Today, the Labour Party has chosen to oppose this Government’s economic programme from the pro-austerity Right, to make itself complicit in every crime of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or of the State of Israel, and to ally itself with the racist Far Right at home and abroad.
Keep pointing out that Keir Starmer used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions. Keep mentioning Jean Charles de Menezes, and Ian Tomlinson, and Julian Assange. As for the Stephen Lawrence case, it is of interest only to well-heeled, white liberals of a certain age. Go round Eltham today and try telling the black boys there the Just So story, How the Met Stopped Being Racist.
As Mayor of London, Boris Johnson had far worse relations with the Met than Ken Livingstone had had. And Johnson now has it within his power to reduce the Labour Party to the remnant presence of its Irish and Israeli namesakes, simply by issuing a single press release with eight points.
First, beginning on Thursday 6th May 2021, all English local elections would henceforth be held on the same day, every four years, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the requisite number of councillors for each ward elected at the end.
Secondly, recalling Disraeli’s doubling of the electorate, while parliamentary candidates would henceforth have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, there would no longer be any nationality requirement to vote in parliamentary elections, nor any nationality requirement either to vote or to stand in local elections.
Thirdly, at each of the Conservative Party’s top 100 target seats in 2024, and wherever a Conservative MP was retiring, then the Conservative candidate would have to have lived there throughout the 15 years prior to the General Election, and would have to have an annual income not higher than £12,500.
Fourthly, where more than one such person applied to be the candidate, then the constituency association’s shortlist of two would be put out to a binding, independently administered ballot of all parliamentary electors in the constituency, while that same system would also be used to chose future Leaders of the Conservative Party across the party’s top 100 target seats and its 100 most marginal seats.
Fifthly, the immemorial protection against double jeopardy, which is fundamental to the presumption of innocence, would be restored at least for offences that were alleged to have been committed after the coming into effect of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Sixthly, “There is such a thing as society”, there would therefore be an inquiry into Orgreave in order to give concrete expression to that turning of the page, and the challenge was now to Labour to match it by expelling Tony Blair from membership, as would be helped along by a coroner’s inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.
Seventhly, the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme dispute would be settled on the mineworkers’ terms, while the County Durham Teaching Assistants’ dispute would be settled, by central government intervention, on the terms set by the County Durham Teaching Assistants’ Activists Committee, mentioning in passing that it was under this Government that coal mining had returned to County Durham, specifically to the North West Durham constituency.
And eighthly, unless they had said no within six hours of the announcement, then certain people would now be Visiting Fellows of the Downing Street Policy Unit, to publish through it with the approval both of its Director and of Dominic Cummings, not as an expression of government policy, but because what they were saying made a useful contribution to the debate. Each would receive an annual honorarium of £12,000, while remaining perfectly free to publish elsewhere in other capacities. They would include the 20 Founding Signatories to The Full Brexit. A further 30 names are also readily available.
Secondly, recalling Disraeli’s doubling of the electorate, while parliamentary candidates would henceforth have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, there would no longer be any nationality requirement to vote in parliamentary elections, nor any nationality requirement either to vote or to stand in local elections.
Thirdly, at each of the Conservative Party’s top 100 target seats in 2024, and wherever a Conservative MP was retiring, then the Conservative candidate would have to have lived there throughout the 15 years prior to the General Election, and would have to have an annual income not higher than £12,500.
Fourthly, where more than one such person applied to be the candidate, then the constituency association’s shortlist of two would be put out to a binding, independently administered ballot of all parliamentary electors in the constituency, while that same system would also be used to chose future Leaders of the Conservative Party across the party’s top 100 target seats and its 100 most marginal seats.
Fifthly, the immemorial protection against double jeopardy, which is fundamental to the presumption of innocence, would be restored at least for offences that were alleged to have been committed after the coming into effect of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Sixthly, “There is such a thing as society”, there would therefore be an inquiry into Orgreave in order to give concrete expression to that turning of the page, and the challenge was now to Labour to match it by expelling Tony Blair from membership, as would be helped along by a coroner’s inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly.
Seventhly, the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme dispute would be settled on the mineworkers’ terms, while the County Durham Teaching Assistants’ dispute would be settled, by central government intervention, on the terms set by the County Durham Teaching Assistants’ Activists Committee, mentioning in passing that it was under this Government that coal mining had returned to County Durham, specifically to the North West Durham constituency.
And eighthly, unless they had said no within six hours of the announcement, then certain people would now be Visiting Fellows of the Downing Street Policy Unit, to publish through it with the approval both of its Director and of Dominic Cummings, not as an expression of government policy, but because what they were saying made a useful contribution to the debate. Each would receive an annual honorarium of £12,000, while remaining perfectly free to publish elsewhere in other capacities. They would include the 20 Founding Signatories to The Full Brexit. A further 30 names are also readily available.
Who needs a party? We get to decide which of them should win. That gives us far more power, and we must be unapologetic about using it. The Budget of March 2020, and the Government’s response to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, have ended the era that began with the Budget of December 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. Please give generously.
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