Calling At Peterborough

Like everyone else, I had expected the Brexit Party to win the Peterborough by-election. But since Labour held on, and with a considerably increased majority, there will be no attempt at a coup against Jeremy Corbyn after all. 

The Conservative Leadership ambitions of Boris Johnson or any other Brexiteer, real or pretended, now seem a great deal less realistic. And although the SDP made a valiant effort, it made no progress; it is simply the wrong vehicle, as much as anything else because of its name and because of the history that it insists on claiming as its own.

Johnson, by the way, is the Conservative Party's Harriet Harman. Her past association with the Paedophile Information Exchange would be career-ending in anyone else, and so would pretty much everything that he has ever said or done. Even the suggestion or the pretence of an impending criminal trial would keep one off Lanchester Parish Council, but it is apparently no bar to becoming Prime Minister. Or, at any rate, it is no bar if one is Boris Johnson.

Last night, we saw the electorate's dismissal out of hand of the whole suggestion of Labour anti-Semitism, so that the "investigation" by the previously unheard of "Equality and Human Rights Commission" ought certainly to be discontinued, and that jumped up body itself ought at least arguably to be abolished. It is also time to correct lazy, or bought and paid for, uses of the term "the international definition of anti-Semitism". It is no such thing, and it has no legal standing even in this country, never mind "internationally".

And last night, we saw again the three partially overlapping tendencies that matter in British politics today: the economically egalitarian and internationally pacific Left, Brexit both in itself and for what it is held to represent, and Remain both in itself and for what it is held to represent, proudly populist all. One or more of those will hold the balance of power in the coming hung Parliament: whatever the Brexit Party has become on the Hard Right, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens at the intersection of Remain and, in their own minds, the Left.

But what of the intersection of Brexit and the Left? What of the people and places whose votes had delivered the EU referendum for Leave, and whose votes had delivered the European Elections for the Brexit Party? We are victims, rather than allies, of Thatcherism, of Blairism, of neoliberalism, of whatever we are now supposed to call it, of everything that the Brexit Party will represent once Nigel Farage has written a General Election manifesto. And we are victims, rather than allies, of identity politics, of unrestricted migration, of Malthusian and anti-industrial approaches to environmental questions, and so on. What of us? In the coming hung Parliament, we need our people to hold the balance of power.

A new party will be registered before House of Commons rises for the summer recess, even if I have to pay for it myself, ongoing lawfare or no ongoing lawfare. And I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.