Live Well For Less?

Not that I had expected The Observer to publish this:

It is such a pity, because I often like Sonia Sodha. But while I do not wish to know where she lives, if it is not in Islington North, then it will not be far away. The Labour Party is not going to be inundated with applications to come fourth or below in an English constituency, or to lose the deposit for a seat that had returned a Labour MP at every election since 1937. Take one for the team, Sonia. Put up or shut up.

Well, things have been rather overtaken by events, what with the return to Labour Party membership of the ineligible Luciana Berger, by personal invitation of Keir Starmer. If this is how he runs his party, then imagine how he would run the country.

Most people assume that Berger has been brought back in order to contest Islington North, so if she did not, then she would have run away scared. As she did from deselection for having been, not a Jew, nor even a right-wing Jew, but just a rubbish constituency MP. 

Jeremy Corbyn had promoted her, and when she resigned from his frontbench, then she mentioned neither bullying nor anti-Semitism. Labour is now shot through with both, with Starmer's having expelled more Jews than all previous Leaders put together.

And what of Lord Sainsbury? In late 2018, he donated £25,000 to the Conservative MP Luke Graham. In 2019, he donated eight million to the Liberal Democrats, over half their General Election funding, making their donations larger than the Labour Party's. He has been promised something by Starmer. What is it? Keep in mind that Sainsbury was also a colossal donor to the Remain campaign.

Berger and Sainsbury have got their party back, and they are welcome to it. The opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and in any case even the Labour poll lead has halved since Rishi Sunak took over. Halved. The Labour vote has gone through the floor at all but one by-election since Starmer became Leader, with one of those recording Labour's lowest ever share of the vote. Council seats that were held or won under Corbyn have fallen like sandcastles, taking control of major local authorities with them. That is the bread and butter of the party's right wing, who are not otherwise the most employable of people.

With nearly two years still to go until the next General Election, Starmer's personal rating is negative not only nationally, but in every region apart from London, and it is still in decline. Starmer's dishonesty is becoming a story. He lied to his party members to get their votes, so he would lie to anyone else to get their votes. We are heading for a hung Parliament. 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. 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.