Neither A Conspiracy Nor A Theory

Hours from now, your already astronomical energy bill will reach lunatic levels while you were waiting for the abolition of the top rate of income tax, and the lifting of the cap on bankers' bonuses, to trickle down onto you. Yet the energy companies' profits are already up 411 per cent, wholesale gas is 45 per cent cheaper today than it was one month ago, and the sale of gas on the futures market has never made any difference to the decision to raise prices. Regardless of the futures market, those prices have never been lowered. Fully supported by all political parties, this is a racket. Follow the money.

I despise the IMF as much as anyone who saw what it did to Italy and Greece. And as much as anyone who knows what it did to Britain, which was under a Labour Government. Also under a Labour Government was the surrender of control of monetary policy, for which the Chancellor of the Exchequer's salary ought to have been cut in half. But this is the Conservative Party's chosen ground now, and it must survive or die on it. The far bigger long-term problem is that it is also once again the Labour Party's chosen ground.

Nothing is a conspiracy if it is done perfectly openly. The sacking of Sir Tom Scholar was the signal to short the pound, beginning while the late Queen was being laid to rest. A massively devalued pound would then make the National Health Service and other British assets vastly less expensive for American corporations to buy up, exactly as Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and their circle had been openly advocating for years. Just like Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting, of course, the heirs of Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan. No smoke or mirrors there. Neither a cloak nor a dagger was deployed.

Likewise, it is worth mentioning that only three or four cent of the gas used in Britain comes from Russia, such that no dependence on it is the root of our privation, but while he later deleted it, Radek Sikorski did tweet "Thank you, USA" when the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged. Joe Biden had already publicly promised to take them out. That is neither a conspiracy nor a theory.

Could even NATO or the EU be inept enough to admit a country vast tracts of which Russia said were in Russia, as did at least half of the people living on that land, such that a war in and over it was already underway? I have family in the Falkland Islands, which is why I have never questioned the referendum results there or in Gibraltar. Such figures are startling, but I have every reason to believe in their veracity. Why should that not apply here, too?

Luhansk, Donestsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are heavily Russian areas that the largely Ukrainian Soviet elite put into Ukraine against the will of their inhabitants. Inhabitants who have been thoroughly mistreated by the regime that was installed in Ukraine by the NATO and EU putsch of 2014. But still, if that regime has taken NATO and the EU at their word, then, with any luck, more fool it.

You know that you would not be prepared to go to war over whether Luhansk, Donestsk, Zaporizhzhia or Kherson should be in Russia or in Ukraine. Nor should you be. You know that you would not be prepared to starve or freeze to death in the dark over whether Luhansk, Donestsk, Zaporizhzhia or Kherson should be in Russia or in Ukraine. Nor should you be. You should not be prepared to starve or freeze to death in the dark at all, and while you should always be ready, you should almost never be willing to go to war.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power in the next Parliament. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.