A Test of Credibility

By the time of a General Election in 2022, then I shall have lived in North West Durham for 40 years. I have already been politically active here for more than 20 years. By contrast, the sitting MP had never set eyes on North West Durham at the turn of 2017.

I was present when, absent from the count at which she was losing her own seat on Northumberland County Council, she was introduced for the first time, but already as the parliamentary candidate, to everyone who mattered in political life here. Despite having nominated Jeremy Corbyn for Leader in 2016, the Constituency Labour Party had been permitted no role whatever in the selection process. The extremely short list of signatories to her nomination papers included precisely one member of Durham County Council, and he had been elected for the first time mere days before he must have lent his name.

I am not a member of the same political party as Tony Blair. I have never accepted any of the Government’s claims about Salisbury or Douma. My problem with the recent bombing of Syria was not merely with the lack of a parliamentary vote, but with the bombing itself. I would force another Commons vote on the arming of Saudi Arabia. I am opposed to any variation on the Customs Union. If any of these is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. But if you would rather have the sitting MP, then do not pretend to hold any of those views. This is a test of credibility.

I strongly support the exploitation of the vast reserves of coal in this country and in this county. That, and the extension of civil nuclear power, are the means of delivering high-wage, high-skilled, high-status, unionised jobs while securing independence from Arab oil, from Russian gas, and from coal that has been mined using child and slave labour. Horror stories about how coal was burned or mined in the Britain of the twentieth century have no relevance to the Britain of the twenty-first. At the same time, I am totally opposed to the open-casting of the Pont Valley or anywhere else, digging up hardly any coal while employing hardly anyone. If this is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. But if you would rather have the sitting MP, then do not pretend to hold this view. This is a test of credibility.

I reject the theory of gender self-identification, I support fathers’ rights, and I fight against drugs, prostitution and pornography. None of these can possibly be the view of a person who has been endorsed as a potential Prime Minister by Owen Jones. But if any of them is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. If you would rather have the sitting MP, then do not pretend to hold any of those views. This is a test of credibility.

I would move to expel Anne Marie Morris from the House of Commons for her public use of the n-word, which would now be career-ending in South Africa or in the Southern United States, and I deplore the imported New York practice of smearing black activists as anti-Semitic when they become so uppity as to disturb the Liberal Establishment. The sitting MP makes great play of her supposed anti-racist credentials, but no motion to expel Morris has been tabled in her name. If any of these is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. But if you would rather have the sitting MP, then do not pretend to hold any of those views. This is a test of credibility.

My Westminster office would be a global centre for the broadly based alternative to neoliberal economic policy and to neoconservative foreign policy, and I am both a product and a feature of the political pluralism of North West Durham, where Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats, the Conservative parliamentary candidate won 34 per cent of the vote last year, the Liberal Democrat candidate cut the Labour majority in half in 2010, and an Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010. Wear Valley was controlled for a time by the Liberal Democrats, who remained numerous on it until its abolition. Derwentside was in practice controlled by an alliance between the Independents and that section of the local Labour Party which now supports my parliamentary candidacy; its Leader from that time, Councillor Alex Watson OBE, is one of my Campaign Patrons.

Therefore, I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people. 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 whose pay Durham County Council had cut by 23 per cent.

If any of these is your view, then I need £10,000 in order to stand for Parliament with any chance of winning. But if you would rather have the sitting MP, then do not pretend to hold any of those views. She prides herself on her inability to conduct civilised relations with people who are not of her political persuasion, and she has appointed as her Political Advisor the man whose political advice has led the Teaching Assistants to their present, sorry state. Alex Watson has been one of the Teaching Assistants’ champions, as has my other Campaign Patron, a legendary local trade unionist called Davey Ayre. This is a test of credibility.

I can be contacted via davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.