Exceedingly Bad

This is what Boris Johnson was trained for. He can recite Kipling from memory, but he has no idea what it is about. The idea that such people are singularly prepared for leadership is laughable.

Just The Balanced Ticket

I am not on the Hard Left; you can ask them. I used to attend the Blue Labour conferences in Nottingham, and I think that those should still be held, complete with Jeremy Corbyn, who would come. Maurice Glasman and John Milbank wrote commendations of my second book, while others were contributed by Bryan Gould and David Stoddart. John also wrote the preface to my first book.

I am a member of the Fabian Society, and I am currently a candidate for its Executive Committee. Progress still sends me its magazine, so I must still be on the books. I am not a member of Momentum, although I would be if I were a member of the Labour Party. And I supported Andy Burnham for Leader until his infamous abstention, having supported Ed Miliband for Leader in 2010 and Jon Cruddas for Deputy Leader in 2007.

In 2015, I supported Tom Watson for Deputy Leader. I still do. He and Jeremy balance each other well, and Tom has clearly identified the Deputy Leadership as the sinecure of the traditional Right in the Corbyn Era and beyond. Therefore, he has anointed as his successor my old university mate, Jonathan Ashworth, who is out leading on the campaign trail this weekend.

Jon, I can assure you, is a man of the Labour Right, with a firm emphasis on both words. We used to tease him for being a Blairite, which was where the careerism was back in the day. But he never really was one. He and the next Leader, Angela Rayner, will balance each other very well indeed. That is already evident, and not by accident.

A Yellow Tinge

The Conservative Party now has fewer members than the Lib Dems.

And a Lib Dem candidate from 2005, who joined UKIP only in 2015, has just become the Leader of UKIP.

Ponder these things.

By The Byes

Last night saw Labour gain Thetford Priory from the Conservatives with 57.7 per cent of the vote, which was an increase of 28 per cent, and a jump from third place to first. There are no no-go areas for Jeremy Corbyn, not even the many that there always were for Tony Blair.

Speaking of whom, while it was no surprise that Labour held Trimdon and Thornley, the 65.4 per cent was an increase of 15.2. That is the Corbyn Effect right there, on Blair's old patch. The Leadership of Durham County Council needs to get the message. Starting with justice for the Teaching Assistants.

Where It's Due?

As a trade unionist and other things, I am part of the Labour Movement, even without being part of the same party as Tony Blair, Jess Phillips, Simon Henig, the persecutors of the Birmingham binmen, the Haringey Councillors who are going to refuse to hold tenants' ballots on redevelopment (Jeremy Corbyn is going to make it the law, duckies), or a London Regional Director who in his days up here used to call me a "mulatto" while trying to have me murdered.

The Labour Movement. The clue is in the name. I am all for Modern Monetary Theory, but I am uncharacteristically agnostic about the Universal Basic Income. I tend to think that people should have jobs. Still, it is a deeply held Tory principle that certain people should have the economy arranged to ensure that they had time for thought and culture instead of needing to work, however little thought or culture most of those people have ever produced.

If technological change is creating the possibility of extending such opportunities to people who might be rather more productive intellectually and culturally, then so much the better. And the Universal Basic Income could not possibly be any worse than Universal Credit. Or, indeed, any more expensive. Could this be an idea whose time has come?

Not Cricket

Yesterday, Rona Fairhead was made a Conservative member of the House of Lords, and a Minister of State in the Department for International Trade. Until this year, she chaired the supposedly impartial BBC Trust. Before that, she chaired the audit committee of HSBC, which signed off that bank's laundering of money on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. 

Yesterday, exactly which stories were bigger than that? The drunken doings of some cricketer, apparently. And political protests at American football games, which were not only reported in Britain as major news, but reported without reference to Donald Trump's long-running feud with the NFL. Google the USFL, if you need to.

But first, Google Rona Fairhead. Reporters, researchers, producers and editors at the BBC, ITN and Sky News, Google Rona Fairhead. You obviously do need to.

Sticky All Round

Dredging up Bloody Sunday again, from any side, is a very bad idea, even if it will tickle the odder among us to be reminded of the strange little world of the Official IRA. But this is happening because the most powerful political party in the United Kingdom, and itself not always the strongest supporter of the security forces in Northern Ireland, insists that it happen.

Unless she sticks it out until the next General Election, then Theresa May's replacement will be a Conservative, but the Conservative Party will have nothing more than the most superficial role in deciding which one. That choice will be made by the DUP. That party would still balk at a Catholic. And it would more than balk at a man who voted for same-sex marriage and who was rather more than a purely legislative supporter of abortion.

If I were David Davis, who even voted with the DUP (and with Jeremy Corbyn) against intervention in Syria on the side that is now IS, then I would be sitting very pretty indeed.

Unfairhead

Rona Fairhead professes that she saw nothing amiss when she was chairing HSBC's audit committee at the time that that bank was laundering money for Mexican drug cartels.

Today, and freshly ennobled for the purpose, she was made the Minister of State at the Department for International Trade. Yet some people still struggle to see the appeal of Jeremy Corbyn.

Snap, Crackle and Pop

Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher both lost the plot in the third term and had to be forced out by their own respective parties. But Theresa May has started out that way.

Today, we learned that her party had been "unprepared" for the snap General Election that she had called (and for which the other side was very well-prepared), and that she had lost her overall majority because of the lack of debate. Such as the debates in which she herself had refused to participate.

Cut Glass?

Ian Lavery is on Question Time tonight. The Internet will have a seizure over his accent. That never happens over Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg, who are assumed not to have an accent, in the way that their party is assumed to be non-political.

Thus, Rona Fairhead can be made a Conservative Peer and Minister straight from the BBC, while on the same day Nick Robinson can squeal like a pig that anyone dares to impugn the BBC's impartiality. Oh, and has anyone seen Laura Kuenssberg's bodyguard? She really was an invited speaker at a Conservative Party Conference event. It is her bodyguard that is this week's fake news story about her, put out by the BBC itself.

What a shock these people are going to get when either Johnson or Rees-Mogg is up against Angela Rayner. They regard it as self-evident that those two are eminently qualified to be Prime Minister, while she is bereft of the slightest claim to that or any other office. But somehow, the rest of us, out here in our bubble and our echo chamber, might not necessarily see it like that.

The Right Rules?

Always read past the first comma. I have added my own emphasis, so that you can see whether this would have been an acceptable definition of "a free market economy" if it had been offered by, say, Ken Clarke, or Anna Soubry, or Tony Blair, or Jeremy Corbyn:

"A free market economy, operating under the right rules and regulations, is the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created. It was the new combination which led societies out of darkness and stagnation and into the light of the modern age. It is unquestionably the best, and indeed the only sustainable, means of increasing the living standards of everyone in a country. And we should never forget that raising the living standards, and protecting the jobs, of ordinary working people is the central aim of all economic policy. Helping each generation to live longer, fuller, more secure lives than the one which went before them. Not serving an abstract doctrine or an ideological concept – but serving the real interests of the British people."

If Corbyn had delivered the words in bold, then they would have been screamed down as Trotskyism and as redolent of Venezuela. They could not be both, but let that pass, along with the fact that whenever Corbyn says anything, then it is screamed down as Trotskyism and as redolent of Venezuela.

In delivering this speech the day after Corbyn's, without even waiting for her own conference and while pretending that anyone cared about "the twentieth anniversary of Bank of England independence" (New Labour's original sin, and incompatible with the principles of today's speech), then Theresa May has conceded to Corbyn the absolute right to set the political agenda.

At best, she should now put flesh on the bones by adopting all of the policies that he set out yesterday, since every single one of them is at least fully compatible with the above. Unless she did that on housing, in  particular, then not only would she be finished, as we already knew that she was, but so would be her party.

Ulster Says No?

Three of Bombardier's four sites in Northern Ireland are in DUP-held constituencies. Those MPs ought to resign and force by-elections on their party's continued support for Theresa May. Or perhaps they all should, as happened over the Anglo-Irish Agreement.

Some of us thought that the terrifying prospect of a "free trade agreement" with the United States was one of the strongest arguments for withdrawal from the EU, which had been well on the way to completing such a monstrosity. We still do. Guess where we are on the political spectrum. Guess which potential Prime Minister would be surrounded by people of that mind.

The Canary's Song, And Dance

Someone has to speak at this year's Conservative Party Conference. I'd have taken the gig myself, just out of pity.

Perhaps Laura Kuenssberg was to have done so, or perhaps she was not. There is certainly something in this story. She was invited. The whole thing is not utterly baseless. The Canary has not simply concocted it out of thin air.

Whereas there was absolutely nothing in the claim that Jeremy Corbyn had danced at the Cenotaph. What did Laura Kuenssberg's scandalised maiden aunts have to say about that?

Study Suggests

Stem cells taken from the umbilical cords of babies can help repair damaged hearts and improve their function, a new study suggests.

Hailed throughout this century, and earlier, as the miracle cure for any and everything, embryonic stem cell "research" has failed to deliver anything. Seriously. Nothing has ever come of it.

Meanwhile, starved of funding and publicity, ethically unproblematic adult and cord blood stem cell research continues to deliver the goods. How many more goods could it deliver, with the resources and the attention?

Adult and cord blood stem cell research works. Embryonic stem cell "research" does not work. And science is what works.

Equality Drive

In Iran, women can already do a lot more than drive. I admit that this is setting the bar low, but anyone would think that Iran were better than Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, there is no more reason to wish to keep Uber for the sake of the drivers, than there is to wish to keep the Saudi ban on women drivers for the sake of the men whom they employ to drive them.

Real Regeneration, Yes

Jeremy Corbyn delivered a superb speech overall, but this is the passage that means that he deserves to be Prime Minister:

We have a duty as a country to learn the lessons from this calamity [Grenfell Tower] and ensure that a changed world flowers. I hope that the public inquiry will assist. But a decent home is a right for everyone whatever their income or background. And houses should be homes for the many not speculative investments for a few.

Look at the Conservative housing record and you understand why Grenfell residents are sceptical about their Conservative council and this Conservative government. Since 2010: homelessness has doubled, 120,000 children don’t have a home to call their own, home ownership has fallen, thousands are living in homes unfit for human habitation.

This is why alongside our Shadow Housing minister John Healey we’re launching a review of social housing policy - its building, planning, regulation and management. We will listen to tenants across the country and propose a radical programme of action to next year’s conference. But some things are already clear tenants are not being listened to. 

We will insist that every home is fit for human habitation, a proposal this Tory government voted down. And we will control rents - when the younger generation’s housing costs are three times more than those of their grandparents, that is not sustainable.

Rent controls exist in many cities across the world and I want our cities to have those powers too and tenants to have those protections. We also need to tax undeveloped land held by developers and have the power to compulsorily purchase. As Ed Miliband said, “Use it or lose it”. Families need homes.

After Grenfell we must think again about what are called regeneration schemes. Regeneration is a much abused word. Too often what it really means is forced gentrification and social cleansing, as private developers move in and tenants and leaseholders are moved out. We are very clear: we will stop the cuts to social security. But we need to go further, as conference decided yesterday. 

So when councils come forward with proposals for regeneration, we will put down two markers based on one simple principle: Regeneration under a Labour government will be for the benefit of the local people, not private developers, not property speculators.

First, people who live on an estate that’s redeveloped must get a home on the same site and the same terms as before. No social cleansing, no jacking up rents, no exorbitant ground rents. And second, councils will have to win a ballot of existing tenants and leaseholders before any redevelopment scheme can take place.

Real regeneration, yes, but for the many not the few.

This is bigger than Brexit. This is bigger than anything else. Theresa May needs to match it next week. But she will not do so. She simply is not equipped to be Prime Minister.

Historic Purpose

"The Labour Party was founded to ensure that the workers earned the full fruit of their labour. Well, the sum of human knowledge is the fruit of thousands of years of human labour.

"The discoveries of maths and science; the great works of literature and art; the arc of human and natural history itself; and so much more that there is to learn. All of it should be our common inheritance. Because knowledge belongs to the many, not the few.

"This is our historic purpose as a movement. Not just to be a voice for the voiceless. But to give them a voice of their own." 

The next Leader of the Labour Party, and thus the next Prime Minister but one, will be, and should be, Angela Rayner.

Bad Korea Move

Of course Donald Trump has declared war on North Korea. How else could it be described? That is not a rhetorical question.

Going To The Dogs?

The case of Lavinia Woodward calls to mind that of Andrew "Picard" Boeckman, who made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs. He could not have accessed those sites using the server of any state school. Get your act together, Eton. The laxity in these matters of at least one, extremely expensive and world famous, fee-charging school calls for a further investigation into that sector by journalists and parliamentarians. 

But the main point is this. Boeckman was given suspended sentence, and not even much of that. He was also made to pay a pocket money fine towards the prosecution's costs, effectively an insult to the taxpayer. But there was nothing under the Proceeds of Crime Act. There was not even a requirement to sign the Sex Offenders Register. Read that last part over again.

Does anyone on Fleet Street or in Parliament fancy looking into what other 18-year-olds were sent down for, in the week that Boeckman was not? Those figures ought now to be available. Or at least, that was the assurance given to me when I submitted a Freedom of Information Request last year. Boeckman was even tried under his mother's maiden name, in order to protect the reputation of his father's law firm. How was that legal?

The court system hands down far harsher sentences to youths convicted of relatively minor, or even relatively major, offences, than it imposes on one of their immensely privileged peers. An immensely privileged youth who was not even required to give his real name at his trial, nor to sign the Sex Offenders Register upon his conviction, but who had made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs.

If he has not gone to prison, then I'm sure as hell not, and nor should anyone else, pretty much. I am not even accused of making and distributing  real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dogs. Nor did I do the thing of which I am accused. Nor, it is universally accepted, did that thing ever happen at all.

On the other hand, Boeckman, the Etonian son of a high-powered lawyer, made and distributed real-life images that included the rape of a two-year-old by a pack of dog. Yet he was spared prison, and he was not even required to give his real name at his trial, nor to sign the Sex Offenders Register upon his conviction.

I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money. That money would have been, and would be, better spent on the incarceration of Andrew Boeckman.

Witless Whitney

If you really believe that Laura Kuenssberg needs a bodyguard, then you will believe absolutely anything. It is nice to see the BBC staging a stunt of this kind specifically in order to generate a front page "story" for the Daily Mail. Kuenssberg should just have stayed away. Who would have missed her? Well, the Daily Mail, I suppose.

There is an active threat to my life, but no one cares. Just as no one cared when there was a direct attempt to murder me, many years ago, organised from the office of the then MP for this constituency, who was Tony Blair's Chief Whip at the time.

Running On Empty

The last run on the pound was under a Conservative Government, as will be the next, should there ever be one. There have been seven recessions in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Five of them have been under Conservative Governments.

That party has also presided over all four separate periods of Quarter on Quarter fall in growth during the 2010s. By contrast, there was no recession on the day of the 2010 General Election. And now, the Conservatives have more than doubled the National Debt. The Major Government also doubled the National Debt.

Yet the Conservatives’ undeserved reputation for economic competence endures. They are subjected to absolutely no scrutiny by the fake news detractors of their opponents.

Bear-Faced Cheek

With nothing else to do, the preposterous Michael Fallon has decided to bore on about Jeremy Corbyn and NATO.

If you really believed in national sovereignty, then you would want out of NATO. Moreover, it revolves around the Islamist regime in Turkey. Why would you want to defend that? Or wage an aggressive war on its behalf? Russia, on the other hand, is leading the war against IS. And winning it, I am pleased to say.

In any case, everyone in Russia and in the West knows that nowhere in the West really would go to war to defend whichever countries in Eastern Europe had been told that they were now in this wretched thing. More fools them for believing it. If they do.

Fallon? A man who once lost his seat to Alan Milburn? Fallon lied through his teeth to Parliament when a Trident was accidentally fired at Florida, and he has never had a job outside politics. His faux-gentry, faux-officer Patronising Tory Voice can sod right off.

Bread and Porridge

Google Lavinia Woodward. If she isn't going to prison, then I'm sure as hell not, and nor should anyone else, pretty much. 23 and no previous? Well, I'm 40 with no previous. Getting over her drug and alcohol problems? I barely drink these days, and I have never taken any illegal drug.

She is a violent alcoholic and drug addict, with other mental health problems as well. Are such people never sent to prison? Are they (and this seems to be a real question) routinely permitted to train as surgeons, something that in this country only ever happens at public expense?

I am not even accused of stabbing anyone with a bread knife. Nor did I do the thing of which I am accused. Nor, it is universally accepted, did that thing ever happen at all. Ms Woodward, the aspiring surgeon, stabbed someone with a bread knife while off her face on this and that. Yet she is to be spared prison, and she is to retain access to drugs and to surgical implements.

I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money.

Customs Declaration

If the pledge of renationalisation sends the share prices plummeting, then all the cheaper those shares will be to renationalise.

Today, John McDonnell announced a series of hugely popular and necessary policies that were incompatible with continued membership of the Single Market and the Customs Union.

It is no wonder that Labour delegates preferred to vote on eight other things rather than on Brexit. Which of those eight ought to have been dropped, and why?

And it is no wonder that 232 Labour MPs have not called for Britain to remain permanently in the Single Market and the Customs Union.

And Other Low Joints

I pass no comment on "taking a knee" per se. But how can it be bad, while parading and saluting the flag of 1860s treason can be good? Seriously? How does that work?

Nor The Years Condemn

The issue is that military veterans are dying because of benefit sanctions, that they are sleeping on the streets because of the crisis in the mental health system, and so on.

The issue is not the wearing of poppies during a football match, which in itself is an extremely recent innovation, and was not seen even when England played on Armistice Day in 1987.

In 1987, First World War veterans were still alive in numbers comparable to Second World War veterans today, while some Second World War veterans had not even retired. For example, my father.

Ho, hum. I assume that all of the gate receipts will be going to the Royal British Legion. Of course. Together with any monies paid for the right to televise the match. Of course.

Flavour, Not Colour

I have enormous respect for Diane Abbott, whose speech yesterday was magnificent.

In that spirit, and as a mixed-race person whom Hilary Armstrong, as Government Chief Whip, therefore refused to have as a District Council candidate in her constituency, I see Ms Abbott as the standing contradiction of the need for all-BAME shortlists, or indeed for the all-women shortlists that gave a grateful nation Jess Phillips.

The crises in representation are not in "race" or in sex, but in class and in political opinion.

Finance Initiative

Both on PFIs, and on personal debt interest, John McDonnell has announced concrete policies that match the rhetoric of Theresa May.

Over to her, then, to give effect to those policies in this Parliament. The Commons majority is clearly there.

There Is A World Elsewhere

Look up the eight issues that Labour Party delegates have chosen to debate, and to vote upon.

Yes, BBC, difficult though it may be for you to believe, those are the priorities of the people out here in the country called Britain.

The Clearer Vision

Not that of the SPD, which is also shared by the has-beens and never-weres whose open letter The Observer does not even print in the paper itself.

But that of Jeremy Corbyn, who is permanently ahead in the polls, and who is acknowledged even by The Economist as Britain's next Prime Minister.

Oh, and staying in the Single Market and the Customs Union did become the policy of the Conservative Party on Friday. But no one noticed. Well, why would they?

Half My Life Gone

And half still to come.

See You In My Fifth Decade

This eve of my fortieth birthday will be spent at the fortieth birthday party of the man at whose eighteenth birthday party I spent my eighteenth birthday. Yes, that sentence does work. I have read it five times. It looks as if it shouldn't. But it does.

Indefinite Leave To Remain

I regret that the likes of Keir Starmer got to Jeremy Corbyn on Brexit. But they did, and the result has just been read out in Florence by Theresa May: a two year transition period, inside the Single Market and the Customs Union. As if she had thought of it herself. And cheered on by Boris Johnson, which says a lot of things about a lot of things.

May's entire programme, such as it is, is either watered down Corbyn or, as in this case, a straight lift from him. Next up, the public sector pay cap, and student payment of undergraduate tuition fees. Any compromise at all on either of those, and at least some compromise is clearly coming on each and both of them, would effectively negate the General Election result. Labour might as well have won.

Yellow Belly Laughs

When Jess Phillips was on Any Questions?, then Matt Zarb-Cousin also had to be on it, in order to represent the Labour Party. When she was on last night's Question Time, then Paul Mason had to fulfil the same role.

But the real story of last night's edition was the agreement that, in the event of a hung Parliament, Vince Cable would become Prime Minister. "He would insist on it," said everyone else. "Yes, I would," he as good as confirmed.

The mistake was to imagine that that would be as part of some "Progressive Alliance". The Conservative Party has won an overall majority at only one of the last six General Elections. Yet its only ideology remains as it has always been, that it is the natural party of government.

It will bear any burden and pay any price in order to fulfil that Manifest Destiny. Knowing that, Lloyd George insisted on being Prime Minister, Nick Clegg could have insisted on being Prime Minister, and Vince Cable would insist on being Prime Minister.

As for the new "centrist" party for which no one in the real world is crying out, just as no one in the real world is crying out for a party to the right of the Conservatives, well, consider the life story of Vince Cable.

The last attempt was set up, again with little regard to so much as the existence of the Liberals, by three former Cabinet Ministers of whom the Leader was the most influential post-War British politician never to have become Prime Minister.

An erstwhile Labour Councillor, and Special Adviser to John Smith as Trade Secretary, Cable was in it. But he is now the Leader of a party that looks, walks and quacks more than a little like the Liberal Party.

The Liberals had the last laugh then, and they would have the last laugh again.

Gone With The Flo

Theresa May is in full Flo. But no one cares. Not there: she has had to take her own audience with her. And not here, where all the talk is of Uber. The office of Prime Minister is effectively vacant.

Question 472

Which 472 Teaching Assistants, exactly, will still be losing money? Who are they? Are they activists? Are they related to activists? I strongly suspect so. This is very well worth looking into.

Pat Glass is a friend of mine, and my only real political difference with her was over whether the EU was a help or a hindrance to the objectives that we both shared. I was proud to vote for her in 2015. 

But seeing Alex Watson on television this week, I recalled my regret that in 2010, when the all-women shortlist and other issues were still raw, neither he nor Mike Malone had yet felt able to break with the Labour Party. Whichever of them had contested this seat would have been the First Past the Post.

I voted for Owen Temple for Parliament this year, despite enormous political differences with him and even though I longed to be able to vote for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, because he was one of the two County Councillors to have done the most for the TAs. The other was Alex Watson.

I shall never forgive the Labour Party in County Durham for having made it impossible for me to share in the epoch-making Labour surge of 2017. Other things will lessen or fade with time. But not that.

Like George Galloway, Alex Watson remains one of my Campaign Patrons.

By George

Running Uber out of town was one of George Galloway's key pledges when, in the face of a near-total media blackout, he stood for Mayor of London. It is high time to revisit some more of them.

It is high time to enforce the requirement that 50 per cent of housing on all new projects must be dedicated to affordable housing, redefined as 50 per cent of average rents, not the 80 per cent that is currently the case.

It is high time for an all-night Tube service, but with workers properly consulted on the process, properly recompensed, and not forced into working long, unsociable, and potentially dangerous hours.

It is high time to ban HGV vehicles from Central London during daytime hours, in a bid to reduce fuel emissions during those hours.

It is high time to invest in more cycle lanes, and in initiatives to make it safer to cycle around London.

It is high time to expand London's airport capacity, but not in the form of a third runway at Heathrow when Gatwick offers a better alternative.

It is high time for the use of the Oyster Card to be massively expanded, making it an interest free debit card used in shops and restaurants, for other services, and for the transfer of money abroad, so that City Hall would become a publicly owned People's Bank.

It is time to put the £18 billion annual City Hall budget online in real time, absolutely transparently, using the BlockChain technology developed by London's red hot FinTech industry that is currently based in the Shoreditch Corridor.

And it is high time to end immediately all fire station closures, and all cuts to London's fire services, reversing the cuts that have already been made.

That would be a start, anyway. In fact, the start was made today, with the acceptance that Galloway had been right all along about Uber.

Like Alex Watson, George Galloway remains one of my Campaign Patrons.

After Uber

I should be fascinated to hear of anyone who had ever had any difficulty hailing a black cab in London. So the only appeal of Uber must have been the things that anyone could see were the results of worker exploitation and general corner-cutting.

Over to the unions and the councils to set up their own. It's an app. It's not hard to do.

This could all be built into the existing black cab trade. With Uber out of the way, then the black cabs would not be undercut if they adopted the technology. All overseen by the councils and the unions.

It could be integrated with Oyster and everything. Everyone would love it. They would rapidly wonder how they ever did without it.

The Knowledge is no more a "restrictive practice" than a medical or a legal qualification is. The same was true of many working-class protections that have been lost. Let this be the first day of their restoration. No satnav in the world could ever match The Knowledge, or that latter would no longer exist, still less would it command such healthy remuneration.

This is a moment to be seized. As of today, the technology effectively belongs only to the people without the compliance and enforcement problems. Seize this moment.

After Noon

Three weeks today, my case management hearing will be the latest stage in the farcical campaign to lock me up for something that almost, if almost, nobody believes ever happened at all, and which absolutely nobody believes was committed by me.

Anyone who does believe that, feel free to get in touch, and your statement to that effect will appear on this site. The floor is yours. A week after first having made that offer, which still stands, not a soul has been in touch.

I said a week ago that if, by noon today, I had not so heard from Oliver Kamm, Damian Thompson, Simon Henig or Neil Fleming, then I would publish it here as a fact that none of them believed that the offence ever even took place, still less that it was any doing of mine.

I have not heard from Oliver Kamm, Damian Thompson, Simon Henig or Neil Fleming. It is a fact that none of them believes that the offence ever even took place, still less that it was any doing of mine. It is also a matter of record that the Police would not have charged me, in that the Chief Constable, having been publicly invited to do so, has not said that he would have done.

I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money.

No Hostilities To Cease

People think that I am hostile to Laura Pidcock. I am not. But I am a journalist. And I have not been a party member in her adult lifetime.

People also expect me to be hostile to Durham Police. In fact, I have no complaint against them. They have been unfailingly kind to me, not least in their consideration of my disability.

They would not have charged me. If you doubt that, then ask their Chief Constable, Mike Barton, the direct question, "Would you have charged David Lindsay?" Unless he gives the one word answer, "Yes", then my point is made.

Just A Second

There is more to the House of Lords than making speeches. Peers should be judged less by their words as by their votes.

Still, I am increasingly of the view that citizens need access both to their own parliamentary representatives with the ear of the Government, and to those engaged in robust Opposition. With a six-year term (making it possible to bring that of the Commons down to four years), with the powers of the present House of Lords, and with remuneration fixed at that of the Commons, a  new second chamber might guarantee that representation to everyone.

Each of the 99 lieutenancy areas would elect six Senators, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top six elected at the end. Casual vacancies would be filled by the party for which the previous Senator was elected. Where the previous Senator was a Crossbencher, for by all means let that term be retained, then there would be a by-election using First Past the Post.

In each area, the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats would be required, and other parties would be permitted, to submit their shortlists of two to a binding, publicly funded ballot of the whole electorate two weeks before the Senate Election itself.

594 Senators does sound a lot. But the 100-member Senate of the United States certainly costs more in absolute terms than this would, and probably costs more per capita. The same is no doubt true when that chamber is compared to the House of Lords. But citizens need access both to their own parliamentary representatives with the ear of the Government, and to those engaged in robust Opposition. This is how to do it.

Co-ordinate That Critique

The election for the Fabian Executive Committee is now in progress, and my 70-word statement reads:

Jeremy Corbyn is the most culturally significant British politician in living memory, the most agenda-setting Leader of the Opposition ever, and the global leader of the opposition to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy. Fabians must co-ordinate that critique at home and abroad, in preparation for the Corbyn Government that will lead Britain and the world out of politically chosen austerity, and away from wars of political choice.

This is my third attempt in a dozen years. In 2015, even the highest scoring of the 10 successful candidates won only 464 votes, while the lowest scoring was elected with a mere 305. I have won one election this year, albeit unopposed, which was not my fault. I have lost two. So here's to a score draw in the end.

On the ballot paper are 27 candidates for various positions, plus one elected unopposed as Treasurer. All 28 of us have put in statements of up to 70 words. Mine, and mine alone, mentions Jeremy Corbyn at all. A Lords frontbencher, a Commons frontbencher and two other MPs are among those who cannot even bring themselves to say his name.

Priority

Today is Saint Matthew's Day. Consider that that erstwhile tax-collector is the Patron Saint of Bankers.

Consider also that that strange and increasingly unfashionable thing, Biblical criticism, purports to read the Bible "as if it were any other ancient text", yet in fact subjects it to a series of methods that would be laughed out in any other literary or historical discipline. Those methods are carefully constructed to "prove" the presuppositions of that strange and increasingly unfashionable thing, liberal theology.

Thus, if two Biblical books are word for word alike, as Matthew, Mark and Luke certainly are in parts, then they must have been copied from each other, since there is no way that God could have inspired them all and, funnily enough, done so in such a way that they confirmed each other's accounts.

Hence the theory of Markan Priority, that Saint Mark's Gospel was the first to be written, and that Saint Matthew and Saint Luke copied out great chunks of it word for word. And hence the theory of Q, the compendium of the material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark; no copy of Q exists anywhere.

Jesus simply did not claim divinity for Himself, so that rules out John at a stroke. Miracles simply do not happen, a position not even compatible with agnosticism. Style simply does not develop (seriously), so Saint Paul cannot have written several of the Epistles beginning with the words, "From Paul". And so on, and on, and on. Academia is at last moving away from this sort of thing. When will the Church in practice, since of course She has never adopted it, and cannot do so, in principle? 

Perhaps a gentle fillip from the wider culture might be in order? Although they differ in length, the different structures of the Gospels mean that they could each be dramatised in 12 episodes of one hour apiece, perhaps running from January to March, i.e., more or less from Christmas to Easter. The order ought to be as in the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John – exactly as if any other ancient text were the subject.

That might even provide an opportunity to do some taking apart of the ridiculous theories of Markan Priority, of the interpolation of Mark 16, of "the Gospel of Thomas" and other such Dan Brown drivel, and of the historical unreliability of Saint John's Gospel on the grounds that Jesus "never claimed to be divine", the "proof" of which is held to be the historical unreliability of Saint John's Gospel.

All of these pieces of nonsense continue to be peddled by half-formed schoolteachers, and by clergy too old to have been part of the traditionalist revival among Catholics or the Evangelical revival among Protestants. Markan Priority was disproved a very long time ago by Saint Augustine, whose Wikipedia pages in Portuguese and Slovene are significant source of traffic to this site, as is the page on U and non-U English. Make of those facts what you will.

Acts could also be dramatised in this way, and it has some great stories in it. But it looks as if they would do the Ramayana first, and stick to the text if they did. That is not treating the Bible as a work of world literature, which is what they would claim that it was, and which, among other things, it is. 

Why not dramatise the Ramayana, exactly as it is? Why not dramatise the Odyssey, exactly as it is? And why not dramatise the Four Canonical Gospels and Acts, exactly as they are? Of what are the television companies afraid? Of what, in practice even though not in principle, would the Church be afraid?

Thanks For The Memories?

Almost unbelievably more recently than it feels as if it must have been, Britain decided to forget that there had ever been a war in Northern Ireland. That exercise has been as astonishing success.

If Jeremy Corbyn's and John McDonnell's past in that area affected the outcome anywhere this year, then it won or nearly won Labour certain seats in Scotland, and it helped to pile up the Labour votes in certain parts of England. It certainly did not do Labour any harm. Corbyn's enemies ought to be very grateful that that is so, because something very similar to it has happened before.

My late father, who was a mild-mannered man, could not look at Yitzhak Shamir on the television. My old Senior Tutor from my undergraduate days, who is still alive, also remembers why. But the origins of the State of Israel have been excised from the British popular consciousness, while the not unconnected, and far more recent, Israeli arming of Argentina during the Falklands War is barely known about at all in this country.

So Corbyn's enemies can rant on all they like about Hamas and Hezbollah, secure in the knowledge that no one will point out that while neither of those organisations, whatever their other faults, had ever done anything to Britain, there were others in that particular mix who most certainly had done.

The Hamas and Hezbollah business may or may not have enabled the Conservative Party to retain four seats in North West London. Meanwhile, many Labour candidates in London, which bore the brunt of the IRA's campaign, secured over 40,000 votes apiece, and the party won 49 of London's 73 seats. Nationally, it experienced under Corbyn its biggest positive swing since 1945. So much, in the great scheme of things, for four seats in one outlying corner of one city.

The price of everyone's having forgotten about Zionist terrorism, only just into living memory and mostly but not entirely three thousand miles away, is that everyone also has to forget about Irish Republican terrorism, well into the lifetime of almost anyone who is old enough to vote and mostly but not entirely right here. Both of those bouts of amnesia do seem to have happened. But it is quite clear which of them has made more difference.

Burma Sauce For The Gander

The suspension of British military aid to Burma is welcome, if a little late. Now, what about Saudi Arabia?

Oh, and if it matters, not all Rohingya are Muslims.

The Contempt That It Deserves

Add the absence of an arrest of Amber Rudd for contempt of court to the absence of arrests over Grenfell Tower. Or over Orgeave. Or over Hillsborough until Margaret Thatcher was dead, undoubtedly an act of policy. Or under the law against cannabis. Or under the law against foxhunting, to which the Police act as escorts, arresting only anyone who might seek to obstruct this criminality or to object to it.

Or of anyone other than a Premier League footballer, and even then probably only one from the "wrong" club, for the "digital penetration" of a 15-year-old girl who had, furthermore, been out drinking with the complete impunity of everyone from her parents to the relevant licensees. Or of anyone other than a minister of religion, or possibly a teacher, for any kind of sexual activity with a 15-year-old boy.

Or of the people who openly admitted to having filled in their 2015 General Election forms incorrectly in such numbers as to have affected the overall result, a crime that is not affected by the fact that there has been another General Election since they committed it. Or of Tony Blair for selling peerages, which he did by every means short of advertising them in Exchange and Mart. Or of Tony Blair and his accomplices as the war criminals that they so obviously are. Or of George Osborne and his accomplices over their larceny of the Royal Mail. Or of George Osborne for his violent remarks about Theresa May.

Consider these things if and when any attempt is made to prosecute anyone in relation to the upcoming strikes over public sector pay. And consider them as I prepare for my case management hearing on Friday 13th October. When is Amber Rudd's case management hearing? There is evidence against her. Whereas there is literally none against me, even though on that date I shall have been charged for five months and arrested for six.

I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money.

Driven From The Front CETA?

CETA, which is like TTIP but with Canada, is exactly not the model favoured by, or favourable to, the areas that voted Leave, most of which went on to re-elect the Labour MPs that they had already had, but often with hugely increased majorities under the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. The referendum result was the long-delayed Labour victory of 1983, and the revenge of the areas that had been devastated by everything in the intervening 33 years.

Slowly, but surely, we are edging towards another one. The two options will be the Brexit deal agreed with the EU (plus any proposed post-Brexit trade deals elsewhere, such as this one), and staying in the EU after all. But the schemes set out first by the Foreign Secretary, and apparently now also by the Prime Minister, are as far removed as it is possible to be from the interests, opinions and aspirations of the areas that decided the result of the first referendum.

The Lions Roar On

Ever since the coup of 2008, Durham County Council has been under occupation. The nominally Labour Leadership, which overthrew a real one, has no meaningful connection to the Labour Movement. Nevertheless, shame on it for today's latest brutalisation of the Teaching Assistants. Shame on Alan Napier for being the UDM to Simon Henig's Coal Board. Perhaps it is time to re-examine Napier's record during the Strike?

Shame on Ben Sellers, who is now the Political Advisor to Laura Pidcock MP, for having talked the TAs out of the perfectly sensible strategy of simply not voting for any Labour candidate for the County Council this year, and of encouraging everyone else to refrain from doing so, since only Labour Councillors had ever voted against the TAs, a situation that remains the case. Some Political Advisor he is. Had that strategy been adhered to, then the TAs would already have won by now, since no matter what the composition of the anti-Labour coalition had been, then it would have been made up exclusively of the TAs' supporters.

It was most regrettable that the Durham Miners' Association had Henig on the platform of this year's Gala, and it is really not asking all that much that Jeremy Corbyn, Angela Rayner, Ken Loach and other strong supporters of the TAs be spared having to share a platform with him again next year. Of course, not only ought the rat and its lice to have been expelled from the Labour Party by then, but the rat itself, at least, may very well be in prison.

For, in order to manufacture sympathy for themselves among the voters, the TAs' enemies in County Hall manufactured the bogus threat to their own lives. They then sought, as they are still seeking, to pin that piece of nonsense on me. They knew that they could not keep control of the Council by fair means, so they cheated, and in so doing committed at least one serious criminal offence.

They also knew that they could not beat me in the Lanchester Ward by fair means, so they cheated, and in so doing they are still committing at least one criminal offence that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. I could only be convicted by a corrupted jury, and since there is not going to be a corrupted jury, then it is absolutely impossible for me to be convicted. Therefore, this whole business is, as much as anything else, a scandalous waste of public money.

Meanwhile, the Teaching Assistants fight on. They will accept no conclusion other than absolute victory on their own terms, and they are just going to carry on until they get it. They have the support of the entire Labour Movement, including the Leader of the Labour Party. Anyone who does not support them is, by definition, not part of the Labour Movement.

And they have the support of all the non-Labour members of the Council, the Council that those members would now be running if the elections to it had been conducted with any semblance of honour or even legality, and if there had been no distraction by the careerist opportunism that is now installed in the office, and perhaps even in the person, of Laura Pidcock MP.

Top Trump?

If Donald Trump is not careful, then he will end up with the Nobel Peace Prize.

Don't Be Suppressed

Like checking nationality before extending NHS treatment, voter ID means identity cards. How could it not? Don't fall for it, on either count.

And Virtue

Of course the Far Right, which really is an enormous security risk, thinks that anyone is a security risk who speaks for the 12,877,869 people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. 

In having been refused Police clearance to attend the Labour Party Conference, Michael Segalov ought to feel honoured. He should ask them about Hillsborough and Orgreave. He should ask them about the Saudi connections of right-wing hacks who are doubtless being waved through by the Police. He should ask them about their own, the Armed Forces', MI5's, MI6's and GCHQ's connections to National Action, which pretty much seems to have taken over an Army with rather more at its disposal than was deployed at Parson's Green, and to Britain First.

He should ask them about the fact that the present Government is in office only on the 10 votes, at one hundred million pounds apiece, of the Ulster Resistance, which has never disbanded, never disarmed, and never even so much as called a ceasefire. And he should ask them about the numerous ties of present and recent Cabinet Ministers (and, again, of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the military top brass) to the Monday Club and Swinton Circle world of the only person to have murdered a sitting member of the House of Commons in the present century.

Of course, he would have to ask these questions in Vice. Other than perhaps Giles Fraser, there is no one writing regularly for any sold-in-shops, Parliamentary Press Gallery newspaper other than the Morning Star who is as far to the Left as 30 or more people writing regularly for such newspapers are to the Right, with all that that then entails for the composition of every panel that is ever put together by any broadcaster other than RT.

For whom are they speaking? For whom are they not speaking? For whom is no one speaking? For a start, no one is speaking for the 12,877,869 people who voted for the Labour Party that was led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Vigilate?

No, you cannot imagine Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands being treated so badly if they suffered a natural disaster such as has afflicted, and is afflicting, the British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean.

And no, you cannot imagine Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands being subjected to the level of British Government incompetence that has now led to an existential crisis on St Helena, which has a larger population that the Falklands, and which is far nearer to the United Kingdom.

But then, you cannot imagine that the Gibraltarians or the Falkland Islanders could ever be treated in the manner of the Chagossians, whose case and cause are routinely screamed down by those who are noisiest in support of Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

So, what is it that the Gibraltarians and the Falkland Islanders have in common, but which the people of the Caribbean, St Helena and the Chagos Islands do not share?

Rocket Man, Indeed

Donald Trump was elected to provide an alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy.

But, whereas Bernie Sanders (or Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and up to a point even François Fillon) would have done so, Trump has not, and he will not.

Leaving only Jeremy Corbyn.

In Good and Due Form?

"From the Ukraine to the South China Sea," Donald Trump has just threatened Russia and China at the UN General Assembly. Is it me, or does he not quite seem to have grasped the point of the UN General Assembly?

Beyond His Ken

No one has become Leader of the Conservative Party without the support of Ken Clarke since Iain Duncan Smith, and look what happened to him. Boris Johnson is toast.

Fifth In The World

The only places where more people access Islamist websites than they do in the United Kingdom are Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the United States. That is the Turkey around which NATO revolves, the Saudi Arabia at whose beck and call we are, the Iraq that we "liberated", and the United States.

The fact that "liberated" Libya is not on that list is only because hardly anyone there still has Internet access since we destroyed what had until then been the country with Africa's highest GDP per capita and highest life expectancy.

Saigon Soon

The people running Durham County Council may not be the brightest. But they will eventually have to realise that the Teaching Assistants are a bit like the Viet Cong: they are just going to keep going until they win, entirely on their own terms, no matter what. Eventually, the Americans just upped and left Vietnam, because they had no other remaining option. It is almost too delicious for words to imagine Simon Henig and his entourage scrambling aboard the last chopper off the roof of County Hall, as the TAs marched in inexorable triumph through the building to hoist their flag from its pole. But that day is coming, more or less.

Boris Is Boris, Indeed

The fact that Boris Johnson is still in post proves, as if proof were needed, that Theresa May is the most inconsequential Prime Minister in the history of the office. Everything that Johnson has ever been given, he has been given "for a laugh" by people who ought to have known better, including Mrs May.

He was made Editor of The Spectator for a laugh. He was made an MP the first time for a laugh. He was made Mayor of London for a laugh. He was made an MP the second time for a laugh. He has been made Foreign Secretary for a laugh. He now expects to be made Prime Minister for a laugh. But many of us never did see the joke, and the halving of his majority this year indicates that it is becoming tiresome to more and more people.

In any case, the Boris Blueprint for Brexit bears no resemblance to the will of the areas that voted Leave, most of which went on to re-elect the Labour MPs that they had already had, but often with hugely increased majorities under the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. The referendum result was the long-delayed Labour victory of 1983, and the revenge of the areas that had been devastated by everything in the intervening 33 years.

2017 was not "the Brexit Election". The issue was hardly raised, and both main parties had the same policy on it, anyway. For all the bluster from certain quarters, they still do. The difference is that, having both wanted to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union, they both now want to stay in those things "for a transitional period". "Transition" to what, exactly? Were this not the case, then Johnson would not have felt moved to make his latest intervention.

The clear majority view in Scotland is to remain both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. Yet the Liberal Democrats, who alone have that policy, won only four seats out of 59, the same number that they would have won under Proportional Representation. They came second in only one more. The clear majority view in Northern Ireland is to remain both in the United Kingdom and in the European Union. That is the position of precisely one MP out of Northern Ireland's 18, the Independent Sylvia Hermon.

What was then still the Hard Brexit Conservative Party held on in the Remain heartlands of the South outside London, and it made significant gains in the Remain heartlands of Scotland. Meanwhile, what was then still the Hard Brexit Labour Party stormed home in London, as well as in Liverpool and Manchester, which also voted Remain. It, too, made notable progress in Scotland. If General Elections since 1983 had been about the EU, then there would never have been a referendum.

Slowly, but surely, we are edging towards another one. The two options will be the Brexit deal agreed with the EU, and staying in it after all. But the scheme set out by the Foreign Secretary would not only be suicidal if presented to the electorate at a General Election. It is also as far removed as it is possible to be from the interests, opinions and aspirations of the areas that decided the result of the first referendum.

Cable and Wireless

The Conservative Party has won an overall majority at only one of the last six General Elections. Yet its only ideology remains as it has always been, that it is the natural party of government. It will bear any burden and pay any price in order to fulfil that Manifest Destiny. Knowing that, Lloyd George insisted on being Prime Minister, Nick Clegg could have insisted on being Prime Minister, and Vince Cable would insist on being Prime Minister.

Like any compromise on the pubic sector pay cap, any compromise on undergraduate tuition fees would effectively negate this year's General Election. In that case, Labour might as well have won. Yet that latter, at least, really does seem to be coming. It seems to have become a matter of consensus that fees are at best an unfortunate necessity, and that in principle undergraduate tuition ought to be free at the point of delivery.

(Personally, I think that we either fund the whole of higher education like that, all the way up to doctoral level, or we charge fees, even if they are deferred, at every stage of the process. I also contend that whatever was enjoyed by students ought also to be enjoyed by apprentices and trainees, and vice versa.)

The only people holding out are the Lib Dems. Truly, they are the party of "the Centre". And they have the electoral record to show for it. This year, every constituency in Great Britain had the option of voting, both for "the Centre" that was and is supposed to be so popular, and for the "populist" Right. "The Centre" did pretty badly, and the "populist" Right was so unpopular that it was wiped off the map. 

Adopting aspects of UKIP's programme cost the Conservatives their overall majority; Theresa May's original Corbynised Milibandism would probably have saved it. While discarding numerous features that had been shared with the Lib Dems gave Labour its biggest favourable swing since 1945. Between them, the allegedly unappetising parties, for alternatives to which the electorate was said to be crying out, won 82.3 per cent of the vote.

Yet the losers continue to dominate the commentariat, which is a duopoly between "the Centre" and the "populist" Right. Not between the Lib Dems and UKIP; indeed, the absence of Lib Dem commentators, as such, has long been striking, and it was especially so during that party's five years in the Cabinet. But nevertheless between their two sets of views.

Bitter old Blairites and Cameroons are never out of the papers, and thus never off the airwaves. The Evening Standard is even edited by George Osborne. But other than perhaps Giles Fraser, there is no one writing regularly for any sold-in-shops, Parliamentary Press Gallery newspaper other than the Morning Star who is as far to the Left as 30 or more people writing regularly for such newspapers are to the Right, with all that that then entails for the composition of every panel that is ever put together by any broadcaster other than RT.

For whom are they speaking? For whom are they not speaking? For whom is no one speaking? For a start, no one is speaking for the 12,877,869 people who voted for the Labour Party that was led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Marginal Costs

Well, then, here's to the Labour amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill and to the Budget, to divert an extra £350 million per week to the NHS. And here's to Boris Johnson's vote in favour of those amendments, even if he has to resign from the Cabinet in order to cast it. After all, he does now have a marginal seat to defend.

Assistance Required

It was announced yesterday that Durham County Council's latest proposal to screw over the Teaching Assistants, which is the same as the last one, is to be brought to its Full Council meeting on Wednesday, 20th September, at 10am.

Alas, I cannot be there at County Hall, so there will be no repetition of my speaking through a megaphone from its steps to hundreds of demonstrating TAs and supporters below, while the staff kept us out of the building until my Campaign Patron, the great Alex Watson, told them that, as an elected member, he could not be prevented from entering. And this time, it is in the school term anyway, no doubt on purpose in order to prevent another enormous display of protest.

But be there if you can. Since Parliament will not be sitting, and since it is not the Labour Party Conference until the following week, Laura Pidcock MP will of course be there in support of the Teaching Assistants. Why, it would be worth reporting by the local media, and by the TAs themselves on social media, if she were not there, following her mass leaflet drops across her constituency this weekend, and following her appearance on the regional segment of The Sunday Politics tomorrow. 

After all, she does owe the TAs, having walked out of their Solidarity Rally, having beaten one of their doughtiest champions at the General Election, and having appointed as her Political Advisor the man whose bad political advice is responsible for the fact that they have not already won. Anything less than her attendance in support of them on Wednesday would suggest the need for the TAs and their supporters to demonstrate against her wherever she went. And that would be absurd.

Committed By Me

Four weeks today, my case management hearing will be the latest stage in the farcical campaign to lock me up for something that almost, if almost, nobody believes ever happened at all, and which absolutely nobody believes was committed by me.

Anyone who does believe that, feel free to get in touch, and your statement to that effect will appear on this site. Oliver Kamm, Damian Thompson, Simon Henig, Neil Fleming, or anyone else at all, the floor is yours.

If I have not heard from those four by noon next Friday, 22nd September, then I shall publish it here as a fact that none of them believes that the offence ever even took place, still less that it was any doing of mine.

The Cobra In The Grass

Theresa May cut the Police and the Border Force to the bone, subjected the Fire Service to a fire sale, and has since moved on to the Army. Ahead of huge strikes over public sector pay, she has just tried to bribe the Police and the Prison Service with a supposed pay increase that is in reality yet another pay cut. Since her dismantlement of the Police's ability to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, there have been four such attacks so far this year. Away with her.

By The Toe

In general, the n-word ought never to be used. I suspect that that is Diane Abbott's own view. She used it to show what she and her staff had to endure many times every day. All hell broke loose, thereby largely making her point.

But Anne Marie Morris used it in a speech to a public meeting earlier this year, and no one has attempted to have the House of Commons censure her. So much for the anti-racist credentials of certain MPs.

She did so by making use of an expression that had not been current in 50 or 60 years, even though she herself is only 60. What is it with Conservative MPs for the West Country?

Nor has either than House or the Labour Party, still less the media, taken any action against the MP who has done the most to legitimise the abuse of Diane Abbott, Jess Phillips.

Chopped Up Standards

It is not often that I agree with Nadine Dorries. But any other journalist who called for the Prime Minister, or anyone else, to be "chopped up in bags in my freezer" would be out of a job, and certainly would not get a pass to the governing party's conference. Politically, how influential is the Evening Standard, anyway? London voted very heavily Labour this year.

Osborne's unpleasant tendencies, which he has manifested more than once before, are like Jacob Rees-Mogg's "eccentricities". In poorer or less posh people, they would be, and they are, recognised as signs of mental illness. Even if they would not always be treated properly as such. The streets are the beds of people who dream that they could afford to be as "eccentric" as Jacob Rees-Mogg. While the secure units house those who dream that they could edit the Evening Standard while calling for the Prime Minister to be "chopped up in bags in my freezer".

Making Allowances?

Like most of its Teaching Assistants, Durham County Council has had almost the whole of August off. Will England's best-paid Councillors be reducing their own allowance accordingly? It is already more than they propose to pay many of their full-time TAs.

Recognises The Need

As the only County Durham MP to have supported the Teaching Assistants and to have been seeking re-election, my friend Grahame Morris was the only Labour parliamentary candidate to have deserved a vote in County Durham this year. His latest initiative is this petition:

That this Government without delay recognises the need for a non-means tested bridging pension for women born on or after 6/4/1950 who are affected by the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts and compensate those at risk of losing up to around £45,000, to also give proper notification for any future changes.

It is well on the way to the 100,000 signatures necessary for it to be debated in Parliament. Do please sign it.

"Bernie Sanders Is Not A Democrat"

In the sense that you mean, Hillary Clinton, thank goodness for that. That he is not a fiscal and military hawk on speed, and that he has absolutely no history of connection to the Southern white supremacism of your husband's mentors, is precisely why Sanders is the most popular politician in the United States, and the man who ought to be President.

Donald Trump is President instead, Hillary, because all that he had to do was beat you. And a koi carp could have beaten you. That Trump had to do nothing more demanding, such as what would have been for him the impossible task of beating Sanders, was only because the process had been rigged in your favour. By the DNC. Now, remind us, Hillary, what does the D stand for?

Figure It Out

"Fewer people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance" does not equal "more people in work". Do not fall for that one.

Understandably Defensive

Russia and Belarus are indeed conducting exercises. Given the buildup of NATO forces next door, who can blame them? Neither Putin nor Lukashenko comes close to the dangerous wickedness of Erdogan, around whose regime NATO very largely revolves. The Alliance with Turkey is as dangerous as the alliance with Saudi Arabia, and for very much the same reasons. Whereas Russia and Belarus, the Belarus that lost a third of its population during the Second World War, are once again on the right side. Not "perfect". But "on the right side".

Public Protection, Work Capability

The Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence was a measure as draconian and vindictive as Yvette Copper's Work Capability Assessments, nearly two thirds of which are overturned on appeal. 

New Labour did do some good at the very start, such as the minimum wage. But it had an extremely nasty side, and not only in foreign policy. Labour is lucky to be led by a man who consistently opposed both the domestic and the international nastiness. He deserves to be Prime Minister.

The Will of The House

A governing party's refusal even to vote on Opposition Day motions is a contempt of Parliament, and thus a contempt of the electorate. But it is a thoroughly amusing one, when the reason for it is the knowledge that the Government was going to be defeated.

This Government does not have a majority on the floor of the House of Commons. It cannot disguise that fact forever, or indeed for very much longer at all. Indeed, it is now the will of that House that the pay cap be lifted in the NHS, and that there be no year-on-year increase in undergraduate tuition fees. Here's to many more such expressions of the will of the House.

Uplifting?

It is a bad thing when Jacob Rees-Mogg makes one think of brassieres. Or, indeed, vice versa.

Rees-Mogg is now purely a ridiculous figure without complication, and he has become so after his majority fell by 5.9 per cent this year. People will only put up for so long with having a comedy turn as their Member of Parliament. Boris Johnson's majority was cut in half in June, and he now sits for a Labour target seat. Jacob Rees-Mogg, take note.

But on the subject of foodbanks, yes, that people bother to create and sustain them does indeed manifest the best of human nature and the best about this country. That there is any need for them to exist, however, manifests the worst of human nature and the worst about this country.

Not Such DUPes After All

The DUP is planning to vote for Labour's Opposition Day motions to lift the NHS pay cap and against year-on-year increases in undergraduate tuition fees.

Neither would bind the Government to act, but this does make a nonsense of its claim to have a majority in the House of Commons, such as to entitle it to such on the committees of that House.

Theresa May's deal with the DUP, an economically left-leaning party as they all are in Northern Ireland, is weak, and getting weaker.

Tel Aviv Big Enough

For years and years before, during and after the criminal invasion of Iraq, some of us were accused on a daily basis of being anti-Semitic for our opposition to it. From time to time, we still are. It is water of a duck's back to us.

But if more than one quarter of people in Britain are at least to some extent anti-Semitic, and if this is still one of the least anti-Semitic countries in the world, then is well over a quarter of the population of almost any other country infested with Jew-hatred? What is a standard figures? A third? Half? Two thirds? Three quarters? And which countries are we talking about? The Federated States of Micronesia? Where, exactly?

Of course this is rubbish. It is designed to demonise, and to criminalise, any objection to the ongoing attempt on the part of the Embassy of a foreign power to bring down the twice-elected Leader of the Labour Party. That is all. There is absolutely nothing else to any of this. Nothing.

In The Freezer, Indeed

George Osborne is the voice of the people who thought that they would be in Government forever, because they had all three parties in the bag, so to speak. But they no longer have the slightest sway over any of them. And they are angry. So very, very, very angry.

Diddums.

Now, on to the criminal investigation into him and his associates in relation to the privatisation of the Royal Mail. On to the prosecution on Tony Blair and his accomplices as war criminals. On to the Coroner's Inquest that has never been held into the death of Dr David Kelly. And on to an Iraq-style inquiry into Libya, but with the participation of lay assessors.

That would be a start, anyway.

Dennis Skinner Did Not "Vote With The Tories"

They voted with him. They, or enough of them on this occasion, have come round to the way of thinking that he has always had. He is the only person to have voted against every EU Treaty since the first one. Exactly the position in which some of them now revel was "Loony Left" back in the day.

Skinner can do as he likes, of course. No one who knows anything about anything can hold anything against him. That is not because he has been there so long. When I was first conscious of him, then he had been an MP for a bog standard 20 years or so. But he had already been a living legend throughout that period, and possibly longer. Some people are just born that way.

10 Years On

The Chairman of Northern Rock at the time of its collapse was Matt Ridley.

It seems to have done him startlingly little harm.

To Cap It All

Any compromise on the public sector pay cap would mean that there was, in its own terms, no remaining point to this Government.

There is no remaining point to this Government.

The Trash Needs To Take Itself Out

The nominally Labour Leader of Birmingham City Council has resigned over his treatment of the binmen, which has seen him disowned by the wider Labour Movement and shamed by the Opposition.

When will the nominally Labour Leader of Durham County Council resign over his treatment of the Teaching Assistants, which has seen him disowned by the wider Labour Movement, including Jeremy Corbyn, and shamed by the Opposition for a period that has now lasted longer than the Miners' Strike?

Two Years On

On this second anniversary of Jeremy Corbyn's election as Leader of the Labour Party, consider that no one now considers either neoliberal economic policy or neoconservative foreign policy to be the only game in town, that Labour Party membership has trebled, that a party that was insolvent is now in excellent financial shape, and that a major trade union has reaffiliated to it.

Consider that Labour has experienced its largest positive swing at a General Election since 1945, that the Conservatives have lost their overall majority, that neither David Cameron nor George Osborne is even so much as in Parliament anymore, that Labour is now permanently ahead in the opinion polls, and that we have a Prime Minister who (when she does anything at all) spends her time coming up with watered down versions of Corbyn's policies.

Meanwhile, during the same period, the Right has been unable even to get onto the ballot to lead the Conservative Party, and UKIP has lost its only seat in the House of Commons.

The Far Simpler Task

It is hard to imagine too much difficulty in securing a 50 per cent turnout to vote for strike action against the continuation of the public sector pay cap. These days, it is also hard to imagine that the Police could be bought off by its having been lifted for them alone. But even if there were to be illegal, coordinated strikes, then so what?

Quite apart from the fact that the enactment of further anti-union legislation constituted a concession of the failure of Margaret Thatcher, whose name her own party never mentions, it would be worth even considering an attempt to enforce that law when anyone attempted the far simpler task of enforcing the law against cannabis. Or the far simpler task of enforcing the law against foxhunting, to which the Police act as escorts, arresting only anyone who might seek to obstruct this criminality or to object to it.

Or the far simpler task of arresting or prosecuting anyone other than a Premier League footballer, and even then probably only one from the "wrong" club, for the "digital penetration" of a 15-year-old girl who had, furthermore, been out drinking with the complete impunity of everyone from her parents to the relevant licensees. Or the far simpler task of arresting or prosecuting anyone other than a minister of religion, or possibly a teacher, for any kind of sexual activity with a 15-year-old boy.

Or the far simpler task of prosecuting people who openly admitted to having filled in their 2015 General Election forms incorrectly in such numbers as to have affected the overall result. Or the far simpler task of prosecuting Tony Blair for selling peerages, which he did by every means short of advertising them in Exchange and Mart. Or the far simpler task of prosecuting Tony Blair and his accomplices as the war criminals that they so obviously are. Or the far simpler task of prosecuting George Osborne and his accomplices over their larceny of the Royal Mail.

In the meantime, stand on the picket lines with all those who will be demanding that the cap be scrapped.

The Morning After

"What would Ronnie Campbell do?" are words to live by. It would have been a tough call for a lot of us last night. But now, onwards in unity against this power grab by the Executive, and onwards in unity towards the Britain that will at last be possible outside the EU.

Partners Relief & Development

An excellent Evangelical aid charity on the front line alongside the Rohingya and other oppressed people in Burma, and also active in Syria.

Reassurance, Indeed

Of course Barack Obama supported Theresa May at this year's General Election. Why is anyone surprised at that? Since he had supported Hillary Clinton only months before, his opposition to Jeremy Corbyn was, and is, a badge of honour.

The Wood For The Trees

By all means let there be a Commons division on the billion pound investment in jobs and services in Northern Ireland. We should warmly welcome that investment, while calling for Scotland, Wales, and each of the nine English regions to receive the same per capita, with at least £100 million for each parliamentary constituency, since that was the price of each of the DUP's Commons votes.

Anything less would make a mockery of the very names of the Conservative and Unionist Party, and of the Democratic Unionist Party. The DUP has never disputed the existence of the so-called Magic Money Tree. At least in practice, that existence is now fully acknowledged by the Conservative Party as well. Let the abundant fruits of that Tree be harvested throughout the United Kingdom.

On The Scrap Heap

Any departure from the public sector pay cap would mean that this Government existed purely to spew bile at Jeremy Corbyn while implementing policies that even Labour had adopted only because he was its Leader. By the end of this week, that will be the state of affairs.

Theresa May needs to return to her original, and again entirely Corbyn-inspired, agenda 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, of a ban on unpaid internships, and of an inquiry into Orgreave.

The parliamentary majorities for all of these are in existence. Mrs May just needs to look beyond her own party. As, in view of the fact that there is a hung Parliament, she ought to be doing, anyway.

In Spite of Dungeon, Fire and Sword

I have received many emails about my previous posts on Jacob Rees-Mogg and all that. Thank you, one and all.

First, yes, Martin Luther and the exiled William Tyndale supported Catherine of Aragon against Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The existing Protestant leadership on the Continent knew Henry of old, and not in a good way. In any case, it could see perfectly well who occupied the moral high ground in this case. In the circumstances of the Church of England's creation can be seen the roots of its ambivalent relationship with wider Protestantism, and of successive Evangelical secessions from the Church of England, one or more of which are just about due now.

Secondly, as several people have pointed out, not only did the Church of England keep its bishops in the House of Lords only after Michael Ramsey agreed to back down, more or less, over what became the 1967 Abortion Bill, but it did so again only after the bishops agreed not to make too much of a fuss over same-sex marriage. And that was under David Cameron. In any case, the public reception of the Reverend Richard Coles on Strictly Come Dancing will see the Church of England performing, or at least blessing, same-sex marriages well within the next five years. If it had not been that, then it would have been something else.

And thirdly, quite apart from the fact that of course Jacob Rees-Mogg was never going to become the Leader of the Conservative Party (don't be silly), there is the fact that nothing about him says "Catholic" at all. Readers in the United States, imagine that someone arose as the purported Leader of Catholic America from one of the mansions of the Deep South. It just wouldn't work. The response would be, "wrong region, wrong class, wrong party." So it is here: "wrong region, wrong class, wrong party." But it was not as if Jacob Rees-Mogg was ever going to become the Leader of the Conservative Party, anyway. Don't be silly.

A Modest Proposal

Mariana Mazzucato writes:

Did you see the image of Richard Branson, hiding with his friends and family in his expensive wine cellar on his private Caribbean island, tweeting that it felt like a fun slumber party from his youth? This while Hurricane Irma tore through the houses and lives of others in the region, offering a stark illustration of the way so-called natural events affect people of different socioeconomic classes in radically different ways. 

Architects and urban planners call this “spatial inequality”. People living close to each other, whether in New York, London or on a Caribbean island, will experience life completely differently depending on the resources and opportunities they have available to them, determined principally by their economic and class background.

Indeed, modern inequality increasingly reveals itself through the divergence of income and opportunities at a local level: the inequality between people living across London postcodes can be almost as large as those between average incomes in developed and developing countries. So a “natural” disaster (worsened by climate change factors) becomes a socioeconomic one, in the same way that the banking crisis, a manmade disaster, affected people differently.

Last week, after Hurricane Irma stormed the Caribbean, Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, appealed to the world, saying that 90% of buildings had been destroyed and 50% of the population was homeless. He criticised those “irresponsible leaders” denying climate change, when it was obvious to him that it was a key factor in the severity of the recent hurricanes.

Now a second hurricane, Jose, is coming his way and he is trying to force residents of Barbuda to evacuate. Similarly, the French part of Saint Martin has been virtually destroyed, while two-thirds of the population of Puerto Rico is without power and 17% without water. Although it was slow to respond, the UK government has contributed £12m to the relief effort in the Caribbean, including a naval ship. 

Browne called me in 2016 because he had read my book, The Entrepreneurial State, and wanted to know more about the various instruments that might be used to get back some value from investments that the Antigua and Barbuda government had made in the tourism industry. And would it be possible, he asked, for such future public investments to be conditional on the tourism industry ploughing back profits into public funds used for development? In this way, the taxpayers who propped up tourism could also benefit from reinvestments into areas such as health, education and transport for all. 

While some may cynically dismiss this question, raising concerns about corruption of public finances in poor countries, the question Browne asked, even before the hurricane hit, was a good one: how should those extracting value from a place contribute to it?

But the questions are complicated and perhaps even uncomfortable for those asking them. The relief efforts needed are larger than they should be due to how these countries have been starved of tax revenue precisely because they have chosen to be tax havens.

The simpler question is to ask those “elites” who save billions by using tax shelters in the Caribbean, and the Big 4 accounting firms that enable their transactions, to contribute to the relief funds. The more difficult question is how to change the status quo and make sure that these companies actually contribute to the resources they take advantage of, both at home and abroad.

It’s more difficult because it requires admitting that the governments offering tax shelters, which today might be appealing for relief, are also extracting value from the governments of the foreign companies they host. So, for example, the UK taxpayers pay for infrastructure and education in the UK. British-based companies benefit from that. If they then benefit from havens to avoid paying tax to the UK, the tax shelters are, of course, a key part of the problem. 

Clearly, a priority should be for companies, operating in countries offering tax havens in British Overseas Territories and the Commonwealth (or, indeed, elsewhere, such as Switzerland or Monte Carlo), to be more transparent. As argued by the Tax Research UK, this would mean that countries in the Overseas Territories should “provide free, online and publicly accessible registers of all companies and trusts” located there.

In particular, it argues that this information should include which individuals own more than 10% of the shares in each company registered in the location; the names of the directors and the various locations where the companies have offices. The Network also argues that the cost of UK aid should be matched by revenue from the companies benefiting from the tax shelters and that full annual accounts should be prepared in accordance with a recognisable set of accounting standards.

A modest proposal would be for the countries to raise money from the companies by increasing, for example, the charges they make for offshore services, or by charging tax on the companies based in these places.

But if the whole point was to avoid tax, would this cause the companies to leave? This gets us to the core of the problem. It is impossible to have real growth, and a reduction in inequality, through policies that are in the end just part of what we might call the “global value extraction business”. The real questions are exactly those that Browne asked me.

Governments need to make critical investments that transform their societies in ways that create capacity, knowledge and long-run growth. This will be expensive, but possible, if arrangements are put in place so that those benefiting from the common resources also plough their profits back into those very resources.

This, however, requires moving away from the “us v them” mentality and recognising that the problem rests just as much on the forces causing inequality at home as on the tensions between the rich and poor countries. It’s more than just an argument about who has to pick up the bill for the mess, disaster after disaster.

Mariana Mazzucato is professor in the economics of innovation and public value, UCL.