Power Plant

Well, of course the Ukrainians tried to block the inspectors from visiting Zaporizhzhia. Whoever was shelling Europe's largest nuclear power plant, then it was obviously not the occupying Russians. So it was obvious who it must have been instead.

If Russia is now Mordor or what have you, and how our cultural references have declined, then what was so wonderful about Mikhail Gorbachev? When it comes to the Baltic states, then we ignore the problems. In the last six months, then we have adopted the same approach to Ukraine. But where the rest of the former Soviet Union is concerned, then we are commendably frank as to the shortcomings, even if those failings often fail to stop us from allying with those regimes. So much, then, for "the last great statesman of the twentieth century". Believe the Russian people's assessment of him.

As for Boris Johnson's belated conversion to nuclear energy here in Britain, he is attempting to blame Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for the failure to develop it. Yet in the way that blaming Margaret Thatcher or John Major remained factually correct and academically interesting in the second and third terms of the last Labour Government, but it was no longer a politically acceptable excuse, so blaming that Government remains factually correct and academically interesting now, but it is no longer a politically acceptable excuse.

Still, the existence of Zaporizhzhia is an unlikely glimmer of hope. The use of nuclear energy as part of the destruction of the British coal industry, in order to destroy the political power of the miners, has left an unnecessary legacy of bitterness on both sides. But Britain still stands on coal, and it is surrounded by sea that is itself rich in oil and gas. The wind blows a lot, and the Sun shines quite intensely from time to time, in this country that pioneered nuclear power. Let that country be bathed in heat and light. This is why we have a State.

Now that this of all autumns is upon us, then ponder these things when you hear people say that they grew up without central heating and relied on coal fires. There were coalmines in Britain at the time. As for their closure's bemoaning by the likes of Allison Pearson and Daniel Hannan, one can only admire their sheer gall.

The Miners' Strike was supposed to have been the last stand of the working class, but suddenly it no longer looks that way, and not only because no one will any longer admit to having supported the destruction of the coal industry, although that is important. The Scottish refuse collectors have brought home the worth of so-called unskilled labour, and they have brought out the true character both of the Labour Party and of the SNP.

It is sublime that rail strikes are being scheduled specifically in order to disrupt the Labour Party Conference. The liberal bourgeoisie whose jamboree that is, and how sad is that fact all round, is beside itself at Eddie Dempsey for his entirely factual explanation that its contempt for the working class drove support for the Far Right. Dempsey has literally fought the EDL in the streets, which we would all pay good money to see the writers on The Guardian or The Times try and do, except that we would want the EDL to be defeated, so that it would be better to keep the dilettantes as far away as possible.

Indeed, the liberal bourgeoisie keeps Fascism in reserve for when it might ever face any serious demand to share its economic or social power with anyone who did not have it before the rise of the bourgeois liberal order, or to share its cultural or political power with anyone at all. In my day, and no doubt still, A-level History students used to have to unlearn the GCSE fiction that Nazism had been a working-class phenomenon. Nor is Fascism a product of traditional conservatism, whatever alliances it may forge, or whatever symbolism it may adopt.

Rather, it came as no surprise when Emmanuel Macron's supporters gave two of the six Vice-Presidencies of the National Assembly to Marine Le Pen's. Consider the growing authoritarianism of Justin Trudeau's Canada. Consider the tendencies of Joe Biden and Liz Truss. Consider the records of Kamala Harris and Keir Starmer. Consider to whom and to what Mario Draghi looks set to cede. Such is the Franco-American republican tradition that arose from the international transmission of English Whiggery through the Masonic Lodges.

Yes, Dempsey, Mick Lynch, Alex Gordon, and the RMT as such, supported Brexit. Of course they did. If the EU had been what liberals said that it was, then the working class, whose votes were decisive, would have voted Remain, and Remain would therefore have won. If the Blair Government had been as nice for the workers, or for those for whom the chance of work would have been a fine thing, as it was for bourgeois liberals, then no one and nowhere would ever have felt left behind, and some Blairite or other would now be attending European Councils as Prime Minister. There will never be any forgiveness for those who had ensured that that had not come to pass. Diddums.

Dempsey's, Lynch's and Gordon's view on Ukraine is also the voice of the class that fights wars rather than the class that starts them, hence the liberal incandescence that these oiks have dared to comment on such matters. Even on the home front, everyone is going to pay some price for the purely masochistic sanctions regime, but, as ever, some are going to feel it a lot harder than others. We all know who might, and who certainly will not, starve or freeze to death in the dark over which country Kherson should be in, a sacrifice that would in any case make absolutely no difference to the outcome.

Recently interviewed in the New Statesman, Lynch also manifested his glorious freedom from the lifelong constraints of late adolescent brainwashing by asking, on the matter of Uyghur slave labour, about the fact that, "Slave labour is happening in Leicester. Why do we want to start on the Uyghurs if we don't want to start on the Palestinians?" Quite. People who hate Chinese and who hate Muslims seem to have a very soft spot for Chinese Muslims. In similar vein, there will be no rainbow flags at the World Cup in Qatar. But there will be red flags outside the Qatari Embassy in London. Guess who will be waving them.

Dempsey is also an opponent of gender self-identification, to the point that Owen Jones has refused in the past to share a platform with him. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who is a true heroine of the fight against the hoax and scam that has been exposed by the Forde Report, has in recent hours been elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party despite having no longer been endorsed by Momentum, or perhaps because of that. That endorsement was withdrawn because she would not subscribe to gender self-identification.

The Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council and the Community Security Trust have gone berserk at the election of a Jewish woman, and are demanding to decide on which committees and subcommittees she may serve. For their role in the defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn, who foolishly tried to deal with them instead of having them dealt with, those bodies bear a heavy responsibility for the cost of living crisis, and we could all do with their being held accountable for it. The same is true of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I met Naomi once, at a Durham Miners' Gala in the Corbyn years. She was warned not to speak to me because I was too controversial.