Wednesday 12 August 2020

Restoring The Soul

Numerous emails today have asked me simply to declare my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham and get on with four and a half years of campaigning. They say that I should have been campaigning since the day after the last General Election.

My one remaining parliamentary ambition is to ensure that neither a seat that bore the name of North West Durham, nor a seat that contained Lanchester, ever again fell to a Labour parliamentary candidate. As more than one of today's emails has pointed out, there is still no Labour candidate for this marginal seat. 

But no, either Richard Holden or the Labour Party would have to give me a very good reason to stand again. He would have to do something truly dreadful, or it would have to nominate someone totally unacceptable, such as David Miliband, or one of the 57, or, on this anniversary of the death of Cleopatra, the reigning Queen of Denial.

This time, since it would not be a snap General Election, I would keep my deposit, I would take more votes than Richard's margin of victory, and I might even place third. Not only that, but I would have the pleasure of running against the Church, or at least against the Diocese.

Then again, I did that last time. The Northern Cross, which does not shy away from politics, refused to publish round robin letters in support of my candidacy for the seat in which the largest town was one of the most Catholic in England. Meanwhile, what might be called culturally Catholic pro-abortion figures of the Labour Right continue to enjoy the usual favoured son treatment.

The Diocese remains engaged in lawfare and in low-level persecution to try and keep me off the ballot. It probably has some favoured son, of either sex, in mind for the Labour nomination here, although let the reader understand that the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle is a registered charity.

Still, the ban on clerics holding civil office is purely canonical. It can be dispensed. If the Titular Bishop, whom it is impossible to describe in any other terms, put up as a parliamentary candidate at North West Durham, then I certainly would, as I would if the Labour candidate were someone totally unacceptable, such as David Miliband, or one of the 57, or Cleopatra.

Unless the Titular Bishop were prepared to rise to this challenge, then the Diocese needs to stop its lawfare and its low-level persecution. The same also applies elsewhere.

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