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.