Thursday 29 March 2018

Behind The Door

If Russia is the Nazi Germany of the present age, then what about those protests after the fire in Kemerovo? Trying doing that in Saudi Arabia. Also note that Vladimir Putin has travelled quickly to Kemerovo, which is an awful lot further from the Kremlin than Grenfell Tower was from Downing Street. There, he has met survivors, something that Theresa May had refused to do.

Smeared on the front door of the house? Still never killed anyone? The Detective Sergeant who was inexplicably the first responder has gone home? The only other victim is an unnamed Police Officer who is being treated as an outpatient? You believed this rubbish. You propagated this rubbish. You screamed down for treason those of us who pointed out that it obviously was rubbish.

You had done all of those things in relation to the alleged murder of 100,000 military age males in Kosovo, and then again in relation to a link between Afghanistan and the events of 11th September 2011, the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, those weapons' capacity for deployment within 45 minutes, Saddam Hussein's feeding of people into a giant paper shredder, his attempt to obtain uranium from Niger, an imminent genocide in Benghazi, Gaddafi's feeding of Viagra to his soldiers in order to encourage mass rape, his intention to flee to Venezuela, the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme, and Assad's gassing of Ghouta as if that were an undisputed fact.

But none of that has stopped you from doing them all again this time. We were right on every previous occasion, and we are right again now. Over Iraq, in particular, you also called us anti-Semites for years on end, so you are going to have to do an awful lot better than that. But you won't. You can't.

What you can do, and what everyone living in a part of England with local elections this year must do, is to vote for the best-placed candidate who is neither a Conservative nor a Liberal Democrat. Those parties, like the SNP and the DUP, have cheered on the baseless New Cold War, and as much as anything else significantly endangered England's football team and its supporters at the World Cup. This will be sad for hardworking Councillors who will lose their seats. But politics is a rough old trade, and local politics is the roughest of the lot. Don't I know it? They can vent their sorrow within their respective political parties.

Speaking of elections, Putin would have been re-elected anyway, but he still put the belt and braces on it. As did Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The uprising in Tahrir Square was not strictly part of the Islamist "Arab Spring". It had its own very particular roots, in the putting down of the demonstration there as part of the global day of action on 15th February 2003, against what was then the impending invasion of Iraq. As such, its legacy deserves a very special place among our concerns.

Alas, another question of legacy presents itself today. Keir Starmer deserves credit for having eschewed attempted coups against Jeremy Corbyn, and for his past work on the McLibel case. But he was also behind the ridiculous Twitter Joke Trial, he decided not to prosecute Simon Harwood over the death of Ian Tomlinson, he acted for Marina Litvinenko, and he is engaged in watering down Corbyn's commitment to Brexit. His role in the John Worboys affair is the opportunity to replace him with someone more suitable.

But who? Richard Burgon, a staunch Morning Star Eurosceptic, is getting too much done as Shadow Justice Secretary to move him. Step forward, the first MP to nominate Corbyn for Leader of the Labour Party, a man who campaigned for Leave on all the good Old Labour grounds that, based on the map, did in fact carry the day. They have had quite long enough to construct a case against Kelvin Hopkins. They have entirely failed to do so. The position of Shadow Brexit Secretary beckons.

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