Merely because a few newspaper columnists hold views that could be so classified, then that does not mean that anyone else does. UKIP managed to fail to win even Stoke Central, even this year. It has never won any seat without the incumbent MP as its candidate. But it managed to lose half of those in 2015. That left it with one MP, and he pretty openly wants to quit.

By very stark contrast, within the present decade, Scotland, Wales, the South of England (outside London, please note), and the North of England have all elected MPs from outside the Labour Party who were to the left of most Labour MPs and of the then Labour Leadership. Scotland, Wales and the South still have such MPs, at this very moment.

It would be quite a job to be to the left of the present Leader of the Labour Party. But the most active, and by far the best known, candidate at the impending Manchester Gorton by-election is undeniably to the left of most Labour MPs. He is on course to be elected to Parliament as many times as Nigel Farage has failed to be so.

The Absolute Insistence

I've written some lines in my time.

But I have impressed even myself with, "The maintenance of sanity necessitates the absolute insistence that Peter Mandelson does not possess genitalia." 

And that was just a tweet.

The Life of Brian is so rarely shown, and so impossible to imagine being made today, that it belongs in the same category as Performance.

But in the scene that so tickles Jeremy Corbyn's uncultured despisers with its "Judean People's Front", we also see Stan's demand to be known as Loretta.

In similar vein, and indeed vain, we see Owen Jones's demand to be known as Melanie Phillips.

Or is it Jess Phillips?

Why does Comment is Free feature two new articles by her?

"Hasn't £13k a day George Osborne already got a job as an MP?", asks one of them. Well, haven't you, too?

Absolutely Fine

Bring on the second Scottish independence referendum.

The second No vote would be a body blow to the SNP, whose horrific austerity policies and whose general incompetence are impossible to oppose on the part of the Blair Era time warp that is the Scottish Labour Party.

This campaign would be Jeremy Corbyn's opportunity to start again, more or less from scratch, and most obviously around the Leader that Scottish Labour ought to have, Neil Findlay.

In all fairness, the SNP does send a few people to Westminster, such as Mhairi Black, who might be seen as to the left of most Labour MPs, even if not of Corbyn.

Plaid Cymru also does that in Wales.

And Caroline Lucas would at least describe herself in such terms.

So that's Scotland, Wales, and the South of England with MPs outside the Labour Party and in some sense to its left.

Since 2015, however, none such has been returned from the North of England.

Step forward a star of the last Scottish referendum campaign, and a star of the next one, the next MP for Manchester Gorton, George Galloway.

Come on, George, since you already seem to be living there, get on and declare  your candidacy.

Then we can all get on with the twin campaigns up to 4th May.

One would be for the tormentors of the Teaching Assistants, and of so many others, to be removed from Durham County Council.

And the other would be for the champion of the Teaching Assistants, and of so many others in every corner of the world, to be restored to the most famous Parliament in the world.

George, that is the only excuse that I, for one, would accept for your absence from the count here that night.

Twitter Ye Not

On the left side of Twitter, they are singing and dancing so much over the departure of Owen Jones that you would think that Margaret Thatcher had died all over again.

In fact, that was quite restrained compared to this.

But having had dealings in the past with Jack Monroe, I can honestly say that, where her battle with Katie Hopkins is concerned, I have no dog in the fight.

Still, that's a lot of money.

If Hopkins has to pay Monroe quite that much for a couple of deleted tweets, then imagine how much Oliver Kamm is going to have to pay Neil Clark.

Soon, very soon, we shall no longer have to imagine.

Spam For Brains

Owen Jones will not starve. 

No one ever went down either the economic or the social ladder by betraying the Left, and he was already pretty far up both of those. 

Owen Jones has become Nick Cohen, and Nick Cohen is doing fine.

Owen Jones has become Melanie "white Western nationalism" Phillips, and Melanie "white Western nationalism" Phillips is doing fine.

As for those who are taking yet another opportunity to use the line about "the Judean People's Front", that is always an useful illustration of the fact that for Blairites and for what were once called Thatcherites, Monty Python is the upper limit of their frame of reference.

They may, especially in the Blairite case, have been to university, and even to the very grandest of universities. They may have lived much or all of their lives in London.

But the dead parrot, the knights who say "Ni!", and the songs about sperm and penises in The Meaning of Life, are still the most sophisticated things that they have ever seen or heard.

There are no most sophisticated things that they have ever read, because, like Thatcher and Blair, they have never read anything of the slightest cultural importance, if anything at all.

That is what distinguishes them, both from traditional Tories, and, even more so, from the Left.

Fitness To Govern

The days are coming, and are arguably already here, when it will be as bizarre to question the present Government's (and even more so, last year's) old links to the 1980s Far Right, and thus to Thomas Mair, as it would now be to question the Bushes' and the Clintons' links to Saudi Arabia, and thus to the attackers on 11th September 2001. 

We, I, used to branded as loonies for mentioning that, too. But everyone accepts it now, and a lot of people pretend that they always did. 

That does not mean that the Bushes and the Clintons organised those attacks. Nor that, say, Michael Gove or Liam Fox ordered the murder of Jo Cox. 

But it is still important, and it raises very serious questions about fitness to govern.

The Good Riddance of Owen Jones

We should be so lucky, of course.

But he was only ever the BBC's licensed impersonator of a left-winger, anyway. 

Perhaps now it could let a real one on from time to time?

The only people to have murdered an MP since 1990 have been the Far Right.

To which numerous members of Thomas Mair's own generation who are now senior Conservatives or leading UKIP members (if there can still be said to be such a thing) were intimately connected back in the day.

Although a "strong supporter" of Israel did attempt to murder George Galloway while he was the MP for Bradford West.

These days, though, that constitutes part of the Far Right. Give that a moment to sink in.

But no part of the Far Right, including fanatical support for Israel, is ever treated as any kind of security risk.

Just as, to return to Owen Jones, you can never be too young to be taken entirely seriously as a right-wing commentator.

Not long ago, the Telegraph and the Spectator were simultaneously carrying someone who was still at school.

And just as there is no view so right-wing that it would preclude, say, a Times column, or a regular gig on The Moral Maze.

"White Western nationalism" was extolled repeatedly by Melanie Phillips this week, days after she had written that there were no such nations as the Scots and the Irish.

Try and imagine a public figure remotely as Far Left as that is Far Right.

You can't.

It couldn't happen.

"Owen Jones Quits Social Media"

But read to the end to discover that he has not in fact done any such thing. 

His Twitter account still blocks me, indicating that it still exists. 

Silly little boy. 

Come back to me when you have had an actual attempt on your life, as some of us have had in our time.

And that doesn't go only for Little Owen.

Corbyn Hides £40,000?

One of the many people whom returning to politics has caused me to befriend, and whose impossible youth is matched only by their brilliance, is Liam Young. 

This is a tour de force.

We Are Many

Come along to the Durham Miners' Hall on Monday at 7pm, and see this, introduced by your humble blogger. 

Apparently, I am that important. News to me, but there we are. 

There is talk of asking for £2:50 on the door, so be prepared. But don't worry, none of that will be going to me.

Election Expenses Exposed

Here.

The clock is ticking.

Burma Source

Jonah Fisher is a very great man. It is a privilege to have known him way back when. 

Watch his report on the Rohingya at 21:30 GMT on Saturday and Sunday, on the BBC News Channel and on BBC World. 

It is of the utmost importance, not least with regard to the complicity of Aung San Suu Kyi. 

A rare balanced treatment of Buddhism and violence was broadcast in August 2013. 

The subject is also addressed in great detail here.

No One Loves A Fairy When She's Forty

Although in the case of Councillor Neil Fleming MP, who is 40 today, no one ever loved her in the first place.

Famously, when asked her greatest achievement, Margaret Thatcher replied, "New Labour."

If anyone were to ask my greatest achievement, then my reply would be, "Councillor Neil Fleming MP."

Or, rather, the fact that she is no such thing, that she has never been elected above Parish level any more than I have, and that she is most unlikely ever again to attain even that dizzy height.

In 2009, the Labour Party went to the length of imposing an all-women shortlist in order to scupper even the remote possibility that Fleming might become a parliamentary candidate, although many of us did wonder how that excluded her, as it certainly would not do today.

In view of recent developments in these parts, developments that have tellingly received little local and no national attention despite the best efforts of certain politically beleaguered self-publicists, mention of Fleming and her family explains why I remain dry-eyed.

Something through the post? Come back to me when you have had an actual attempt on your life, complete with hands around your throat. Come back to me when, although no one disputes that it has happened, absolutely nothing is ever done about it.

I go back a very long with the right-wing-if-anything Labour Establishment in County Durham, and I do not even bother to pretend to have any sympathy.

Although I am sorry that the names of the other signatories have been omitted, this letter of mine appears in today's Northern Echo: 

There are five groups on Durham County Council, plus two completely independent independents.

But only Labour members voted against the teaching assistants.

None voted in support of the campaign that has electrified the trade union movement and the Left throughout the country, thereby earning international attention.

Yet that campaign has been endorsed by the Leader of the Labour Party, at the largest working-class and left-wing event in Europe, the Durham Miners’ Gala, in front of at least 150,000 people and the television cameras. Only the Conservatives abstained, although that does make the Labour Group objectively “worse than the Tories”.

It is therefore not only reasonable, but morally and politically obligatory, to call for the election of no Labour candidate whatever to that Council on May 4.

And then, what? A Cabinet position for every non-Labour Group and for those of no group, with the numbers made up based on their relative size. The same for scrutiny chairs, obviously never mirroring the portfolios of their respective partisans. And representation on each committee and subcommittee in proportion to their numbers on the authority as a whole.

Such is the support that has been attracted by the Durham teaching assistants, the Lions of Durham as once there were Lions of Grunwick, that Labour’s loss of overall control, and indeed its loss of every seat, will be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Crimea, to Kashmir, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia.

A bully with a bloody nose is still a bully.

Don't dish it out if you can't take it.

And no one loves a fairy when she's 40.

If anyone ever loved her in the first place.