Run Its Course

If the last Parliament had run its course, then the 2020 General Election would have seen significant gains by the Lib Dems from the Conservatives in the Remainer heartlands of the South. On Thursday, watch out for such gains at municipal level. If they materialise there this week, then expect them at the 2022 General Election, too. 

Thereby greatly increasing the chance that Labour will be the largest party in that hung Parliament. In turn, that would necessitate, even more than would already have been the case, the presence of people on whom any Government would be dependent and who would fight as hard for areas such as this one as the Lib Dems would for their own well-heeled, pro-EU constituencies. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

I must emphasise that, while obviously coming from the Left, I am both a product and a feature of the political pluralism of North West Durham. I have therefore undertaken that, if I were to be elected as the Member of Parliament, then I would appoint an Independent, a Labour, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat supporter in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to communicate the concerns of local people to me, and then to work with them and with me in order to address those concerns. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

I have further undertaken, that, in the hung Parliament that is the most likely outcome of the next General Election, the price of my support for any Government would be the necessary support for a number of projects in each of the former District Wards equal to the former number of District Councillors, together with justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants whom Durham County Council had deprived of 23 per cent of their incomes. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

As a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn who is not a member of any political party, he has given me some cause for disappointment. He has overlooked his supporters by appointing his enemies to frontbench and other positions. He permitted a free vote on Syria. He whipped an abstention on Trident. He has acted against the social and ethnic cleansing of Labour Haringey, but not to secure justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants in Labour Durham.

Corbyn’s housing and transport policies go nowhere near far enough. He supports the Government’s indulgence of the ludicrous theory of gender self-identification. He sides with neoliberal capitalism on the issues of drugs and prostitution. He has hinted at support for the Customs Union, which, in a crowded field, has a reasonable claim to be the worst of all the many bad things about the EU. He has accepted some of the Government’s baseless and collapsed claims about Salisbury and Douma. He has failed to make the trip to Iran that would certainly secure the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, thereby making it highly unlikely that Abbas Edelat would have been arrested, either.

He has met the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council without having waited for the local election results in London to establish whether or not they spoke for anyone very much at all. He has failed to prevent the Labour Party from suspending or expelling distinguished Jewish activists for purported anti-Semitism.

And now, under Corbyn’s Leadership, Labour has expelled Marc Wadsworth, the man who introduced Doreen and Neville Lawrence to Nelson Mandela. It has done so on the say-so of one Ruth Smeth, who is notable for nothing apart from having made an allegation of anti-Semitism against Wadsworth, an allegation that she has since withdrawn. Yet she and some 50 other white MPs marched through the streets to demand his expulsion, in a scene reminiscent of a lynching. They all remain members of the Labour Party, as does Tony Blair of Iraq infamy, yet Wadsworth is expelled for having “brought the party into disrepute”.

If Labour does not do all that well after all in the London local elections, then this will be the reason why. Whether or not those MPs know who Wadsworth is, or why he matters, an awful lot of otherwise Labour-inclined London voters do.

Like many people, I yearn for Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister. But we must reserve the right to pursue that electoral objective outside the Labour Party. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

To Cap It All

John McDonnell has today announced that Labour would cap the total amount that could be charged in fees and interest payments on all overdraft accounts. 

Time was, and it was not very long ago at all, when Theresa May used to announce things like that. The problem was, and is, that she has still yet to do any of them, despite being, at least nominally, the Prime Minister.

Jeremy Corbyn has been disappointing is some ways, by no means all of them minor. But Theresa May has been far, far more so. And John McDonnell has today announced that Labour would cap the total amount that could be charged in fees and interest payments on all overdraft accounts.

Back To Where They Came From?

Identity cards. I told you. It is always identity cards. Like they have in France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands, none of which has any problems either with terrorism, which was the last excuse, or with immigration, which is the latest excuse. No, of course they don't. The very idea.

The Windrush scandal has demonstrated that the British never did hold the views on immigration that were attributed to them by politicians who thought that the Internet ranters against "race replacement" were normal and representative. But then, we all knew that, anyway.

In 2005, the Conservatives went very hard indeed on immigration. They managed the remarkable feat of being beaten by Tony Blair even after the Iraq War. In 2010, at the first outing of the "tens of thousands" target, they unexpectedly failed to win an overall majority. 

In 2015, Labour went harder on immigration than the Conservatives did, and Labour was unexpectedly defeated. In 2017, against a very different Labour Party indeed, a Conservative Party led by the Home Secretary who had created the "hostile environment" lost its overall majority. And in between those General Elections, the EU referendum had been decided in the wrong places for immigration to have been the decisive issue.

Identity cards are a wedge issue between Corbynites and Blairites, so watch out for that. But when the nation's choice of Home Secretary is between Sajid Javid and Diane Abbott, then the right wings of both main parties have come exist purely as objects of ridicule. Their respective Party Leaderships are pointing and laughing at them as they chortle that, "You have nowhere else to go." How particularly stupid and silly the Labour Right now looks, the likes of John Woodcock and Jess Phillips, who defended Amber Rudd to the bitter end.

Aggressive, Indeed

Cheer up, Michel Barnier. No one in Great Britain or the Irish Republic understands where the DUP is coming from, either, and most people in Northern Ireland wish that they didn't.

There is no way of making the Irish Border work after Brexit. It can't be done. It just can't. My personal favourite idea is the use of drones. In an agricultural area. Where teenage boys would shoot them down for the sheer entertainment value.

"Freedom" Fries On

At least 25 people have been killed and at least 45 people have been wounded by twin bombs in Kabul.

The Afghanistan that we "liberated" is being blown apart by the so-called Islamic State that results, in its very existence, from our "liberation" of Iraq. 

Better luck next time? Well, there have been rather a lot of next times. Herewith, the latest stamps to have been issued by the regime that came to power in the coup that we backed in Ukraine.

Doesn't it make you proud?

And Nobody Will Really Miss Them

Peter Hitchens writes:

Generally, I’m against banning things that have been made legal, because it usually won’t work. But I think fixed odds betting terminals are a cruel exploitation of the hopeless, and morally no better than mugging pensioners, and nobody will really miss them. Let’s make them illegal now.

A Level Playing Field?

Kenan Malik writes: 

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” asks Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. For the IAAF, the governing body of world athletics, the problem is the opposite – certain women are, in their eyes, too much like a man. 

Women such as South African athlete Caster Semenya, the 800m world and Olympic champion. Semenya has a condition known as hyperandrogenism, or elevated levels of natural testosterone. Too elevated, in the IAAF’s view. 

Its new regulations, announced last week, will ban athletes such as Semenya from competing in any race between 400 metres and a mile unless they undergo medical treatment to reduce their testosterone levels down to an “acceptable” range for women. 

The IAAF claims it wants to create “a level playing field”. But the whole point about sport is that it’s not a level playing field. It selects individuals with natural advantages. It’s no more surprising that elite women athletes may have elevated testosterone levels than that female basketball players are taller. 

Whether testosterone confers an advantage is itself disputed. Endocrinologist Peter Sonksen has worked with the International Olympic Committee on anti-doping measures. His research suggests that the testosterone gap that exists between men and women disappears among elite athletes. 

The IAAF’s own study shows that the biggest effects of testosterone are in the hammer and pole vault. Yet in neither event will hyperandrogenic women be banned. In the 1500m, testosterone levels had no effect. Yet it is included in the ban. It’s also one of Semenya’s events. That seems less about creating a level playing field than about targeting a particular athlete.

As there are separate competitions for men and women, there has to be a way of distinguishing the two. The IAAF’s testosterone test is, however, irrational, idiotic and unfair.

A Deal Too Far

For all their faults, the Mail newspapers have never quite lost their paleocon side. Alex Brummer writes: 

The unveiling of a £12 billion ‘mega-merger’ between Sainsbury’s and Asda has been met with largely unalloyed excitement. Big deals between household names raise hopes of something different and better for consumers, lower prices, improved returns for investors — and big fees for City advisers (an estimated £100 million here).

But if we strip away the hype and disabuse ourselves of the belief that something good must come of creating a behemoth of the High Street — combined sales of almost £50 billion a year and a 31.4 per cent grocery market share — it looks far less seductive. I’d go so far as to say this is a deal too far and here is why. 

First, this is being driven by market weaknesses, not strengths. Asda is struggling at the lower end of the market, while Sainsbury’s is caught in the middle, under pressure from heavily discounted stores and upmarket outlets.

We know from experience that bringing together two companies facing enormous challenges is never a recipe for success. The last such supermarket merger in the UK, between Morrisons and Safeway in 2004, was an unmitigated disaster. It took more than a decade to bed down and for customers to get the benefits they were promised. As for investors, which include all of us through our pension funds and insurance policies, well we’re still awaiting the promised returns. 

Second, however you cut it, a merger taking a major competitor off the market can only, in the longer haul, cut competition and choice with no guarantee of lower prices. Instead of the so-called Big Four — Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons — we’ll have the Big Three. The best that can be said is that creating one large ‘middle-of-the road’ supermarket might create opportunities for rivals with something different: Marks & Spencer and Waitrose at the top end, and the German no-frills interlopers Lidl and Aldi at the cheaper end. 

Of course, the proprietors of US-owned Asda (Walmart) and Sainsbury’s (the biggest shareholders are Qatar and Sainsbury family trusts) have good commercial reasons for wanting this deal. Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, now views the UK as a problem rather than an opportunity. 

As well as the Aldi and Lidl effect, consumer disaffection with out-of-town stores and the popularity of online shopping are having an impact. With a 15.8 per cent share of the UK grocery market, Sainsbury’s meanwhile, under Mike ‘Cut-price’ Coupe, has struggled to keep up with market leader Tesco. The latter has a stonking 27.6 per cent share — enhanced this year by its £3.7 billion takeover of Booker, Britain’s largest food wholesaler. 

Sainsbury’s sought to challenge Tesco’s domination by moving into consumer electronics, toys and other goods via its takeover of Argos and its well-established, digital and home delivery service. Bringing Sainsbury’s and Asda, two companies with very different cultures together, would mean the linked enterprise leapfrogging Tesco as the country’s market leader — hence the variety of grandiose promises for a better future.

Yes, there will be opportunities for economies of scale by joining up head offices, warehouse and logistics systems, and far greater bargaining power with suppliers. This, it is said, will enable the merged ‘super super-market’ to offer shoppers a better deal. But cost-cutting and merging companies that employ almost 350,000 staff in total will be costly and disruptive, and take years to implement with implications for consumers.

And to emphasise, taking a player out of the market — especially Asda, which prides itself on being the most price-conscious among the Big Four — won’t make things better for consumers. That is what monopoly power is all about. It will also be bad for suppliers, especially British farmers as they seek to adjust to Brexit. A new dominant supermarket chain will have the market power to chisel down the price it pays for fresh produce and ingredients. It will have suppliers over a barrel.

Claims that a fast-changing marketplace demands this merger to meet the Aldi-Lidl challenge must be taken with a pinch of salt. Admittedly, the recent growth in market share for Aldi and Lidl, from virtually nothing to 12.6 per cent, has surprised everyone and surpassed expectations. Competing with them is difficult for domestic supermarkets because so little is known about the economics of the secretive, privately owned German companies now sweeping across Europe. 

As for newcomer Amazon, its fresh food delivery is in its infancy in the UK. It has a lot of catching up to do to match Ocado, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s — all of which have embraced the online world. Sainsbury’s has 276,000 online deliveries a week, against 225,000 by Asda.

Whatever investors decide about the merger, it cannot go through without detailed investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority regulator. In the past when the CMA found competition would be substantially reduced, it demanded the sell-off of stores so that no single supermarket dominates an area. But that fails to address the bigger issues of bargaining power with suppliers. It also fails to determine whether consumers have maximum choice and access to the most competitive prices.

The City and investment community likes deals done and dusted quickly so fees and profits can be taken. That cannot be acceptable in the grocery market where price, choice and convenience must be the overwhelming criteria for the greater public good.

The Real International Community Meets In Yalta

Before anyone starts, no one named here, and some of them are very bad indeed, is worse than people with whom Western governments associate all the time. With that in mind, Neil Clark writes:

Around 600 participants from 71 countries met in Crimea at the 4th Yalta International Economic Forum to discuss global co-operation and the building of a better world. This was the real ‘international community,’ as opposed to the pretend one restricted to just the US and its closest allies.

In February 1945, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin, the so-called ‘Big Three,’ met in Yalta to plan for the post-war world. In April 2018, the world faces the threat of war again – not from goose-stepping Nazis – but from similarly Russophobic neocon hawks who seem hell-bent on total global domination.

The imperialist agenda has been thwarted in Syria, where regime-change plans have been blocked, hence a ratcheting up of Cold War 2.0 tensions with Russia from Washington and London. But at the YIEF, one could see the strength of resistance to the serial warmongers.

View image on Twitter

ЯМЭФ@forumyalta

На пленарном заседании «Будущее мира» в качестве модератора выступит Neil Clark @NeilClark66 , журналист и блоггер из Великобритании #ЯМЭФ2018 #ЯМЭФ #Крым #Ялта #Великобритания

1:48 PM - Apr 20, 2018

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I had the great honor to be asked to be the moderator for a debate on The Future of the World, which included a diverse lineup of speakers from nine different countries. I opened proceedings by noting that this month marked the 50th anniversary of Tony Richardson’s classic anti-war film The Charge of the Light Brigade, which covered events which took place not far from where the conference was taking place.

In 1968, Richardson was lampooning the Establishment-induced Russophobia of the 1850s. Today, rather obscenely, we are back to where we were 160 years ago. ‘The Russians! The Russians! The Russians!’ is once again the demented cry of the political and media elite.

Journalists and other public figures in Britain today who don’t go along with Russophobia face attacks from truly repulsive gatekeepers. Even university academics are under threat for daring to question the War Party line. At least in Crimea, we didn’t have to worry about the witch-hunters.

Alferova Yulya@AlferovaYulyaE

Amazing day in Yalta. Yalta International Economic Forum #Crimea #Yalta #Russia

6:34 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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In a passionate address which got a great reception from the audience, Oumar Mariko, a member of the National Assembly of Mali and the Secretary-General of the African Solidarity for Democracy and Independence Party, stressed how important it was that Africa’s voice was heard. When Western hawks talk about the ‘international community,’ they never include Africa (ironically while at the same time attacking their opponents for ‘racism’), but at Yalta it was very different. 

Mariko said that even though African countries had gained formal independence from the old imperial powers, these powers still tried to control Africa and acted with a colonial mindset. We saw an example of this with NATO’s criminal destruction of Libya in 2011, turning the country which had the highest Human Development Index in Africa into a failed state.

From Zimbabwe , Christopher H. Mutsvangwa, special adviser to President Emmerson Mnangagwa, also discussed imperialism and how Africa had been dominated by Western nations for centuries. Now though, he argued we were entering a new historical epoch in which the power of the imperialist nations was on the wane, and that could only be positive. “We always look to Russia because Russia has always helped oppressed peoples,” he declared.

From Syria, Mohammad Samer Al-Khalil, the Minister of Economy and Foreign Trade, told how his country had turned the tide against Western-backed terrorists and how the Syrian government, against all the odds, had managed to maintain free education and the provision of social services throughout the conflict. He urged delegates to invest in his country, and help the rebuilding process.

Speaker after speaker denounced the sanctions imposed against Russia, which Oumar Mariko called “absolutely illegal.” Europe in particular was acting against the economic interests of its own people by going along with these sanctions – at the behest of the US and UK. “We want to sell cars to Russia and Russia wants to sell us gas,” Bundestag member Markus Frohnmaier said. So why can’t we just get on and trade freely, instead of just tamely following the diktats of the US? 

The importance of free trade in improving relations between countries was stressed by UK MEP Bill Etheridge. The British people do not want enmity with Russia he assured the hall. The fact, as I pointed out afterwards, is that Russophobia, as in the 1850s, is very much an Establishment phenomenon, and the UK government’s fiercely anti-Russian line shows us how undemocratic the UK is. 

If Britain was a genuine democracy we’d be working with Russia against terrorism – not against Russia. We certainly wouldn‘t be risking a potentially disastrous war with a nuclear-armed power to aid the cause of Salafist-jihadists in Syria.

Former Prime Minister of Slovakia Jan Carnogursky focused on Crimea and how sanctions could be lifted. “We call on all the nations of the world to accept and support the results of the Crimean referendum of 2014,” he said. 

From Austria, another country which, to its credit, didn’t join in with the expulsion of Russian diplomats at the behest of Theresa May, the deputy mayor of Linz, Detlef Wimmer, greeted the audience in Russian, before making a strong case for a change in European policies. 

From France, MEP Nicolas Bay criticized his nation’s hostile stance towards Russia. Georgy Muradov, deputy prime minister of Crimea, warned of the dangers of the current tensions, saying “today we are talking about the future of the world, because we are afraid to look at the real world.”

Matthew Gordon-Banks@mwgbanks

With all the strife in the world,
The Republic of Crimea seems like an Oasis of calm, green and industry:
IV Yalta International Economic Forum 2018

7:28 AM - Apr 20, 2018 · Ukraine

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The “real world” though is changing fast, as Yalta showed. Other events in the three-day forum included a plenary session on ‘Youth Visioning the Future,’ a conference at the Livadia Palace on the ‘Economic Development of Syria’ involving high-level delegations from Russia and Syria, a session on Russian-German environmental dialogue, and debates on fake news and digital security in the 21st century.

МИД России Крым

✔@PMSimferopol

International forum «Journalists from Muslim countries for the partnership of civilizations» was held in #Yalta. Over 50 delegates from more than 20 countries took part in the conference sessions.#Crimea #Russia #Forum #Journalists

8:17 AM - Apr 24, 2018

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As the conference came to an end and we prepared to leave Crimea, one thought struck me. The kind of thought-provoking debates we had in Yalta, which provided a platform to a wide range of opinions and featured speakers that would be ‘blacklisted’ at home, e.g. Syrian government officials, simply could not take place in modern thought-policed Britain. 

How ironic that for all the highfalutin talk about ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ Westerners now have to go to Russia to speak their minds freely.

Look Where They Tell You Not To Look

Craig Murray writes:

At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by  D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian. Gordon Corera, “BBC Security Correspondent”, did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters. 

MI6’s most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian.



A number of people replied to Harding’s tweet to point out that this was demonstrably untrue, and Pablo Miller had listed his employment by Orbis Business Intelligence on his Linkedin profile. That profile had just been deleted, but a google search for “Pablo Miller” plus “Orbis Business Intelligence”, without Linkedin as a search term, brought up Miller’s Linkedin profile as the first result (although there are twelve other Pablo Millers on Linkedin and the search brought up none of them). Plus a 2017 forum discussed Pablo Miller’s Orbis connection and it both cited and linked to his Linkedin entry.

You might think that any journalist worth his salt would want to consider this interesting counter-evidence. But Harding merely tweeted again the blank denials of the security services, without question.



This is an important trait of Harding. Last year we both appeared, separately, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Harding was promoting a book and putting the boot into Wikileaks and Snowden. After his talk, I approached him in an entirely friendly manner, and told him there were a couple of factual errors in his presentation on matters to which I was an eye-witness, and I should be very happy to brief him, off the record, but we could discuss which bits he might use. He said he would talk later, and dashed off. Later I saw him in the author’s lounge, and as I walked towards him he hurriedly got up and left, looking at me.

Of course, nobody is obliged to talk to me. But at that period I had journalists from every major news agency contacting me daily wishing to interview me about Wikileaks, all of whom I was turning down, and there was no doubt of my inside knowledge and direct involvement with a number of the matters of which Harding was writing and speaking. A journalist who positively avoids knowledge of his subject is an interesting phenomenon.

But then Harding is that. From a wealthy family background, privately educated at Atlantic College and then Oxford, Harding became the editor of Oxford University’s Cherwell magazine without showing any left-wing or rebel characteristics. It was not a surprise to those who knew him as a student when he was employed at the very right-wing Daily Mail. From there he moved to the Guardian. In 2003 Harding was embedded with US forces in Iraq and filing breathless reports of US special forces operations.

 Moving to Moscow in 2007 as the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, others in the Moscow press corps and in the British expatriate community found him to be a man of strongly hawkish neo-con views, extremely pro-British establishment, and much closer to the British Embassy and to MI6 than anybody else in the press corps. It was for this reason Harding was the only resident British journalist, to my knowledge, whose visa the Russians under Putin have refused to renew. They suspected he is actually an MI6 officer, although he is not.

With this background, people who knew Harding were dumbfounded when Harding appeared to be the supporter and insider of first Assange and then Snowden. The reason for this dichotomy is that Harding was not – he wrote books on Wikileaks and on Snowden that claimed to be insider accounts, but in fact just carried on Harding’s long history of plagiarism, as Julian Assange makes clear.

Harding’s books were just careful hatchet jobs pretending to be inside accounts. The Guardian’s historical reputation for radicalism was already a sham under the editorship of Rusbridger, and has completely vanished under Viner, in favour of hardcore Clinton identity politics failing to disguise unbending neo-conservatism. The Guardian smashed the hard drives containing the Snowden files under GCHQ supervision, having already undertaken “not to even look at” the information on Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact the hard drives were not the only copies in the world does not excuse their cravenness.

We know, of course, what MI6 have fed to Harding, because it is reflected every day in his output. What we do not know, but may surmise, is what Harding fed back to the security services that he gleaned from the Guardian’s association with Wikileaks and Snowden.

Harding has since made his living from peddling a stream of anti-Assange, anti-Snowden and above all, anti-Russian books, with great commercial success, puffed by the entire mainstream media. But when challenged by the non-mainstream media about the numerous fact free assertions on behalf of the security services to be found in his books, Harding is not altogether convincing. You can watch this video, in which Harding outlines how emoticons convinced him someone was a Russian agent, together with this fascinating analysis which really is a must-read study of anti-Russian paranoia. There is a similar analysis here.



Perhaps still more revealing is this 2014 interview with his old student newspaper Cherwell, where he obvously felt comfortable enough to let the full extent of his monstrous boggle-eyed Russophobia become plain:

His analogies span the bulk of the 20th century and his predictions for the future are equally far-reaching. “This is the biggest crisis in Europe since the Cold War. It’s not the break-up of Yugoslavia, but the strategic consensus since 1945 has been ripped up. We now have an authoritarian state, with armies on the march.”

What next?

“It’s clear to me that Putin intends to dismember Ukraine and join it up with Transnistria, then perhaps he’ll go as far as Moldova in one way or another,” Harding says. This is part of what he deems Putin’s over-arching project: an expansionist attempt to gather Russo-phones together under one yoke, which he terms ‘scary and Eurasian-ist’, and which he notes is darkly reminiscent of “another dictator of short stature” who concocted “a similarly irredentist project in the 1930s”. 

But actually I think you can garner everything you want to know about Harding from looking at his twitter feed over the last two months. He has obsessively retweeted scores of stories churning out the government’s increasingly strained propaganda line on what occurred in Salisbury. Not one time had Harding ever questioned, even in the mildest way, a single one of the multiple inconsistencies in the government account or referred to anybody who does. He has acted, purely and simply, as a conduit for government propaganda, while abandoning all notion of a journalistic duty to investigate. 

We still have no idea of who attacked Sergei Skripal and why. But the fact that, right from the start, the government blocked the media from mentioning Pablo Miller, and put out denials that this has anything to do with Christopher Steele and Orbis, including lying that Miller had never been connected to Orbis, convinces me that this is the most promising direction in which to look.

It never seemed likely to me that the Russians had decided to assassinate an inactive spy who they let out of prison many years ago, over something that happened in Moscow over a decade ago. It seemed even less likely when Boris Johnson claimed intelligence showed this was the result of a decade long novichok programme involving training in secret assassination techniques. Why would they blow all that effort on old Skripal?

That the motive is the connection to the hottest issue in US politics today, and not something in Moscow a decade ago, always seemed to me much more probable. Having now reviewed matters and seen that the government actively tried to shut down this line of inquiry, makes it still more probable this is right.

This does not tell us who did it. Possibly the Russians did, annoyed that Skripal was feeding information to the Steele dossier, against the terms of his release.

Given that the Steele dossier is demonstrably in large degree nonsense, it seems to me more probable the idea was to silence Skripal to close the danger that he would reveal his part in the concoction of this fraud. Remember he had sold out Russian agents to the British for cash and was a man of elastic loyalties. It is also worth noting that Luke Harding has a bestselling book currently on sale, in large part predicated on the truth of the Steele Dossier.

Steele, MI6 and the elements of the CIA which are out to get Trump, all would have a powerful motive to have the Skripal loose end tied.

Rule number one of real investigative journalism: look where they tell you not to look.

Trial Date Watch: Day 11

More than two weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served three months even of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Libel Watch: Day 66

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

A Future To Believe In

On Friday 13th July, Donald Trump will arrive in the United Kingdom. On Saturday 14th July, during that visit, Jeremy Corbyn will address at least 200,000 people at the Durham Miners' Gala. He ought to be joined in doing so by Bernie Sanders.

Taste The Difference

As Sainsbury's and Asda prepare to merge, we need a windfall tax on the supermarkets in order to fund agriculture and small business, with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities or the environment. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

Trial Date Watch: Day 10

More than two weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served three months even of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Libel Watch: Day 65

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

International Workers’ Memorial Day

Remember the dead, and fight for the living.

Disrepute

Supporting Amber Rudd? What does John Woodcock have to do? And now Jess Phillips as well. After she led the lynch mob through the streets of London against Marc Wadsworth.

Why would you even want to be a member of the same party as these people? There, I've said it. You know what you have to do, brothers and sisters. You know what you have to do.

A Solution In Search Of A Problem

Everyone knows that electoral fraud in this country is negligible. But the Political Class has wanted identity cards for as long as I can remember. Resist. To your last breath, resist.

Probable Western Responsibility For Skripal Poisoning

Craig Murray writes:

This comment from Clive Ponting, doyen of British whistleblowers, appeared on my website and he has now given me permission to republish it under his full name:

I have been reading the blogs for some time but this is my first post. Like Craig I was a senior civil servant but in the ministry of defence not the FCO. I had plenty of dealings with all three intelligence agencies. It seems to me that the reason none of the MSM are doing any investigating/reporting of the Salisbury affair, apart from official handouts, is that the government have slapped a D-Notice over the whole incident and it is not possible to report that a notice has been issued. 

Here is another theory as to what happened. The Russians pardoned Skripal and allowed him to leave (spy agencies have an understanding that agents will always be swapped after an interval – it’s the only protection they have and helps recruitment). In the UK Skripal would have been thoroughly debriefed by MI6 and MI5 (his ex-handler lives near Salisbury). 

If at some point they discovered that Skripal was giving them false information, perhaps he was told to do so by the FSB as a condition of his release, lives may have been endangered/lost. If he also was also involved in the ‘golden showers’ dossier then elements in the US would have a reason to act as well. The whole incident was an inside job not to kill him, hence the use of BZ, but to give him a warning and a punishment. The whole thing is being treated as though the authorities know exactly what went on but have to cover it up.

Addendum:

I meant to add that the policeman who ‘just happened’ to be around was almost certainly the special branch ‘minder’ who was keeping Yulia under surveillance. The media are not allowed to mention the existence of a D notice.

Those of us who have been in the belly of the beast and have worked closely with the intelligence services, really do know what they and the British government are capable of. They are not “white knights”.

I would add it has been very plain from day one that there is a D notice on Pablo Miller.

Trial Date Watch: Day Nine

More than two weeks after I had again been due to stand trial, I now no longer have a trial date, even though it is rightly a criminal offence to fail to attend one's trial.

Had I been tried, as expected, on 6th December, then, even had I been convicted, I would already have been released, since I would by now have served three months even of a wildly improbable six month sentence.

The legal persecution of me, which has been going on for over a year, was initiated only in order to deter me from seeking public office or to prevent my election to it, and its continuation is only to one or both of those ends. Amnesty International is on the case.

Until there is anything to add to it, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

Libel Watch: Day 64

The Leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, was so afraid that I was going to be elected to that authority, that he faked a death threat against himself and dozens of other Councillors.

Despite the complete lack of evidence, that matter is still being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of the attempt by the sacked Director of Public Prosecutions, Alison Saunders, to secure a Labour seat in one or other House of Parliament.

If I am wrong, then let Henig and Saunders sue me. Until they do, then this post will appear here every day that the post is delivered.

All Politics Is Local

We have the weakest economic growth in five years, due to a 14 per cent drop in new housing, apparently because it was cold in the winter, or so we are expected to believe.

The Government's handling of rail franchises has been torn to shreds by the Public Accounts Committee.

The Foreign Secretary is offering an amnesty to anyone who had been in this country for 10 years, no matter how they had got in.

And the Home Secretary has been caught lying to Parliament over the circumstances under which British citizens had been detained and deported based on the colour of their skin.

If Labour took control of Wandsworth on Thursday, then Theresa May would be finished. Westminster would ice the cake. Kensington and Chelsea would put a cherry on top.

In spite of everything, make it happen.