Trevor Who?

As he endorsed the sprightly 78-year-old Bernie Sanders, the ailing 78-year-old Jesse Jackson failed to notice that much of the upscale, white, Millennial crowd had no idea who he was. 

He waxed lyrical about battles and martyrdoms from before many of their parents were born. He tried to lead them in the old call-and-response, which left them utterly bewildered. He talked about all being precious in the sight of God, and you cut have cut the embarrassment with a knife.

The Civil Rights industrial complex has been more or less irrelevant for 12 years, since Barack Obama managed to be nominated and elected almost without it. In the same way, it is no disrespect to Doreen Lawrence to say that her 67-year-old Jamaican accent is not, in 2020, the voice of BAME Britain, or even of BAME London.

Keir Starmer may indeed enjoy the support of the old Afro-Caribbean and South Asian Establishment within the right-wing Labour machine in London, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and the former Metropolitan County of the West Midlands, plus pockets in other urban areas.

But there is now someone in Britain from every inhabited territory on the planet. There are no all-white towns, and there are ever-fewer all-white villages. The BAME population is young, and increasingly mixed-race. Its members were typically born here, as were their parents. And Starmer used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions.

All in all, then, Trevor who? Anyone else would have been, not suspended from the Labour Party, but expelled from it, for telling people not to vote Labour at the last General Election. Trevor Phillips has got off very, very lightly. The old Afro-Caribbean and South Asian Establishment within the right-wing Labour machine in London, indeed.

Ours is the 2020 Vision of a new political party, a new think tank, a new weekly newspaper, a new monthly cultural review, a new quarterly academic journal, and so much else besides. I will be standing for Parliament again here at North West Durham next time, so please give generously. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.