And Throw Away The Key

In a truly just world, Benjamin Netanyahu and Justin Trudeau would end up in the same cell.

#MakeAllWomenSafe, Indeed

Since there cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs or prostitution, including pornography, so there must not be a “free” market in general. Since there cannot be a “free” market in drugs or prostitution, but not in general, so there must not be a “free” market in drugs or prostitution.

We need to make it a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. The Universal Basic Income, and Modern Monetary Theory’s Jobs Guarantee, would remove any conceivable excuse for prostituting oneself.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Blues, Not Jews

The triumph of the Conservative Establishment over the Brexiteers is the triumph of the "I'm not political, I'm a Tory" tendency.

That tendency is perfectly embodied by Theresa May and by her closest allies, such as Philip Hammond, David Lidington and Damian Green, as well as by those Cabinet Ministers who had threatened to resign if a No Deal Brexit were not ruled out, namely Amber Rudd, Greg Clark and David Gauke.

Now, I am sure that none of those people is personally anti-Semitic. But their political roots are in the situation after the First World War, when Toryism was redefined by means of one of the great acts of triangulation. In its own mind, it placed itself both between and above two opposite extremes.

One extreme was seen as Liberalism: individualistic, meritocratic (although the word had not yet been coined), bourgeois, commercial, American, Jewish. The other extreme was seen as Socialism: collectivist, egalitarian, proletarian, industrial, Soviet, Jewish.

To be any of those things very much or, in several cases, at all was to be an extremist, and defined by an ideology in the eyes of people who prided themselves on having none. Such has never quite ceased to be the case, and that tendency is now not merely ascendant again, but triumphant.

This, therefore, is the Government of Shamima's Law, whereby anyone who might be entitled to another nationality, whether or not they held it or wanted it, can now be stripped of British citizenship at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen.

That has made merely provisional the British citizenship of everyone who would qualify under the Israeli Law of Return. That is to say, of every British Jew, quite expansively defined.

But even by that expansive definition, unless I am very much mistaken, no member of the present Cabinet is Jewish. Though few in number, British Jews are an educated and politicised lot, so it is quite unusual for there to be none in the Cabinet.

Think on.

Don't Be Woolly

By far the biggest story in the world today, the one that should be leading every bulletin, is Kashmir.

Two nuclear-armed states are shooting at each other. So much for nuclear deterrence, but we already knew that.

For a solution in Kashmir based on the self-determination of its people, we, by which I mean the human race, obviously need India and Pakistan.

For India, we need Russia, which retains a close alliance to India going back to the Soviet period, although very far from stuck there.

And for Pakistan, we need China, since the two have one of the closest bilateral relationships on earth.

This is the real world.

Don't Be Yellow

Much as I respect Owen Temple and Martin Walker, I am no Lib Dem. Even by my standards, I am particularly suspicious of that Whig tradition.

But the Lib Dems have the same number of MPs as the Independent Group, and all of theirs were elected as Lib Dems.

At the very least, then, they deserve equal coverage.

If You Can't Hack It

If you believe Michael Cohen, then you'll believe anyone.

But even if you did, then beyond the suggestion that Donald Trump might be personally unpleasant in whatever way, where would be the "scandal"?

He knew about the hack? Well, politics and journalism are rough old trades. Ask the Clintons.

Feel The Bern, And Get Burnt

CJ Hopkins and Neil Clark have the measure of Bernie Sanders. And he doesn't measure up.

Further Opportunities To Secure Support

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Richard Burgon should be the next Leader of the Labour Party.

Still Worth The Gamble

This is why we still need Tom Watson.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 77

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 97

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 98

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 104

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 105

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Trial And Error

Cardinal Pell stands "convicted" on the uncorroborated evidence of one witness, without forensic evidence, without a pattern of behaviour, and without a confession. Good luck to his enemies with that on appeal. His representatives might also look into who and what the jurors were. But that this "case" was ever brought means that I have to welcome His Eminence to the club. 

Beginning on 1st April, hilariously enough and if they can be bothered to humiliate themselves even further, I am supposed to stand trial at Durham Crown Court for "five days plus", despite the supposedly incontrovertible evidence against me. This will be the third attempt to put me on trial, and it will be two years after I was charged. Do not cancel any holidays to be there. The Prosecution certainly will not have done so.

There are to be two counts. One arises out of the uncorroborated evidence of one witness (if that, because I am certain that he never said it but I am not at liberty to contact him), without forensic evidence, without a pattern of behaviour, and without a confession. The other, without which the first would be impossible, arises out of no witness testimony, no forensic evidence, no pattern of behaviour, and no confession.

It is universally accepted that the crime alleged simply did not happen, but that the State is determined to persecute a political dissident into silence. This whole thing began only in order to keep me off Durham County Council, and it is being continued only in order to keep me out of Parliament. You pay for this.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Chris Williamson Is Right

The allegation of widespread anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party has now been disproved twice. 

On the more recent occasion, one in five of all complaints, of which there were only a thousand and four hundred of those were against people who were not Labour Party members, was found to have come from the person who is known to the great Professor Norman Finkelstein as "Barking Yenta".

She, The Right Honourable Dame Margaret Hodge MP, has had a vendetta against Corbyn for more than 30 years, since she was the Leader of Islington Borough Council. During that time, its children's homes were found to be run as brothels. Tony Blair later made her the Minister for Children.

Six hundred complaints against Labour Party members did not mean complaints against six hundred different Labour Party members. Just as they might all have been made by the same person, and that was not very far wide of the mark, so they might all have been made against the same person. Certainly, anything resulting in less than an expulsion cannot be seen as having been proven, and there have been all of 12 expulsions. Twelve. In a party of more than half a million. 

Yet still there is an apologetic tone, a craven cringe, towards textbook examples of the divisive and anti-democratic role of self-appointed "community leaders": the Community Security Trust, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Chief Rabbinate, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. That last supports the Kahanist Otzma Yehudit party to which Benjamin Netanyahu is now allied. The United Kingdom rightly banned Rabbi Meir Kahane from setting foot here to his dying day.

Moreover, it is the present Government that, in its creation of Shamima's Law whereby anyone who might be entitled to another nationality, whether or not they held it or wanted it, can now be stripped of British citizenship at a stroke of the Home Secretary's pen, has made merely provisional the British citizenship of everyone who would qualify under the Israeli Law of Return. That is to say, of every British Jew, quite expansively defined.

As for Luciana Berger, she needs to be told that her First Pregnant Woman in the History of the World act has already been done, here in North West Durham.

Corbyn's anti-austerity rallying cry at today's Prime Minister's Questions was mostly aimed at the Independent Group and its fellow-travellers, and it will have hit them very hard. It was a magnificently two-fingered "good riddance" to them. Now to get Chris Leslie and Chuka Umunna out of the rather fine office for Labour MPs in which they are squatting. A far more deserving occupant would be Chris Williamson.

But in any event, along with the low-hanging fruit of depriving the Independent Group of their seats, along with electing Marc Wadsworth against either Hodge or Ruth Smeeth as he chooses, and along with electing George Galloway in place of Jess Phillips at Birmingham Yardley, the highest priority must be given to re-electing Chris at Derby North. With or without the Labour Party.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

And remember that my proposal to work with Independents, with Conservatives and with Liberal Democrats recalls the Red-Blue Coalition that used to control Derby City Council. The Leader of that Coalition, and thus of that Council, was Chris Williamson.

Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn, And The New McCarthyism

David Hearst writes: 

In the year I was born, 1954, the Cold War was at its height and an American senator was laying waste to the careers of the innocent by denouncing them as communist sympathisers, reds under the bed. 

His name, Joseph McCarthy, has entered the lexicon of political notoriety. McCarthyism is defined today as "the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence". 

Exactly the same is happening to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his adviser Seumas Milne, a former colleague of mine on The Guardian. McCarthy no longer exists. But the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, still does. 

Evil genius 

On Sunday, Dearlove made national headlines by telling the Mail on Sunday that Milne was a security risk who would have to be fired if Corbyn became prime minister. 

"Anyone with his sort of background could not be let anywhere near classified information. It would be out of the question," Dearlove said. "That means Corbyn could not make the judgments and decisions a PM has to make unless he stopped consulting him." 

The MoS editorial went further. Milne, they decided, was not an idiot like his boss, Corbyn. The received wisdom about the popular Labour leader is that he is not too bright. No, Milne was much more dangerous than that because he was intelligent, educated at Oxford, and a son of the establishment. One of them. 

"Mr Milne is not some naive patsy. He is a serious operator. He knows what he is doing when he sympathises with Middle Eastern terror groups and when he hobnobs with Vladimir Putin’s regime. 

"His lifelong, highly selective hostility to the state of Israel is a long-standing feature of the intellectual hard Left to which he belongs. But it helps to sustain the increasing isolation of, and mistreatment of, individual Jews in the Corbyn Labour Party." 

The root of anti-Semitism 

For those of you circling the earth on the International Space Station, and whose jaws must be dropping at the crudity and mendacity of this political discourse, I promise you I am not making this up. It's in black and white.  

So Milne’s sin is that he is not just a Palestinian-terrorist-Putin-sympathising Trot, not just that he has somehow become the root of the cancer of anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but that he is a class traitor. 

"Unlike his bumbling and poorly informed chief, Mr Milne comes from Britain’s elite class and is a highly educated and very intelligent man. This is what makes his extraordinary career and his unconventional political positions so important," the MoS wrote. 

One onslaught followed with another. Within minutes, Tom Watson, Corbyn’s deputy, said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: "The test for him as leader is to eradicate anti-Semitism. It is not Labour Party members who will be the judge of that, it is the British Jewish community. I think he understands now that if he is ever to be prime minister he needs to rebuild that trust." 

What is the truth?

Let me be clear about where I stand in all this. Like many Londoners, I disagree with Corbyn over Brexit, who held firm to the view, when I interviewed him at the start of his tenure as leader, that it would be wrong to hold a second referendum. 

I also hold no truck with anti-Semitism. Unlike Luciana Berger , the MP who resigned claiming anti-Semitism had taken root in the party, I know what it means to be hounded out of town as a Jew. My mother and father fled Vienna in 1936 and 1938 respectively and in my loft there is a stack of Nazi documents listing the equipment impounded from my grandfather’s dental surgery.

The Nazis proudly recorded their crimes. Each page of carefully typed inventory ends with the words "Heil Hitler". When an anti-Nazi slogan was daubed on the wall outside my grandfather’s dental practice, a Nazi gang forced him to scrub it off … with a toothbrush. 

Corbyn or Milne can defend themselves. My concern in writing this is the truth: a quaint, minority pursuit these days, I admit, but one to which I remain whimsically attached. Why? Because in at least two of the three charges against Milne, I was either personally involved or witnessed the same thing myself as a journalist. 

The charge sheet 

The charge sheet against Milne goes as follows: that, as Oxford student, he stayed in Beirut at the height of the civil war in 1977 with an array of leftist Palestinian militants; that on a trip to Jerusalem with Corbyn, he met two members of Hamas on a trip paid for by MEMO, a UK organisation promoting the Palestinian cause; that soon after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Milne chaired a meeting in Sochi addressed by Vladimir Putin, all expenses paid by the Russians. 

Let me deal with this in reverse order. The meeting Milne chaired was organised by the Valdai International Discussion Club. This is a group of about 40 specialists on Russia; journalists, academics, and analysts who meet Putin once a year.

Milne was in good company - the New York Times, the Economist, the FT, the Times, Brookings Institution were regulars, for different reasons. For the journalists it was access. For the US analysts, it was intelligence. The media had different policies on whether to accept the lavish hospitality. The NYT and FT insisted on paying for the trip themselves. The other media, including The Guardian, were less fastidious. 

The only reason Milne was invited as a journalist from The Guardian was because I had dropped out. It was when I heard Putin repeating the same lines he used the year before that I decided enough was enough. 

Milne was initially invited to Sochi as a speaker, although he found when he got there that he was chairing a meeting - a common enough occurrence with these gigs. The fuss in The Guardian was initially about him going to Sochi after Russia was considered beyond the pale following its take over of parts of Ukraine.

Milne was phoned up by Jonathan Freedland as his plane was on the tarmac, although the trip had already been signed off by the company's foreign travel system in which you had to declare where you were going and who was paying. Curiously, no such attention had been paid to Timothy Garton Ash's expenses-paid trips because they had been paid by governments considered allies. 

MI6 hobnobs with Putin 

However this list of organisations hobnobbing with Putin is not exhaustive. I have a little bit of intelligence for Dearlove and the Mail on Sunday about whom else attended Valdai, and "hobnobbed with Putin". It is someone of whom Dearlove cannot be unaware: his successor at MI6, and the Joint Intelligence Committee, Sir John Scarlett. 

I had a drink with the man. Scarlett travelled on a new UK passport, scrubbed clean for the visit. Scarlett’s meeting with Putin took place in a bizarre setting, accurately described by fellow Valdai members Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy of the Brookings Institution, who co-authored a biography of the Russian president. 

Hill, who is another Brit, sat next to Putin in 2010 and today she is Donald Trump’s chief Russia adviser and regarded as a restraining influence. Presumably, Hill is not regarded by MI6 as a security threat, although she was a serial hobnobber with Putin. 

The encounter between Putin and Scarlett took place at an old Soviet dairy turned into an equestrian centre for Russia’s new elite, in the discrete setting of the woods outside Moscow. Putin had tired of presenting himself to us at official venues and wanted to display himself as a representative of New Russia - rich, confident and in your face. 

The stage setting, a wooden hunting lodge, turned out to be just another elaborate piece of presidential theatre. We found out it had been rebuilt just for this meal. There were about 40 of us seated on a long trestle table that formed a large square. Putin sat about seven place settings along from me. 

We noticed that his press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, passed two notes, which his boss slipped into his top pocket, during a question and answer session that lasted over two and a half hours. On one of them, Peskov alerted his boss to the presence of Scarlett sitting opposite in the extreme left hand corner of the square. 

The former KGB man wanted to make a point of welcoming MI6 to his elite table. True to tradition, the meeting of the two spymasters went off the rails. Peskov told Putin that Scarlett was the one wearing the red poppy. The problem was that the meeting fell on the anniversary of Armistice Day, the end of the First World War, and a number of Brits attending the dinner were wearing poppies.

So Putin, who is short sighted but too vain to wear contact lenses, alighted on Anatol Lieven, a UK academic, and accorded him the honour of running MI6 from 2004 to 2009. Lieven was confused when Putin referred to him as a "former colleague". 

Dearlove cannot have erased this from his memory. Nor can he have forgotten how he, Dearlove, arranged for his boss Tony Blair to endorse Putin when he was just prime minister. He once admitted regretting having arranged for Blair to meet Putin in Saint Petersburg. So Milne shaking hands with Putin is treason. But MI6’s Scarlett doing the same is not? 

The third man 

There is another significant memory lapse in the account of Milne and Corbyn meeting two Hamas members on a trip funded by MEMO. To be invited by MEMO is not a sin. Jack Straw and Paddy Ashdown have both spoken at MEMO conferences. 

The two Hamas men were elected members of the Palestinian Legislative Council who had pitched a tent in Jerusalem in protest at an Israel court order to deport them to the West Bank. Every journalist I know at the time went to see them, including me. 

But the memory lapse is much more significant. There was a third man present, who has since been air brushed out of this now incriminating encounter. It was none other than the “moderate” Labour MP Andy Slaughter, who was leader of the group. 

Slaughter resigned from Corbyn’s front bench, so he is obviously not a Corbynista. But he met Hamas and engaged with them as intently as Corbyn and Milne did. Why has he been excluded from everyone’s recollection of this damning piece of evidence? 

Milne went on the MEMO trip as a columnist. When pressure grew on The Guardian to acknowledge paid trips, Milne discovered that the British pro-Israel lobby, BICOM, had arranged over 50 visits for Guardian journalists to Israel in recent years without any paid visit being acknowledged by the newspaper. Many Guardian journalists had been on BICOM freebies more than once. I was one of them. 

I have no personal experience of what happened to Milne before he joined The Guardian. He went to Beirut in 1977 when he was a student at Oxford. This was in the middle of a bitter civil war and he circulated amid a number of leftist Palestinian factions, controlled by an organisation no more radical than the PLO, which went on to recognise Israel. End of story. But it's not. No detail of Milne’s criminal record is too small to be omitted. 

It's all about Israel 

I will end with just two observations. The Labour Party could very well split if more defections are in the offing. These interventions by yesterday’s spooks are not casual, nor are they ill-timed. They are a direct attempt to stop a popular and democratically elected leader from becoming prime minister. 

They are, therefore, actively, consciously and cynically subverting British democracy. You may like Corbyn or loathe him. That's up to you, but you may never be allowed to express your opinion at the ballot box, if these guys have their way. 

And how would you feel if the tactics used on Corbyn were used on you? What would you do if your character had been assassinated repeatedly and you had no means of redress? Is this the way you want politics conducted in " the mother of all parliaments"? 

The second is that this debate about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is all about Israel, and whether indeed anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic. There are many British Jews who support Corbyn, who do not feel threatened by Corbyn’s pro-Palestinian stance and wrote of their support in a letter to The Guardian. 

The problem lies with the Board of Deputies which claims to speak for all Jews in Britain. These are the leaders who have appointed themselves judge, jury and hangman in each and every allegation of anti-Semitism. 

Their claim is fatally flawed when they cannot even bring themselves to condemn Benjamin Netanyahu for making a political alliance with the devotees of the late Meir Kahane. His Kach Party was outlawed after supporter Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer at the Cave of the Patriarch’s Mosque in Hebron 25 years ago today. This massacre led to the first Hamas suicide bombs. 

The Likud-leaning AIPAC condemned the Israeli prime minister, but the Board of Deputies could not. The board’s US partner, the American Jewish Committee, wrote: "The views of Otzma Yehudit are reprehensible. They do not reflect the core values that are the very foundation of the State of Israel." But the Board of Deputies was silent. 

Tal Ofer, deputy on the Board, tweeted on Friday: "The @BoardofDeputies have said they don’t want to comment on political parties and candidates during elections." Really? They have not stopped commenting on, and condemning, Corbyn and Labour in the beginning, middle and end of election campaigns. 

This is moral cowardice and hypocrisy of the highest order and the very heart of the struggle that is tearing not only the Labour Party apart but the British Jewish community as well. 

McCarthy would be smiling in his grave.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 76

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 96

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 97

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 103

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 104

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Deep Blue

The Prime Minister's announcement on Brexit, or the lack of it, comes after her de facto Deputy had this morning blithely described the Conservatives as "the party of the Centre". Whatever the opinions of others, that is how it sees itself, a view that it regards as self-evident.

After the First World War, Toryism was redefined by means of one of the great acts of triangulation. In its own mind, it placed itself both between and above two opposite extremes. 

One extreme was seen as being Liberalism: individualistic, meritocratic (although the word had not yet been coined), bourgeois, commercial, American. The other extreme was seen as being Socialism: collectivist, egalitarian, proletarian, industrial, Soviet.

To be any of those things very much or, in several cases, at all was to be an extremist, and defined by an ideology in the eyes of people who prided themselves on having none.

There is a reason why you can be talking for half an hour or more to a person who claims to be "not political", only to find out as an aside that you are conversing with the Conservative Leader of the Council, or the Chairman of the local Conservative Association, or someone like that. 

You will never, ever have that experience with a comparable Labour figure. No one ever says, "I'm not political, I'm Labour." But the people in question would consider it the most obvious and natural thing in the world to say in absolute seriousness, "I'm not political, I'm a Tory."

In fact, any English organisation, at least, that goes to the trouble of specifying that it is non-political is invariably full of Conservative supporters and even activists.

But the likes of the European Research Group are very political indeed. They are indeed defined by an ideology. Therefore, it is held, they are extremists. And therefore, it is held, they are not Tories.

To someone like Theresa May or David Lidington, that is axiomatic to what would, in normal circumstances, be the point of banality. These, however, are not normal circumstances. So they have had to act. And they have acted.

Ruling Out

Brexit has nothing to do with how people vote. We have already seen that once. Did Remain voters abandon either main party for the Lib Dems or whatever in 2017? Well, there you are, then. 

And anyone who talks about a realignment of British politics is probably very young, or else they would have heard it several times before, and certainly not very serious to anyone apart from themselves.

Now, to Theresa May's confirmation of the policy that had already been announced twice in the Daily Mail by a total of six different Ministers, none of whom had been rebuked in even so much as the very mildest terms. 

There is no Commons majority for a No Deal Brexit, in a House which it is worth mentioning does have an overall majority for the Conservatives and the DUP combined. 

So holding a Commons vote on a No Deal Brexit amounts to ruling it out. At that point, Article 50 will be "extended". 

Fully insured ships have already set sail for the ends of the earth on the clear understanding that that "extension" is going to last a very long time. Again, then, we already knew this.

Labour is not in a position to deliver a second referendum, and in any case today's Government announcement has removed the prospect of the circumstances under which it would have sought to have held one.

But the Conservatives are in a position to rule out a No Deal Brexit, and to "extend" Article 50 until there was no possibility of such a thing.

Today, what had already been clear was made official, that the Conservatives had been promising that to their implacably Remain paymasters for months.

Cast Your People's Vote Here

Laura Pidcock is now in favour of a second referendum, but I remain opposed to it. 

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Free Radical

Fiona Onasanya's appeal is ongoing, and the State is clearly preparing to lose it.

In any case, she would never have been charged in relation to a traffic infraction had she not offended the Crown Prosecution Service three times over, by her robustly left-wing rather than Liberal Establishment politics, by its roots in her robustly uppity blackness, and by the roots of that in a Christianity so robust that it dared to proclaim the Old Testament of Jesus Christ to be the Old Testament of Jesus Christ.

With those offences was she charged. Of those offences was she convicted. And for those offences was she imprisoned.

Pell-Mell?

Cardinal Pell's appeal is ongoing. 

And in any case, might there be any chance of prosecuting anyone who was not a Catholic priest for having sex with a teenage boy? 

Someone in the media, perhaps?

Rendering What Is Due

Mauritius has also done damn all for the Chagossians over the years. They are very badly treated there.

What matters now is self-determination. 

Not only, but not least, because that would close a base that has been vital to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to the practice of extraordinary rendition.

Anime et Fide?

Well, of sorts, I suppose.

Owen Jones is no friend of mine. But of course he is going to be the next MP for Stockport. We already knew that, because Ann Coffey will be 75 by the spring of 2022.

That is how these things are going to work. 

Not by deselection, or very rarely so. But because as MPs who reflected the Labour Party at the time of their first election retired, then they will be replaced with people who reflected it as it was today.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 75

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 95

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 96

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 102

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 103

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

This Is The Fifth Generation

By spreading hysteria about Huawei, all that Jeremy Fleming is saying is that, even in its own terms, GCHQ is just not very good. Does that really never occur to him?

But as Ren Zhengfei recently pointed out, Huawei is simply too advanced for the world to do without it. This is the world now. Be on the bus, or be under it.

Similarly, in order to bring about a solution in Kashmir, then the world needs China, which is closely allied to Pakistan, and the world needs Russia, which retains an alliance with India going back to the Soviet period.

This is the world now, the world of the BRICS, the world of Huawei, and the world of the Belt and Road Initiative. 

Criticise the Chinese, or the Russian, or the Indian, or the Pakistani Government all you like, and that ought to be a very great deal. But this is the world. Be on the bus, or be under it.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

In Tutela Nostra Limuria No More?

Well, look how we have exercised that charge. So, wonderful news, say I. And note that, although it has been a crossparty effort, Jeremy Corbyn has been fighting for this neglected and reviled cause for a very long time.

As Corbyn's enemies rally, they will invoke the memory of Denis Healey, Britain's first monetarist Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Defence Secretary who perpetrated the crime against the Chagossians. Let that tradition clear off to the oblivion of the Independent Group with all haste.

And always apply the Chagos Test to anyone who professes to support self-determination for the Falkland Islanders or anyone else. Unless they also support the Chagossians, and with the same amount of vigour, then dismiss them with contempt and derision.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

The Fragile Situation, Indeed

Being nasty does not in itself make people a threat to Britain. And in any case, the regime in Saudi Arabia is one of the two nastiest in the world, as well as being the ideological and financial powerhouse behind attacks on British streets. 

Yet its grip on British politics is so tight that it is hardly ever mentioned by anyone who is allowed a hearing. Those who do mention it, and who are denied a hearing, now include the Leader of the Opposition. And no, that is not Chuka Umunna, whatever the gatekeepers might think, or wish to have the rest of us think. 

Today, at Saudi Arabia's insistence, Britain has proscribed a governing party of a strategically vital country. That party and its supporters have never attacked Britain, because they have never had any cause to attack Britain. Well, they have cause now. If you declare people to be your enemies, then you may expect them to behave as such. 

Why have we done this? Well, the Conservative Party has been stung by the suggestion of defectors to the Independent Group that it is lurching away from the centre ground as defined by Tony Blair. It has been on to Blair, to ask him how it might reburnish its image. Blair has been paid $12 million by Saudi Arabia. And this is what he has recommended.

Blair's knowledge of Lebanese affairs is likely to be scanty. Ask him about Michel Aoun, or about Rafic Hariri. But he knows that Labour MPs finally lost patience with him when he supported the bombardment of Lebanon in 2006. And who won that one? Blair knows only two things about Hezbollah. But that is one of them. And the other is how well its Saudi enemies pay.

This does still have to be approved by Parliament. Before then, I hope that Hezbollah issues a statement along the following lines: "We have never considered the United Kingdom to be our enemy, or indeed given it very much thought at all. Hitherto, it has been irrelevant to us. We still cannot see how we are relevant to it. But if it chooses to declare us its enemy, then, however reluctantly, that is what we shall prove to be."

And while this business is flushing out the Dishonourable Members for Riyadh and Kiryat Arba, then someone needs to stand up and demand that, alongside banning a governing party in Lebanon, the British State also resume its historical approach to Kahanism by banning an impending governing party in Israel, Netanyahu's putative coalition partner, Otzma Yehudit. If not, why not?

Honda Knows That

James Woudhuysen writes:

Honda announced it would close its factory in Swindon last week. CEO Takahiro Hachigo insisted the motive wasn’t Brexit, but rather to ‘accelerate electrification’ of Honda’s cars. True or false? 

Brexit was a motive for Honda. But the prime mover was the growing crisis in the international car industry. 

Worse, that crisis runs deeper than the costs of converting factories to make electric cars. The crisis is now about China, and about the EU’s war on the car. 

Honda has decided to shutter not just Swindon, but also a plant in Turkey (which is inside the EU Customs Union). 

While it has had problems in Britain for years before Brexit, it has also decided to collapse production in Europe more generally. 

In the year to October 2018, Honda made just 136,000 cars in Europe; in Japan, it made 723,000; in the US, one million; and, in China, a stonking 1.2million. 

Even the ardently Remain Financial Times had to admit that Brexit had merely closed off, for Honda, ‘any plausible route’ to a turnaround, as well as giving it ‘a justification for defeat’. 

Similarly, electric cars spurred Honda’s move – not out of Britain, but out of Europe. 

Developing electric cars is expensive, and Europe is no place to reap economies of scale so as to offset costs. Indeed, Hachigo’s ‘accelerated electrification’ of the motor car just isn’t happening in Europe. 

Many believe that China’s growth slowdown, which is actually quite modest, has particularly hit the European car industry.  The looming ‘overhang’ of world tariff wars in cars also doesn’t help. 

But the real story about the car industry today is that China is forging ahead with electric cars. In 2017, China sold more than half of the world’s electric cars, twice as many as America. 

At 2.2 per cent, the penetration of electrics in overall sales of cars in China lagged that in Norway (39.2), Iceland (11.7) and Sweden (6.3).

But China was poised to overtake the Netherlands (2.7) and Finland (2.6), and already beat not just Britain and France (1.7), but also, significantly, Germany (1.6). 

For key countries in Europe, the annual volume of electric-car sales is still negligible. 

China’s own mainstream car brands are weak. But unlike places like Detroit and Stuttgart, burdened by the history of the internal combustion engine, China starts from a clean sheet of paper in electric-car production. 

Unlike Washington or Brussels, too, China is bulldozing its way into an infrastructure for electric cars. 

Compared with the volume-production threat represented by Chinese electric car-making right now, a No Deal Brexit is, for Honda and its rivals, merely a sideshow. 

Honda’s Hachigo himself said that he would strengthen his business in Europe, ‘including electrification’, through ‘collaboration with our operations in China’. 

And though nobody yet knows just what US Department of Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said in his 17 February report to Donald Trump on car imports as a danger to US national security, we can be sure that not just Europe, but also China, was in the frame. 

Of course, Western car-makers see in China not just a threat, but also a volume market for cars of all sorts. After all, China builds about 10,000km of new motorway each year. 

But Europe is very different. The EU’s regulators, national governments and city administrations are profoundly hostile to the car. That’s the other main impulse behind Honda’s decision. 

For example, the EU’s general court, part of the European Court of Justice, has upheld an anti-pollution complaint brought by the cities of Brussels, Madrid and Paris. 

Deepening the regulatory fallout from the Volkswagen scandal of 2015, it has insisted that makers of diesel cars have until December to lower their emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from more than 160mg per km to 80mg. 

Even the European Commission has joined car-makers in protesting that this deadline could bring a ‘huge hit’ to sales. In Europe in 2017, little more than 700,000 electric cars were on the road; in China, 1.2million were, representing a colossal 40 per cent of the world’s stock. 

Honda knows that.

Don't Be A Burke

For all the greatness of Edmund Burke, he died in 1797, and there were no party designations on ballot papers in those days.

Both the candidate's name and that designation now appear. Both are now read out at the declaration of the result.

Therefore, if either changes, then there does now need to be a by-election.

In any case, on what else, exactly, would the Independent Group defer to Burke? What else are they even aware that he ever said?

Loyalty To The Resistance?

Britain has just declared 12 members of the Lebanese Parliament, around one tenth of the total and including two Cabinet Ministers without whom there would simply be no Lebanese Government, to be members of a "terrorist organisation".

As in the United States, that is what Saudi Arabia demands, so that is what has to happen. Note that this "terrorist organisation" has never attacked Britain, and that is in the front line of the successful war against the so-called Islamic State on behalf of which Britain had been all ready to bomb Syria at the time that Shamima Begum went off to join it there.

But MPs got wise then. And they need to get wise now.

Somewhere Beyond The Sea?

Ships have now set sail from Britain, not knowing whether or not they will be allowed to unload their cargoes by the time that they got to Japan?

And ships have now set sail from Japan, not knowing whether or not they will be allowed to unload their cargoes by the time that they got to Britain?

Bollocks, frankly. Utter bollocks.

Nobody would insure that, and every one of those ships is fully insured.

A delay in Article 50, probably until the end of the calendar year and possibly for longer than that, has already been agreed.

Everybody who is deemed to need to know that already knows it.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 74

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 95

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 101

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: 102

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

By Extension

The cancellation of Wednesday's Commons vote can only mean that an "extension" of Article 50 has already been arranged. Who is supposed to enforce the original date? The Supreme Court? Well, there you are then.

Yesterday's Daily Mail article by Amber Rudd, Greg Clarke and David Gauke was not a departure from Government policy, but an expression of Government policy. It was not a breach of collective responsibility, but an exercise in collective responsibility.

Theresa May and her party have been badly stung by the suggestion of three of its former MPs that it is no longer the conventionally defined centrist party of its own self-image, and not least of hers, but rather in some sense right-wing.

To the Conservatives, the Right, whether in any of the Continental or in any of the American forms, is like Communism, or historically Catholicism.

That is to say, they regret to have to admit that it does exist on the fringes of British society, but it is fundamentally alien to these shores, and it is certainly nothing to do with the Tories.

Indeed, in its own mind, one of the main aims of the Conservative Party is to ensure that, whether in any of the Continental or in any of the American forms, the Right never gains any kind of foothold on This Sceptered Isle.

May is going before the end of this Parliament. Before the end of this Parliament, expect to see Anna Soubry in the Cabinet. Not Andrew Bridgen. Not Jacob Rees-Mogg. Anna Soubry. And quite possibly Chris Leslie and Chuka Umunna as well.

A Security Risk, Indeed

If it is not Jeremy Hunt's fantasy that Slovenia was once "a Soviet vassal state", then it is Richard Dearlove, of the Iraq Dodgy Dossier, with the gall to open his mouth on the subject of Seamus Milne or anything else. 

Why is Dearlove not in prison? Put me in the next hung Parliament, and he will be. It has become a local commonplace that I am on 30-30-30 with Labour and the Conservatives here at North West Durham, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Have The Decency

As well as saying what we all knew that he would say about the Independent Group, and as well as hitting the nail on the head about Shamima Begum and politicians who take away people’s citizenship, Peter Hitchens writes: 

Lord Matthews, the judge presiding over the horrible trial of the killer of six-year-old Alesha MacPhail, says he has ‘no idea’ why the culprit, Aaron Campbell, 16, committed ‘some of the most wicked and evil crimes this court has ever heard of in decades of dealing with depravity’. 

The little girl’s body was discovered with 117 injuries, so dreadful they even shocked an experienced pathologist. 

Well, I have an idea. I did what I always do when I hear of violent crimes which are both brutal and inexplicable. 

As soon as I heard the appalling details of this case, which took place on the peaceful Isle of Bute, I searched for the word ‘cannabis’ in the trial records. 

And immediately, as usual, I found that the accused was known to be a regular user of this drug.

It really is time to blast aside the PR spin which claims that marijuana is a ‘soft’, safe drug or even an actual medicine. It is nothing of the kind. Users all too often become mentally ill. 

And they are all too often found – as in the Alesha MacPhail case – to be the perpetrators of terrible, violent crime. At the very least, this link must be investigated. 

The campaign to legalise marijuana, under these circumstances, is quite extraordinarily irresponsible and stupid. These involved should have the decency to drop it, now.

Toadmeister Watch: Day 73

I repeat my challenge to Toby Young to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Either that, or he has conceded every point here.

His party took 34 per cent of the vote at North West Durham last time. Labour, it and I are now universally accepted as being on 30-30-30, so that any one of us could be the First Past the Post. 

But I do not stand against people. I stand for things. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.

I will stand for this seat, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Yaxley-Lennon Watch: Day 93

I warmly welcome Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who calls himself "Tommy Robinson" but who would have to give his real name on the ballot paper, as the UKIP candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham. Or, at any rate, as a candidate for this seat, of any party or none.

Either that, or he is running scared of the white working class. After all, I am mixed-race, and the sitting MP, who will presumably be the Labour candidate, has a mixed-race child. We are both impeccably middle-class (Google the house prices in Riding Mill, whence she hails), as the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat candidates will doubtless also be. 

From his own point of view, then, beating us ought to be a doddle.

Not that my candidacy is in any way conditional on his. Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. I will stand for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

This post will appear here daily until Yaxley-Lennon officially runs away with his tail between his legs by denying that he is a parliamentary candidate for North West Durham.

Pidcock-Kamm Watch: Day 94

Either Laura Pidcock is proud that she is now Oliver Kamm's endorsed candidate for this parliamentary seat of North West Durham, or she will tweet the following:

"I reject the endorsement of @OliverKamm, and I have made a donation to @NeilClark66's legal fund against him," followed by the link to Neil's fund.

This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Henig Watch: Day 100

Rather magnanimously, considering how he became the Leader of Durham County Council in the first place, the Durham Miners' Association has permitted Simon "Third Generation Who's Who Entrants Are Above The Law" Henig to sit on the platform of the last two Durham Miners' Galas.

On both occasions, he has of course shared that platform with the principal speaker, Jeremy Corbyn. It is therefore the least to be expected that @SimonHenig will tweet the simple formula, ".@jeremycorbyn is not an anti-Semite." This post will appear here daily until that tweet has been posted.

Councillor Watch: Day 101

Hilariously, the third attempt to put me on trial is due to begin on 1st April. That will be one year after the second failed attempt, and two years after I was charged. 

The only purpose of this whole business has been to stop me from standing for Durham County Council (failed), to stop me from being elected (succeeded, because nothing else would have done), and to stop me from standing for Parliament (also doomed to fail, if I can raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign).

No one, absolutely no one at all, has ever suggested that I committed the acts alleged, or even that those acts ever really took place.

Specifically, until such time as they notify otherwise to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, then it is a matter of record that not only does every member of Durham County Council believe me to be innocent of the charges against me, but every member of Durham County Council believes that the acts alleged never happened in actual fact.

This post will appear here daily until further notice.

Unaligned?

British politics is not going to realign, anyway, because it is not like that. By the way, the electoral system is an effect, and not a cause, of what it is like. It would be like that under any electoral system.

But even if there were to be a realignment, then it would not be around Brexit, because Brexit has nothing to do with how anyone votes. 

Peter Hitchens will make short shrift of all of this tomorrow. His line will probably be, "The Tory split should have come from the Right."

But no. It is Theresa May who has been declared so far to the right that she is off the chart, as Jeremy Corbyn has been declared so far to the left that he is off the chart. 

And whereas his party is proud of it, hers is stung to the heart, and has resolved in the mighty Mail to mend its ways.

Now watch it do precisely that, and purge the dangerous right-wing extremism of Theresa May.

Mull This Over

The Independent Group is being funded by Charlie Mullins.

How were eight of these 11 people ever in the Labour Party? I mean, how? 

And why? From their own point of view, to what conceivable purpose?

Too Yellow To Report It

The big news today is that a bus is on fire in far Venezuela.

Just as well that there is nothing going on in, say, France, isn't it?

Wash Out The Po

I don't know whether that title works in America, but I couldn't resist it.

Good luck to Nick Sandmann is seeking $250 million from The Washington Post, because that was how much Jeff Bezos paid in cash for it in 2013, so that is literally every penny that it is worth. A quarter of a billion dollars.

In picking a side here, ask what the liberal media have ever done for you. Ask how sorry you would be to see them taken down. Well, there you are, then.

Everyone Should Have The Chance To Learn Music

Megan Birchall writes:

I am a musician — I have played in national orchestras and although I never intend to go professional, the joy that music has brought to me can never be underestimated. 

I began playing when I was in Year 3 at my primary school as part of the Wider Opportunities scheme which has been delivered to more than two million nationally and from then on — admittedly changing instruments several times until I finally settled on saxophone aged 11 — I have never stopped playing. 

If there is one thing I can truly say that music brought me it was a sense of camaraderie. As someone who never quite fit in, the music department at my school, along with those involved in it, gave me a sanctuary that I couldn’t have done without. 

Amid teaching us timings and harmonies, we bonded as a group. Performing in an ensemble, whether on an instrument or in a choir, nurtures patience as you go over the same few bars over and over, trying to near perfection. 

I can certainly say, as I imagine many others can, that over time music helps to develop an eye — or ear — for detail as you try to correct every little fault. That’s not to say music is a harsh, demanding environment to grow up in, but it does take commitment. 

An abundance of studies have been written over the years, demonstrating the benefits of children engaging in music from a young age, but studies can’t truly capture that bond that you gain from performing with your peers, nor can they explain the abstract feeling that every time you perform, you feel as though you’re creating something truly special. 

No two performances will ever be exactly the same and you feel that as you perform. Of course, for those who have never seriously engaged in music, this probably sounds like a load of balderdash. 

However, a study published by the University of Kansas in 2007 showed that students in schools with better music programmes scored an average of 20 per cent higher in maths and English, regardless of any of socioeconomic factors that could possibly influence it. 

Similarly, when playing percussive instruments, younger children are able to develop their hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills at a much faster rate than their peers. 

Music has been proven to develop brain functions as it crucially uses both the left and right side of the brain, helping to massively increase cognitive functions. Even the social benefits I mentioned previously have been well documented. 

Whether the child goes on to pursue music or not — and the hefty majority don’t, going on to a wide range of careers instead and enjoying music solely as a hobby — the patience, discipline and other necessary skills developed by music carry over to whatever they decide to move on to and are crucial to allowing them to excel, possibly even giving them an advantage over their less musical peers. 

Speaking as a member of the Labour Party, I think that we need to more openly demand that music and other arts subjects aren’t going to bear the burden of Tory cuts — especially given the proven benefits of allowing young people to engage with a musical education consistently as they grow older. 

Of course, core subjects like English and maths need to be prioritised, but why should music be the first to be cut when it comes to extracurricular activities? Decades of studies demonstrate the benefits of giving young people access to a musical education, so why is it that it’s usually the first to go? Do we not owe it to our young people to allow them an opportunity to develop creatively?

Venezuela And Trump’s Plunder Doctrine

In The American Conservative, which is on a roll at the moment, my friend Daniel Larison writes:

It seems that the idea of attacking Venezuela is never very far from Trump’s mind:

In a July 2017 private briefing with intelligence officials, President Donald Trump apparently asked why the US wasn’t at war with Venezuela, noting that “they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.”

The latest claim is found in Andrew McCabe’s book, but it shouldn’t be dismissed. It is consistent with Trump’s many public and private statements floating the idea of invading Venezuela.

Trump first publicly threatened military intervention as an option in August 2017. This latest report indicates that he was already thinking along these lines at least a month earlier.

Trump returned to this idea again and again in private meetings with advisers and regional leaders, and it didn’t seem to matter that everyone he talked to about it told him why it would be a disaster.

Just a few weeks ago, Trump was once again musing about an invasion to Lindsey Graham, who described the president as being “really hawkish” on Venezuela.

In the past, Trump’s advisers and U.S. regional partners have dissuaded the president from pressing ahead with his horrible idea, but it keeps coming up for two important reasons: Trump is absolutely not a non-interventionist, and he sees countries rich in natural resources as desirable targets for plunder.

Trump’s initial support for intervening in Libya included the suggestion that the U.S. should get to take control of the country’s oil as a reward. His belated opposition to the Iraq war was founded on his dissatisfaction with the fact that the U.S. didn’t take Iraq’s oil.

He has expressed the hope that “maybe we’ll get another chance” to do so. It is easy to believe that Trump entertained the idea of war with Venezuela for the express purpose of seizing their oil resources, because he has consistently and repeatedly expressed an interest in plundering the resources of other countries as spoils of war.

This is what I call Trump’s “plunder doctrine,” and it is one of the few consistent features of his foreign policy worldview.

That bodes ill for Trump’s present and future decisions on Venezuela policy, and it should be a warning to all of us that the president will have no problem with starting an unnecessary and illegal war if he thinks there is some advantage to be gained.

The Fake News About Humanitarian Aid And Venezuela

Via the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, Alan Maclead writes:

In recent times the international media, including many who promised to “resist” the dangerous commander-in-chief Donald Trump, have been awash with stories about Nicolas Maduro blocking US “humanitarian aid” reaching Venezuela. 

Maduro is said to have even blocked a bridge in his desperation to starve his own people (see, for example, CNN, CBC, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, ABC, Bloomberg, The Guardian). 

A constant flow of stories such as this have served to establish a narrative of a dictator blocking a benevolent US government from helping its desperate people. Something must be done! 

Virtually unreported in the humanitarian aid story are several inconvenient truths that contradict the official US government narrative the media is so closely parroting. 

Firstly, the “aid” is not recognized as such at all. 

For shipments to qualify as aid, they must be given indiscriminately. The US “aid” appears destined only for Juan Guaidó, the US-backed self-appointed president. 

The Red Cross and the United Nations have refused to help the US or to recognize Trump’s shipments as aid. Indeed, the United Nations has formally condemned the US’ actions in Venezuela. 

For their part, the Venezuelan government has been very eager to accept genuine aid, and is currently working with the UN to distribute supplies. 

The UN Human Rights Council denounced Trump’s sanctions (illegal even under OAS law), noting that they specifically target “the poor and most vulnerable classes”, calling on all member states to break them and even began discussing reparations that the US should pay to Venezuela. 

The sanctions have had a devastating effect on the country’s economy, reducing its oil output by 50 percent, according to the opposition’s own economics czar. 

Furthermore, Trump has threatened anyone breaking the sanctions with up to 30 years imprisonment. 

One UN special rapporteur described the sanctions as akin to a medieval siege and declared them a “crime against humanity.” 

Thus, much of Venezuela’s crisis is actually manufactured in Washington, though you would be extremely hard pressed to understand that from mainstream coverage. 

The appointment of the notorious Elliott Abrams should be a major red flag for anyone believing that the US government’s actions are benign. 

Abrams was responsible for organizing death squads across the region in the 1980s that carried out mass slaughters and genocide in Central America and was also prosecuted for selling arms to Iran to fund the Contra death squads, famously sending them weapons under the guise of humanitarian aid. 

History now repeats itself, as the Venezuelan government intercepted a shipment from Miami containing assault weapons, ammunition and military-grade radios on a Boeing 767 that had made nearly 40 round trips from the US to the region this year alone. 

Thus, the person famously caught for sending guns under the cover of aid to Nicaragua may already be sending guns under the cover of aid to Venezuela. 

In short, there is more than ample reason for Venezuelans to be highly skeptical of any help the US claims to be offering, especially considering the terrible harm the US has wrought on its economy. 

The $20 million shipment of “aid” is a drop in the ocean in comparison to the effect of the sanctions, estimated to be tens of billions of dollars. 

The “aid” therefore constitutes about what Venezuela loses every eight hours due to the sanctions. 

The very obvious thing any American with a genuine desire to help the Venezuelan people would advocate is to end the illegal sanctions and begin paying reparations. 

Yet all this has been almost completely ignored by the mainstream media, marching in lockstep with the Trump administration’s regime change agenda. 

Instead it presents a socialist dictatorship intent on spurning good faith US efforts to help its stricken people in an attempt to establish the grounds for escalation of US actions in the country. 

In 2017 the US blocked genuine Venezuelan aid to the victims of Hurricane Harvey. Yet this was not seen as the justification for an invasion of the US. 

The final piece in this farcical puzzle is that the bridge Maduro supposedly blocked to stop aid reaching the country has, in fact, never been opened and the barriers blocking the way have been in place since at least 2016, as five minutes on Google would have shown. 

Yet virtually the entire media – so obsessed with fact-checking everything Donald Trump says – went along with his administration’s PR stunt. 

That it was immediately exposed as a hoax meant nothing to the media outlets in question, who have not deleted or modified their stories since publication. 

Printing fake news about official enemies will not result in a ban from Twitter or deletion from Facebook, it seems. However, merely expressing an alternative opinion has done. 

The Venezuelan case proves the lie that the media genuinely cares about honest reporting, countering fake news and resisting Trump. 

When it comes to serving an imperial agenda, all is jettisoned out the window in favor of regime change propaganda. 

Also over there, Kurt Nimmo does not think much of the arrival of Richard Branson on the scene.