Magnifica Humanitas

Here it is.

Say nothing about it until you had read it several times, prayed over it each time, consulted several people who had done likewise, and prayed over what each of them had said.

Smelling The Coffee

Tessa Jowell professed to have had no idea that David Mills had remortgaged their house. At least unless you believed that, then you ought not to believe the even more incredible protestations of Nicola Sturgeon. Although not in court, it will all come out now, so to speak. Peter Murrell played a central role in the attempt to frame Alex Salmond, whose constituency office Murrell had been running more than 30 years ago, when he had stolen the then substantial sum of £500 from SNP funds. Salmond knew that Murrell was having difficulties, so he replaced the money and said no more about it.

Has the Aberdeen South by-election been handed to the Conservatives? Too late to benefit if so, Ross Thomson has returned to that party, for which he held that seat from 2017 to 2019, because Reform UK had declined to nominate him for it this time. By only 155 votes, but even so, it was in fact Labour that came second there in 2024, yet no one is even mentioning it. Whereas the Green old guard is desperate for their party not to contest Makerfield, in the hope of securing from Andy Burnham a commitment to Proportional Representation in the 2029 Labour manifesto. There is absolutely no chance of that.

The Green Party is regularly ahead of Labour in the polls, it has just had a hugely successful set of elections, no one seriously doubts that it now has more members than the Labour Party, it has already come from a distant third place to win a parliamentary by-election, and people who wanted an alliance with Change UK should be enjoying their very well-deserved retirement. Votes do not belong to parties. They belong to us, the voters. It would not be as if a Reform victory at Makerfield would make Nigel Farage Prime Minister, so if I were a Green-inclined voter there and the Greens pulled out in favour of Burnham, then I would vote for Robert Kenyon to make the point that I would be the judge of where my vote went.

But speaking of a Farage Premiership, the people who saw it as their ticket to the top are as incensed at the emergence of Restore Britain, recruits to which from things like the British Democratic Party (look it up if you dare) are being told that they were not allowed back, as those who harboured similar hopes for Burnham are at the failure of the Greens to show due deference to him and to them, the Green grandees. What does Burnham think of having been endorsed by Peter Tatchell?

Age Appropriate?

Having lowered the voting age, the Labour Party unexpectedly lost the General Election of 1970, and it did not win a workable majority again for 27 years. It has not governed Scotland since before this month's 16 and even 18-year-old voters were born. It gave 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in Wales, where it has just come a very distant third.

But it has learned nothing. Of those who would vote at all, most 16 and 17-year-olds would vote Green or Nationalist, with enough in the right places for the new breed of Independents or for the Workers Party to be decisive against, for example, Wes Streeting, or Shabana Mahmood, or Jess Phillips. And most of the rest would vote for Reform UK or Restore Britain, which now have to decide whether or not to oppose a measure that was so strongly in their interest.

Browsing, History

Angela Rayner is calling on Keir Starmer to implement Kemi Badenoch’s policy of nationalising everyone’s children by banning under-16s from social media, thereby depriving them of the formative experience of their international peers while constantly forcing the rest of us to prove our ages by means of digital ID from Palantir and the Tony Blair Institute. The Government’s legislative programme would already give the vote to people on the day that they first became able to access any non-Epstein Class political opinion. This is all a great shame, because it has become obvious that Rayner had been thrown under the bus to ensure far less extensive legislation than was necessary and had been promised on the rights both of workers and of tenants. It also looks increasingly as if her removal was clearing the way for the attack on trial by jury and on the right of appeal.

Still, Rayner and Rishi Sunak were both born, less than two months apart, in 1980. Both were first time voters in 2001, the high water mark of Tony Blair. Sunak had been Head Boy of Winchester, and had still yet to do a day’s work in his life. Rayner had left school with literally nothing fully five years earlier, and was to make her way through her trade union. Make what you like of either of those backstories, but the fact that he was the first member of Generation Blair to become Prime Minister while she may yet be the second makes Blairism a spectacular failure in its own terms even before considering the fact that Badenoch, who was also born in 1980, never did a day of school in this country until she was 16. Education, Education, Education, indeed.

And here is Badenoch telling LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch also failed to mention that her Muslim grandmother had converted to Christianity. And even as, on the other side, the granddaughter of a Methodist minister, Badenoch claims to have taken part in Islamic Friday prayers, “because that was what happened there when I was in school.” Really? Like a lot of churchgoers in this country these days, I know Nigerian Christians, and again I ask, “Really?” Now, Badenoch may well have been naturalised, and as a Commonwealth citizen she would in any case be eligible to vote and stand in elections in this country and to hold office all the way up to Prime Minister. But that was not how she presented herself until 28 April 2026.

Restoration Comedy?

With her pork markets and her cheese, Liz Truss ought to have been laughed out of British politics in the manner of David Miliband and his banana. But although he was undeniably preposterous, Miliband, like the equally absurd Truss, did real damage, in his case as a torturer and in the Labour Right's long betrayal of the British Chagossians, with Miliband as the hinge between Denis Healey and David Lammy. And now, this very silly but very nasty man is clearly trying to get back. He is not the only one. Sue Gray has become an adviser to Andy Burnham, and Alan Milburn has used his latest gig to renew his call for "a wider set of reforms to state institutions", meaning privatisation in general and NHS privatisation in particular. Music to the ears of Wes Streeting.

Speaking of Chagos, though, it is Lord Hermer who is to review the non-custodial sentences handed down to three teenage boys who raped two girls at knifepoint and filmed it. Those boys are white, and there is no suggestion that they are immigrants. The almost unbelievably heavy Irish accents of many Irish Travellers in Britain are due to the closedness of their community. It is highly unlikely that teenagers in that community today were born in Ireland. Hermer sits in the Government that has had time to change the sentencing guidelines, yet which has failed to do so. But who was in office when those guidelines were issued, in whatever party they may find themselves these days?

For example, Reform UK, whose Leader, without having reported anything to the National Cyber Security Centre, blames a Russian hack for the disclosure of Christopher Harborne's five million pound gift to him, in which case that gift could not have been buying him much security. Or Restore Britain, which is on course to take more votes than the margin of victory between Burnham and Reform at Makerfield, but which is not contesting Aberdeen South, where the fight is between the SNP and the Conservatives. In his time at currently newsworthy Southampton Football Club, Rupert Lowe became so friendly with Rishi Sunak that he ended up in business with Sunak's wife. No one in the Conservative Party objected to Lowe's allocation of one of its seats, not just on any parliamentary committee, but on the mighty Public Accounts Committee. And on air, Lowe has told Jacob Rees-Mogg of the "agreement" between Restore and the Conservatives, describing himself, uncorrected by Rees-Mogg, as "a true Tory".

Restore's entire database is now in the hands of Scott Benton, who is telling canvassers in Makerfield to ignore Labour supporters and concentrate on taking votes from Reform. Is Benton now opposed to kosher slaughter? Then again, is Lowe still opposed to halal slaughter? It is not clear whether or not his son Angus has already married Yasmin Mezran, daughter of the Libyan Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Karim Mezran. If he has, then was halal meat served at the wedding feast? If he has not, then will it be? Over any refreshments, the happy couple's fathers either had, or will have, plenty to discuss, since, from his base on the Potomac, Mezran is a leading proponent of greater immigration to Europe from Africa and the Middle East, exemplified by his daughter. Would her father-in-law remigrate her? If not, why not?

One Spirit, One Body

American Pentecostal pastor: “When did your family become Christians?”

Palestinian Catholic priest: “On the Day of Pentecost.”

That exchange has happened at least once, because I was there. As one of mine for Catholic365 begins: “The whole Church was baptised with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, which we celebrate on Sunday, and She manifests that baptism through a rich plurality of gifts, the charisms. The whole Church, and thus every member, is therefore both Pentecostal and Charismatic. Every gift is a charism, and each is always given for the good of the whole body, in response to Her evangelistic activity, in the context of Her sacramental life, and subject to Her gift of discernment. She exercises that gift within Her institutional life, because the institutional Church and the charismatic Church are inseparable, being two aspects of a single reality.”

The Beautiful Game?

Like Tony Blair’s affected support for Newcastle United in his 24 years as the MP for a constituency that would have been evenly divided between Sunderland and Middlesbrough, Keir Starmer is off about how his beloved Arsenal United saw off the competition from Melchester Rovers and Earls Park, the Sparks. It is all very embarrassing.

As is being caught putting up decoy candidates. That has gone on forever, and especially against Independents, since anyone may use the one word “Independent”. But it used to be impossible to prove. Now, though, they make these arrangements on their phones.