Posie Politics?

I have no idea why Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, as she would have to call herself on the ballot paper, would want to contest Keir Starmer's seat, especially when a serious Left campaign already has five thousand supporters since Tuesday, and an office. Yes, a real, actual, physical office, right there in the constituency. I know that for a fact. Watch out for the announcement of the candidate.

"Posie Parker" would do better to be standing against Rishi Sunak, the fifth successive Prime Minister under whom gender self-identification has become the law for all practical purposes across the public sector and its vast network of contractors, without anything so vulgar as a parliamentary vote, and in the teeth of opposition from the Morning Star, Counterfire, the Socialist Labour Party, the Communist Party of Britain, and so on, with both Alba and the Workers Party of Britain having been founded in so small part because of this issue. The CPB, the WPB and Alba are all growing especially rapidly, while of course Labour Party and SNP membership are both in free fall.

Of those listed, only Alba is iffy on Brexit; it wants an independent Scotland to be in EFTA. All of the others have been opposed to the EU forever, since Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit were calling that position "Loony Left". Again, both Socialist Labour and the Workers Party have in no small measure been founded on this question. If there is a Left party in favour of gender self-identification, then it is the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, which is the fiercely pro-EU British branch of the Shachtmanism that produced the neoconservative movement. It does not play well with others on the Left.

One who does, however,  is my near neighbour, Daniel Kebede. Right on gender self-identification, right on Brexit, right on Ukraine, and right on economics, including the increasingly successful strikes, he is still only in his mid-thirties, he is no longer in the Labour Party, and today he was elected General Secretary of the National Education Union. A luta continua.

It continues in the pages of the right-wing papers, and on websites such as UnHerd and The Critic. Notice that apart from Sarah Vine, who concedes her debt to the left-wing sisters, the gender critics there are almost all at least broadly from the Left, and in many cases very strongly so. Julie Bindel, Kathleen Stock, Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill, Sarah Ditum, Helen Joyce, Jo Bartosch, Lucy Masoud, Selina Todd, and so it goes on. Like several of those, Debbie Hayton is also an old school trade union activist. In any case, the right-wing papers are not going to be publishing these views in the near future, since their younger contributors, Conservative MPs and Ministers of the next 15 to 20 years, are sick of the potential damage to their careers.

The public sector has adopted gender self-identification as a consequence of privatisation, since it began as corporate policy, and the State now farms so much out that whatever the corporations want, then the State finds itself obliged to provide, if by no means necessarily unwillingly. Anyone who cannot see that gender self-identification is the logical consequence of the Thatcherite concept of a self-made man or a self-made woman is a caricature of a Tory anti-intellectual, who has simply never read anything, or even given anything any thought. Including many an article by the aforesaid gender-critical writers.

At the top of the Conservative Party, they can and do see that logic. That is why gender self-identification has happened entirely while they have been in office. That is also why it has become dominant in the Labour Party only under Starmer rather than under Jeremy Corbyn, who was conflicted on this as on many things, but who was especially close to the Morning Star and Counterfire sets. Sunak and Starmer are at one on the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill, not that it is wrong at principle, but that it should be enacted at Westminster.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

Orders The Immediate Release

Andrew Tate has been placed under house arrest, but he is out of prison. I am sure that I could stand no more than a few seconds in his company, but I cannot imagine that the United States would allow a white liberal American citizen to be treated as he has been, and I would not be at all surprised if little or nothing ended up coming of this.

I am a very accomplished rat-smeller. See Cardinal Pell, Julian Assange, Alex Salmond, Ched Evans, and the victims of Freya Heath, whose conviction was merely set aside on a procedural technicality. This has nothing to do with liking anyone. The beatification will presumably be the occasion of a Papal Visit to Australia, but if possible I shall be in Rome for the canonisation of Cardinal Pell. To keep Assange’s work going, then I would die in his stead. While I am opposed to the marrow of my bones to the political cause to which Salmond has devoted his life, I expect that he and I would get on. But I doubt that Evans and I would find much to talk about. I know that Heath’s victims and I would have more than enough for a very heated discussion indeed. And I have already said what I thought of Tate.

It is increasingly obvious that I have also been right all along about Prince Andrew, in whose defence I have been uniquely consistent. Moreover, since no charge or even arrest has followed the alleged allegation against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, then it is fair to assume that there has never been a Police investigation into His Lordship. He should now sue every media outlet that had suggested that there was one. An Oratorian does not take a vow of poverty, and the English Oratories have friends who could afford any lawyer in London. Despite the ostentatious traditionalism of certain aged Spectator Associate Editors and ageing Telegraph glamour boys, I alone have publicly defended Bishop Byrne. I have done so from the very start.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 602

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Indictment

Hillary Clinton faked Russiagate, and Hunter Biden’s laptop has turned out to have been real, so when are they going to be indicted, and when is any client of Jeffrey Epstein’s going to be? The judge who authorised the initial raid on Donald Trump, Bruce Reinhart, was a federal prosecutor until 1st January 2008. One day later, he became a defence attorney representing Epstein’s employees.

I am not saying that Trump is innocent. He does not even deny paying off the prostitute who calls herself Stormy Daniels. It is just that, like you, I can think of plenty of other people who are no less guilty. Likewise, we have recently seen the guilty of Iraq reverently asked for their reflections two decades on. None of them has ever suffered professionally. Quite the reverse, in fact. 90 per cent of the British population saw through the Iraq War from the start, but none of the 60 million of us has ever been deemed capable of assuming any of those wholly discredited individuals’ positions in public life.

Instead, that British Deep State defenestrated Jeremy Corbyn. It is subjecting Boris Johnson to a kangaroo court. It incited violence against Nigel Farage, and the attempted murder of George Galloway. It tried to imprison Alex Salmond for the rest of his life. And it persecutes the world-historical figure of Julian Assange. Each of those will always be much bigger than any of his enemies, but the point still stands.

Hero, Not Zero

We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That means growth, industry, what someone once nearly called “the white heat of technology”, and the equitable distribution of their fruits among and within the nations of the world, so that everyone might enjoy at least the standard of living that we ourselves already enjoyed.

There is always climate change, and any approach to it must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, encourage economic development around the world, uphold the right of the working class and of people of colour to have children, hold down and as far as practicable reduce the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. In Britain, we must be unequivocal about regretting the defeat of the miners in 1985.

We sent our manufacturing to India and China, yet now we have the gall to criticise their carbon emissions. And we expect to depend for energy on the Sun, the wind and the tides, precisely because it is beyond our power to stop them from doing what they do and we just have to live with it, yet we also expect to be able to stop climate change rather than finding ways of living with it. I am strongly in favour of solar, wind and tidal energy in the mix. The base of that mix is nuclear and coal. The coal without which there can be no steel, and thus no wind turbines or tidal turbines.

Any economic arrangement is a political choice, not a law of physics, and the “free” market cannot deal with climate change while defending and expanding our achievements. That is precisely why it is being promoted. But instead, we need the State, albeit a vastly more participatory and democratic State than has often existed. The energy sources to be preferred are those which provided high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs. 

Let us harness the power of the State, and deliver an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country’s vast reserves of coal. Around those twin poles of nuclear power and of the clean coal technology in which Britain was the world leader until the defeat of the Miners’ Strike, let there be oil, gas, lithium, wind, solar, tidal, and everything else, bathing this country in heat and light. This is why we have a State.

Fracking? There is no problem with any energy source in principle, but none of that shale gas has turned up yet, and if it is anywhere, then it is in heavily populated areas that could do without the earthquakes, the poisoned water, and all the rest of it. Say it again, harness the power of the State to bathe this country in heat and light from oil, gas, nuclear, wind, wave, tidal, solar, and that without which there could also be no steel for rigs, pipelines, power stations or turbines, namely coal. Britain stands on one thousand years’ worth of coal, and was the world leader in clean coal technology until the defeat of the miners in 1985. Again, do not vote for anyone who will not say that the miners were right.

The opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and 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 Keir 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.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 601

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Essential Living Needs, And Nothing More?

Robert Jenrick was so bent that even Boris Johnson had to sack him. But he is back now, his £45 million to Paul Desmond quietly forgotten, although the billionaire Desmond had to give him only £12,000 to get it. What a cheap date Jenrick is.

Still, it all adds up. Jenrick's manor house in Hertfordshire is worth over a million pounds, and his two houses in London are worth two million each. His own business, you say? Is he not claiming a penny of expenses towards them, then?

Even if Jenrick really were making full use of his three publicly subsidised private houses within a few miles of each other, none of them anywhere near his constituency, then at the last count there were 676,452 empty homes in England alone. 40,000 asylum seekers could easily be given one each.

If we are to have prison ships, then they should be for the likes of Rishi Sunak, who, hot on the heels of his impossible tax return, has failed to declare his wife's shares in a childcare agency that will benefit from the Budget. Or Jenrick, so bent that even Johnson had to sack him.

Neither An Indulgence, Nor An Offence, But A Misfortune?

Keir Starmer's preferred candidate at Islington North is Praful Nargund, who is the CEO of a private health company while sitting on the Boards of six more.

He is already a Labour councillor in Islington, although, before anyone starts, his ward is in Emily Thornberry's constituency.

If you are going to advocate voting for this person against Jeremy Corbyn, then I do not know what to say to you.

Reflects The Priorities

Not for the first time, Humza Yousaf is showing himself to be petty, factional, and exactly why we all love politics.

My favourite development so far has been that Michael Matheson has been appointed Cabinet Secretary for NHS Recovery.

Recovery from whom, Humza? Recovery from whom?

The Representatives Challenge: Day 600

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Severe?

Sixty-eight. My father died when he was 68. Yet we are allowing the retirement age to go all the way up to that, whereas France stands on the brink of revolution at the suggestion of an increase to 64. Emmanuel Macron is demonstrating how violently authoritarian "centrism" is when challenged, a foretaste of any Starmer Government that we might ever have the misfortune to suffer, yet we are coming to realise that the reason why the French will never be made to work until they dropped, or reduced to a pension such as ours that was less than half their present one, was precisely because this was how they reacted to the suggestion of far less than that.

We also look approvingly at the Dutch farmers, and while some of us are baffled as to how this Israeli Government was supposed to be different from its predecessors, we cannot deny our admiration for those who have risen against it. We observe all of this against the background of our own strikes, which will soon have been running for a year. Lo and behold, the terrorist threat level in Northern Ireland, and thus in practice in the United Kingdom as a whole, has been increased to severe. From a Government already possessed of powers beyond those which the Israeli Government was seeking to give itself, prepare for the clampdown. And prepare to be told to blame it on the New IRA.

Yet early this month, four Protestants, at least one with known Loyalist paramilitary connections, were arrested in relation to the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell. There has always been a school of thought that the New IRA was a false flag operation. The old IRA was riddled from top to bottom with Police informants, MI5 assets, and so on, as was the Real IRA, and as at least has been the much older Continuity IRA, which goes back to the split over abstentionism in 1986. The recent documentaries about David Rupert, and about "Robert" by the superlative Peter Taylor, undeniably broke ground, and were a reminder of how good the BBC could be, but they could not have surprised anyone.

The Far Right is the most constant and the most potent, but by and large real and perceived terrorist threats come and go. 20 years ago, imagine the suggestion that the Mayor of London and the First Minister of Scotland would both be Muslims, with the very Prime Minister two of three South Asians from three different parties. I did have to laugh at the recent AUKUS event, and not only at the idea of Britain's striking fear into China by sending submarines to the other side of the world sometime around 2040. That was the Tricontinental WASP Empire, was it? Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak? The only thing funnier was that the Australian Labor Party, the American Democratic Party and the British Conservative Party were now fully interchangeable. Would you surrender your gun to any of them, any more than to Peter Dutton, Donald Trump or Keir Starmer?

Sunak is not wrong that the violence that affected most people in Britain was not terrorism, but antisocial behaviour. Two Prime Ministers in the last 10 years, one of whom was also the last Mayor of London, have been members of an organisation that existed specifically in order to commit criminal damage and other offences, even including assault, just so that its members could prove their ability to pick up the bill. Imagine that a group of youths the same age, but on a council estate, were to organise themselves into a club, complete with a membership list, officers, some sort of uniform, the works, all for the express purpose of smashing up pubs. They would rightly go to prison, and I do not say that lightly. Not so the longest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer of the last 15 years, like those two Prime Ministers a known user of illegal drugs. Like them, he had in his time burned a £50 note in front of a beggar such as the Government is "cracking down on", though not by giving them homes and jobs. Tony Blair lives.

It is always about class. About 70,000 children are reported missing right here in Britain each year, yet the Home Office is to allocate hundreds of thousands more pounds to the search for Madeleine McCann, whom there is no realistic chance of finding dead, never mind alive. Did her parents have their other two children taken away? Those twins were two when their parents left them with their not quite four-year-old sister in a foreign country and went out on the town. People without the McCanns' advantages lose their children for far less.

Charles Dickens would have done as well with the McCanns and their sycophants as he would have done with the Bullingdon Club and its Old Boys. Great Expectations is about the corrosive effects of snobbery on the character, and those of us who were already fans of Steven Knight can only find ourselves wishing that he had written something completely original on that theme. His latest offering is shaping up to be good Knight. Sadly, it is bad Dickens. 

Now, there were brown people in the England of the period, including of Estella's standing. It is not unfaithful to the novel to make her as Jane Austen made Miss Lambe in Sanditon. The book does not say that the Gypsy-born Estella is white. Nor does it specify Pip's age, and putting him at the start in his late teens rather than the usual 12-ish is not a bad idea in relation to the narrative timeline. But while a youth of that age in the early nineteenth century would indeed have sworn fulsomely and all the rest of it, Dickens allows us to presuppose that, in the way that he never expressly says that Oliver Twist's Nancy is a prostitute, or that Fagin is pimping out the boys, both of which were as obvious to his original readers as they are now.

If Knight, the Dickensian influence on whose work has always been glaring and glorious, had wanted to include those things expressly, then he ought to have done that from scratch, of which he would have been more than capable. As it is, what he has written is worth watching as an example of his work, though not as example of Dickens's, and we may look forward to his treatment of phenomena such as gave rise to the McCanns or to Boris Johnson. The hugely popular and highly populist Dickens would indeed have been writing for the nine o'clock evening slot on television today. It is a noble aspiration to be his heir.

Widespread and Alarming

As William Hill is fined £19.2 million, the debate on the last, sainted Labour Government's Opposition-supported deregulation of gambling is now open. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, and end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops. That would be a start, anyway.

Nothing To Lose But Our Chains

10 years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was the only MP to defend the memory of Ed Miliband's father. Today, Miliband accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism, which the motion barring him from being a Labour candidate did not mention. Despicable stuff. However venerable the Today programme may be, it is not covered by parliamentary privilege. Corbyn should sue.

Being in a trade union that was affiliated to the Labour Party now feels like scabbing. If Unite were still affiliated in 2026, and if no one with a higher profile had stepped up to the plate, then I would be a candidate for General Secretary, both to secure disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and to secure disaffiliation from the ILGA. Join Unite Community here.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 599

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Significantly Diminished?

Presented with a broad field of candidates, between one quarter and one third of the SNP's few remaining members decided not to vote in what amounted to the election of the next First Minister? Really?

Humza Yousaf claims to have been brought into politics in opposition to the Iraq War, yet he will now be in government at the pleasure of the born again warmongers, and privatisers, of the Green Party, who are particularly enthusiastic cheerleaders for a war that now involves the British deployment of depleted uranium to Ukraine, a decision that was probably made at least in part in Scotland.

I give Yousaf a year, and that is being generous. Longer than Liz Truss, I suppose, but most of his party's MSPs backed him, whereas most of her party's MPs did not back her. Still, he is not very good to begin with, he has barely won, and much of the party truly hates him.

Bringing us to Keir Starmer. The Corbyn thing is not news. Did it not happen months ago? But the protests against an Israeli Government so utterly typical that it is even headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, are the context in which tomorrow's motion can no longer mention "anti-Semitism". That Jeremy Corbyn cannot be a Labour candidate is now officially because he led the party to defeat at the last General Election. Well, karma can be a bitch, Starmer. Karma can be a bitch.

Corbyn would certainly be the First Past the Post at Islington North. Look out for Labour guff about physical fear being the reason why they could not find a candidate against him. No, dears, you just did not fancy coming fourth or below in an English seat. Most Guardian and Observer columnists live there or very nearby. Put up or shut up.

Everyone else, put aside any doubts about Corbyn, and get on board for the Left's most famous victory in living memory both in Western Europe and, for want of a better term, in the Anglosphere. Corbyn's reelection would cause dancing in the streets on every continent. Parts of Latin America might declare public holidays. I am not joking. Be part of it. You know you want to. Including if you see yourself as the anti-Establishment Right. You will not get another chance like this to sock it to The Man, who is now known by name as Keir Starmer.

Christopher Snowdon and Peter Hitchens would no doubt both see themselves as such, at least since the fall of Truss in Snowdon's case. He can discredit Trussian libertarianism to his heart's content by giving a twice-annual flogging to his dead hobbyhorse of British Summer Time all year, or even of Central European Time, but Hitchens's voice is too important across a wide range of issues to be drowned out by the reaction to his calls for the abolition of BST. If that debate ever began in earnest, then Snowdon would win, for exactly the reasons that Hitchens states. It is Snowdon's that is the lifestyle of the political and media elite. For the sake of the fight for railways and against drugs, for civil liberties and against wars, leave this alone.

Although he ended up being vaccinated anyway, Hitchens initially lined up with the libertarians against the Covid-19 measures, and those of us who instead adhered to the medical advice were not wrong to do so. That advice may turn out to have been wrong, although that was no part of the argument against it at the time, which was ideological. But we would still be right to have followed it while it stood. As lockdown opponents became anti-vaxxers, who seem to think that they have been conclusively proved right even though that has not happened and their arguments were political rather than medical, so anti-vaxxers are mutating into deniers of the existence of Covid-19. Yes, you read aright. They hold that there has never been any such virus as SARS-CoV-2. Again, if you want to be taken seriously on other issues, then keep away from all of that. It helps never to been anywhere near it.

People who opposed medical vaccination are in no position to defend recreational drug use, and the fact that nitrous oxide is given to pregnant women is no more an argument for the legal mass availability of laughing gas than the use of morphine in labour would be an argument for the legal mass availability of heroin. But there is no reason to expect Michael Gove to deliver on this.

Having returned to these shores, Prince Harry has not been arrested for his Class A drug offences, any more than his United States visa has been revoked. When he was so out of it that he thought that he was having conversations with a pedal bin, then he was surrounded by some of the most carefully vetted Police Officers in the world. They often are. Last May, Gove himself was described in edited Fleet Street copy as having been on " a cocaine binge". He and Boris Johnson, who is no longer an American citizen, have lied on their United States visa applications, as has Harry. They are not the only ones, although presumably no one will bother in future. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng was obviously off his face at the funeral of the late Queen. The Truss Government was so awash with cocaine that it scandalised the servants.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. (I no longer believe in prison sentences that include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is.) We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one's premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Hitchens's The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is routinely. But since drugs-based blackmail is fundamental to political power in this country, we can forget it.

So much for that confidence and supply agreement with the DUP. All it asked, and I am glad for the people who benefited from this, was an extra billion pounds, £100 million per vote. Social conservatism for Great Britain never seems to have occurred to the DUP. Anyone would think that they were Irish. But any dependence on them is long gone. Instead, we have the Windsor Framework, which assumes a case for Northern Ireland to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence, that is also the case for Great Britain to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence. Give it five years. Under any party.

After all, the parliamentary boundaries are being redrawn so as to restore normal service and stop General Elections from being decided in places that never voted for Thatcherism. Thatcherism at the time was a force both of and for social liberalism, and it was ferociously Eurofederalist, with any opposition to that project derided as "Loony Left". The Thatcherite heartlands became the backbone of the Coalition, and they expressed their approval of its record by giving its Prime Minister an overall majority in 2015.

The South then largely voted Remain, in accordance with Conservative Party policy at the time. That party installed a Thames Valley Remainer as Leader and Prime Minister without any sort of election, and if the 2015 Parliament had run its course, then scores of seats would have turned from Blue to Yellow in 2020. That would also be true if the 2017 Parliament had run its course, with the overall result that Corbyn's Labour would have been the largest party in the hung Parliament of 2022. Unsurprisingly, those Thatcherite, liberal, pro-EU areas are now preparing to return Liberal Democrats in 2024. And matters are being arranged so that theirs would once again be the votes that mattered.

Like the rise of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and like the vote to Remain of those places which did so, the resurgence of the Lib Dems in the monied shires of Southern England bespeaks that the vote was a nice thing to have, but that people who got their way by other means every day did not really need it. If 60 per cent of the laws to which they were subject were made without the formal participation of their elected representatives, well, those were still going to be the laws that they themselves wanted, because that was how the world worked.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 598

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Potentially Transformational, Indeed

Keir Starmer’s “values” are apparent from the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act and from the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act. Faced with Baroness Casey and Dame Rachel de Souza, Starmer has instead favourably quoted a 1975 speech by Margaret Thatcher, in which she vilified the Shrewsbury 24 and the Clay Cross Councillors, setting the scene for the policing of the Miners’ Strike, for the clubbing of pregnant women at the Battle of the Beanfield, for Hillsborough, and so on. It is scandalously downplaying the role of spycops against trade unions, and the role of the Government in blacklisting trade unionists, but the Undercover Policing Inquiry is making it clear that the likes of Starmer are unfit for public life.

Labour has reverted to type as the party for people who thought that the only problem with the wars, with the austerity programme, and with the authoritarian measures necessary to enforce them, was that they did not go far enough. Such people are not in the Conservative Party, because they dislike country house Tories and the private sector middle class. Labour is their device for harnessing the power of the State to lord it over everyone else.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

Passion, Tide

This is your weekly reminder that there has been a liberal coup in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle. See also this, this, this, this, this, this and this. Since no charge or even arrest has followed the alleged allegation against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, then it is fair to assume that there has never been a Police investigation into His Lordship. He should now sue every media outlet that had suggested that there was one. An Oratorian does not take a vow of poverty, and the English Oratories have friends who could afford any lawyer in London.

In the long run, what do Bishop Byrne's overthrowers and defamers, the people who drove Canon McCoy to suicide, expect to achieve? In parts of Continental Europe and North America, they already have what they want to such an extent that men attending Mass are reported to the Police as a matter of policy because they are  considered so suspicious, although such reports are vanishingly rare, because so is such attendance. The women, meanwhile, have long retired, mostly from the employ of the Church.

Throughout the West, people who defined themselves by voluntarily having few or no children, and by not making converts as a matter of principle, are now wondering why they are being supplanted by the numerous children and grandchildren of those of their contemporaries who had adhered to the Teaching of the Church, by converts, and by young people who may as well be, having taught themselves the Faith from the Internet and from books bought via it, bypassing the doctrine-free hour that Catholic schools expected them to spend every day colouring in pictures illustrative of the need to be nice.

Further afield, the lands of accurate catechesis and of edifying liturgy are so alive with the Gospel that they have young priests to send here as missionaries, deliciously exposing the racism and imperialism of white liberals, which is always good to see on full, hilarious display. Should the Synod ever meet, then it would be the greatest ever such circus. Although no one seems to be queuing up to be its attendee from Hexham and Newcastle.

No Fear?

I was recently asked whether the remnant Labour Party at and around County Hall in Durham was afraid of me. If they are not, then they cannot believe that I am guilty. Let's see them get out of that one.

It defeats me how anyone could find me remotely intimidating. But one of my cellmates, as they are not called in practice, did. I had a good half a dozen, because that seems to be how it works. I was older than all of them, and old enough to be the father of most, but that was only ever an issue once, with one of the several murderers (not what they were in for, but everyone knew).

"Don't speak to me like that, I'm old enough to be your father, you show some respect," I told a leading crack cocaine dealer who sent men with machetes to deal with his enemies, and with whom I was locked up for 23 hours of the day. He never spoke to me again, he tried to get me moved, and when the screws told him where to stick that, then he got himself moved because he was so frightened of me. Gosh.

But my favourite cellmate story is about the first one, whom the judge had ordered to write a letter of apology to a rival drug dealer whose crack house he had burned down, thereby sending the naked crack hoes screaming into the streets of one of the least salubrious districts of Newcastle. He could not spell, so I wrote it for him. I have no idea whether it ever arrived, but it was certainly sent. I enjoyed prison. I was well-liked and well-respected, and I did a small amount of good for several other people in there.

So if I strike fear into the last rusting cogs of the right-wing Labour machine in County Durham, then they should console themselves that I had had the same effect on the kind of person as whom they sometimes tried to dress. And if I do not, then they cannot believe that I am guilty. Let's see them get out of that one.

A Tale of Two Andrews

I very much hope that Prince Andrew will write a memoir. He should also sue everyone who had called him a paedophile, a paedo, a nonce, or anything in that vein, and who should demand the late Queen’s money back with interest, costs and a penalty. So far as I am aware, I have been uniquely consistent in his defence, in keeping with my record of rat-smelling in defence of Cardinal Pell, of Julian Assange, of Alex Salmond, of Ched Evans, and of the victims of Freya Heath, whose conviction was merely set aside on a procedural technicality.

That has nothing to do with liking anyone. The beatification will presumably be the occasion of a Papal Visit to Australia, but if possible I shall be in Rome for the canonisation of Cardinal Pell. To keep Assange’s work going, then I would die in his stead. While I am opposed to the marrow of my bones to the political cause to which Salmond has devoted his life, I expect that he and I would get on. But I doubt that Evans and I would find much to talk about. I know that Heath’s victims and I would have more than enough for a very heated discussion indeed.

And while I am sure that I could stand no more than a few seconds in his company, I cannot imagine that the United States would allow a white liberal American citizen to be treated as Andrew Tate is being. I would not be at all surprised if little or nothing ended up coming of that furore. Meanwhile, it is increasingly obvious that I have been right all along about Prince Andrew.

Is It That Time Again?

Unless Peter Hitchens wanted British Summer Time all year, or even BST+1 for more than half of it, then he needs to drop the whole matter. If this debate ever really did begin in earnest, then the proponents of that would win.

It is just a fact that the Britain last seen in my 1980s childhood, of tea at five and of grown adults routinely in bed by nine or even eight, is a thing of the past.

It is also the case, not only that Hitchens works from home, as it is worth noting for reference elsewhere that practically all commentators do, but also that he chooses to do so well past what even these days is still retirement age.

For the sake of the people for whom he speaks, he needs to let this go.

Transition

The transgender issue was immensely divisive in and around the Corbyn Project. Jeremy Corbyn was and is especially close to the Counterfire and Morning Star circles that were and are as robustly material-realist on this as they were and are robustly pro-Brexit. But much of his fanbase took a very different view of both.

There is no such dilemma for the Labour Party now, though. It is back to being as obediently corporate-sponsored as the rest of them, and thus as uncomplicatedly committed to Thatcherism in excelsis, the literally self-made woman or self-made man, as it is to Margaret Thatcher's Single Market.

Like the rest of them. The concept of gender self-identification was unknown in this country, if it was known anywhere, until the Conservative Party won an overall majority on 2015, yet it now applies throughout the state-funded sector as if it were already the law, just as it does throughout the far from discrete corporate sector as a matter of vigorously enforced policy. And the Windsor Framework's case for Northern Ireland to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence, is the case for Great Britain to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence. Give it five years. Under any party.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

A King's Ransom?

Would you employ Kwasi Kwarteng or Matt Hancock? Yet they would not be citing these figures unless someone were already paying them. There are questions of fiduciary duty here. Directors and shareholders need to look into it.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove, a Cabinet Minister, has already publicly sided with Boris Johnson against the Privileges Committee. Well, of course. It will be up to the whole House to accept or reject that Committee's report, and almost no one who had to answer to a constituency Conservative association would dare vote with Harriet Harman against Johnson, or indeed have any desire to do so. This has always been a waste of time.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 597

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Alert and Knowledgeable

Peter Hitchens writes:

I had thought this would be a good week for gloating, 20 years after so many fools supported the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq or (in many ways more shamefully) failed to oppose it. Here's what I said on this page almost exactly 20 years ago, refusing to drop my opposition to the war just because troops had gone in.

'This is not a war for national survival in which we all have to pull together and hush our doubts or be subjugated… Patriotic British people who believe in fair play should be against this war.' I pointed out that Anthony Blair 'loathes Britain and has never knowingly supported a war fought, or an action taken, in British national interests. He is keen on this war because he likes the new multicultural, Left-wing, United States…'

And I warned, more truly than I knew: 'As of Thursday night, centuries-old rules of war and diplomacy went into the dustbin. From now on, any big nation can invade another country because it does not like its government. If challenged, that big nation can turn round and say – and they will – that the USA did it to Iraq.'

I remain appalled by the behaviour of Blair and his propaganda chief Alastair Campbell, and astonished that both of them still feel able to appear in public, offering advice to the nation they misled into supporting this folly. And the BBC takes them both seriously. Plainly both should be living out their days in the penitential silence of a Trappist monastery deep in some remote mountain range. Instead, they are in our midst and they will just not shut up.

I am still grieved that so many of the fantasies which these men peddled were believed by people who should have had more sense. Why are we so easily gulled? I think the British and American governing classes learned only one thing from the episode – to make a better job of deceiving the public next time.

And I am in near-despair that the stupidity and brutality of Vladimir Putin have saved the warmongers of the West the trouble of fooling us into the large-scale long-term conflict they have been seeking for so long, ever since the Iraq invasion blew up in their faces. Useless now for me to explain how the actions of the West created the Ukraine crisis when it could so easily have been avoided. I've tried, and all it gets me is abuse. Why bother?

They have got their war, and, unless we can revive the dead arts of diplomacy, this one could run and run and run, deepening, widening, worsening.

Just as there were in 2003, there really are now people, high in American politics, who think that the USA is itself so good that it is entitled to make war on countries it disapproves of, directly or indirectly.

There are people in Britain who are prepared to do their bidding./ And there is also the 'Military-Industrial Complex', against which President Eisenhower (no peacenik Marxist) warned so fiercely in his astonishing farewell speech in January 1961.

It is astounding that this lifelong military man should have been the one to say it, but this is what he declared: 'In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

'The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

'We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

When he referred to an 'alert and knowledgeable citizenry', he meant us. These events, in 2003 or now, are not inevitable. We have, whether we like it or not, a responsibility to scrutinise and, if necessary, oppose them.

In that spirit, he adds:

I am glad that the Apple TV series Tehran, made in Israel and set in the Iranian capital, treats Iranians as humans rather than as the shrouded or turbaned monsters some people imagine them to be. But is its plot, based on a supposed Iranian desire to become a nuclear power, founded on fact or alarmism? I remain unsure that our attitude towards Iran is wise. The unending suspicion and hostility, in my view, only strengthen the Hezbollah-type fanatics of the Revolutionary Guard. Sanctions hurt ordinary citizens, many of them pro-Western and anxious to be free, not the ruling elite.

On Inspection

If Ofsted is so "crucial", then why are private schools not subject to it? They have some old pals' operation of their own.

When asked, as only they ever are, how they would pay for this or that, then Labour frontbenchers always now reply that they would impose VAT on private school fees. That is supposed to pay for everything.

Now, no one is scrimping and saving to find anything from £15,000 to £50,000 per year. Anywhere on that scale, you either have that kind of money, or you do not. Even HMRC, which is of course the State itself, admits that 50 per cent of workers in Britain have gross annual incomes of less than £20,000. Two in five adults do not reach the income tax threshold of £12,570, just over one thousand pounds per month. And yes, that does include benefits and everything else.

But the pretence that VAT on school fees would pay for every policy under discussion at the given time, proves only that neither it nor they would ever be attempted in actual fact. Moreover, this levy could not be both an inexhaustible source of revenue, and a device for closing down the hated private schools. It would obviously not be the former, and it would no less clearly fail to be the latter. The customer base would perfectly easily absorb the small additional cost and carry on.

You could go so far as to ban private schools by law, and they would set up abroad. Furthermore, their continued existence is utterly unrelated to what, if any, educational provision the State may make. The Labour Party has proposed a privately schooled Prime Minister at the last two General Elections and at five of the last seven, as it will again next time, and it has proposed a privately schooled Chancellor of the Exchequer at all of the last four. Those schools are selling social connections.

They are not especially academic, though. They are often still using the IGCSE, which has been banned in the state-funded sector for being too easy. That is why, when it comes to inspection, they have some old pals' operation of their own. Instead of the "crucial" Ofsted.

Feels About Right?

At 35, Kwasi Kwarteng was making so little in the City that he could afford to become an MP instead. Last year, we found out why. As for Matt Hancock, before being wafted into a safe seat, he worked for an unspecified backbench MP, then he was an adviser to the Bank of England on housing (one of this country's great policy failures), and then he was Chief of Staff to George Osborne. Yes, that George Osborne. Today, however, these decidedly low flyers think that they are worth £10,000 per day.

Meanwhile, never mind that in the grand tradition of Tony Blair, Rishi Sunak lives on pocket money from the wife. I had been coming to terms with being older than the Prime Minister, but it turns out that he must in fact be 350 years old, since he made only two million pounds in profit last year yet he is worth £720 million.

Sunak's declared gains of £1.6 million add up to a return of 0.23 per cent, and the one million pounds that he paid in tax represented 0.13 per cent of his wealth, about one per cent of what an average person paid. Poor Rishi is doing so badly that he never even received the recent increase in his MP's salary, since that is missing from his published tax return. Just as it is from Keir Starmer's.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 596

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Biologically Mail?

Here is the Daily Mail calling Suzy Eddie Izzard "she" and "her" throughout. Well, of course. From The Guardian to the Daily Telegraph, I defy anyone from abroad, who would not be able to do so by style rather than by substance, to tell the media of the liberal Right apart in a blind test. They all print what their corporate advertisers will pay for, based on what those corporations' market research has told them that the liberal-capitalist bourgeoisie wanted to read.

The first of those has in fact led the change on this issue, which is why that change has happened entirely under a Conservative Government, while the second has accordingly been changing so far and for so long that that can no longer be ignored. To the public sector and its vast network of contractors, gender self-identification is for all practical purposes already the law throughout the United Kingdom. That was not the case before 2015.

A number of up-and-coming commentators, with aspirations to Conservative seats, have been disaffected for some time with the editorial line on gender self-identification. That line is now shifting. As always with anything that might be termed social conservatism, it never did bear the slightest resemblance to the private life of almost any right-wing hack. Anyone who doubts that has never met them.

Those newspapers have not given up on the restoration to the office of Prime Minister of the husband of Carrie "Stonewall" Johnson. Boris Johnson's reliable outrider, Michael Fabricant, has already called for the Gender Recognition Reform Bill to be extended throughout the United Kingdom. The question of gender self-identification would not even arise in a debate between Johnson and Keir Starmer. Or between Starmer and Rishi Sunak, come to that. On the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill, Starmer's and Sunak's positions are exactly the same, namely that it should be done at United Kingdom level.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

Ever Thus

This is such a typical Israeli Government that it is even headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been the default Prime Minister throughout the memory of more than half the population of a country that has a median age of 31.

Hence the muted Palestinian response to the rage against it and him. "Well, yes, that is all true. But what's new?"

It was true but not new when people were expelled from the Labour Party, and Jeremy Corbyn was being called an anti-Semite, for saying everything that has become a commonplace in places like The Guardian. Corbyn should have sued then. He should sue now.

Southside Blues?

What if Humza Yousaf won, as by now he very well may have done? That would be thanks to early voters, many of whom must now have buyer's remorse, as well as non-members, deceased persons, fictional characters, and so forth. Yousaf has the support of enough MSPs to confirm him in office as First Minister, as has to happen under the Holyrood system. But how long could he possibly last?

Then there will presumably be a byelection to succeed Nicola Sturgeon at Glasgow Southside. Not much could persuade me to advocate voting for a Holyrood or Westminster candidate who was in favour of Scottish independence. Indeed, the only thing that could, would be to advocate voting for Alex Salmond or Craig Murray at that byelection.

One Continuous War

Peter Hitchens writes:

I loathe Vladimir Putin. I used to think he offered one good thing, despite his domestic tyranny. I used to think he was a defender of the idea of national sovereignty, an opinion that became actually ludicrous the day he invaded Ukraine. I confess this error, because, when dozens of others are not confessing or regretting their role in cheering on the Iraq war, we conservatives have a duty to behave better.

In fact I am far less ebullient than I thought I would be, twenty years after the Iraq invasion. I thought the anniversary would give me the chance to jeer a bit at some foolish persons. But when I tried to gloat over the follies of the pro-war journalists who made such idiots of themselves in 2003, I could not do it. Yes, they were gullible simpletons. But they have since won the battle to get the West into a state of permanent war. And it is Putin above all who has helped them achieve this. How I hate him for it. Putin has murdered peace as Macbeth once murdered sleep. By his one action he has handed the warmongers the sword of righteousness. Yes, yes, I know he has also launched an indefensible, lawless, and murderous attack on his neighbor. But this makes it worse. He has committed not just a crime, but a mistake.

The neoconservative factions, who for the last twenty years have been looking for a way back to war, have been given it by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Who cares if their propaganda and their intelligence were wrong last time? Who cares if their other interventions in Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya all went badly wrong? The intelligence was right (for once) about the Russian invasion, and invasions of sovereign countries are always evil and wrong.

I can explain, and often do, that the initial violent aggression in Ukraine came in 2014 with the Western-backed lawless overthrow of Ukraine’s unlovely but legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych. Eight years of war followed in which many horrible things were done. I can point out that the eastward expansion of NATO was likewise an act of dangerous diplomatic aggression, warned against by many wise people in the West. I can even say (which is true) that hawks such as Robert Kagan accept that Russia was provoked. But this fact will always fail to grip about 97 percent of the people I want to reach.

As James Carville long ago observed about political campaigning, “While you’re explaining, you’re losing.” And so it is. The politics of war have become as crude and simple as a Punch-and-Judy show on a beach. Perhaps they always were, and the Vietnam era was a strange and dreamy interlude, mesmerizing to those who recall it but irrelevant to everyone else.

Traditional conservatives were useless over Iraq because they always respond to any call to the colors, however stupid. In this case, it isn’t stupid. They are delighted to be able to support a victim against an aggressor. The left, who marched by the hundreds of thousands against Iraq, are also in general pro-war, and why should they not be? They too are against aggression. Everyone is.

And as I haul myself up to the podium of yet another obscure debate on the Ukraine issue, to try to explain that it is not quite that simple, I know that most people don’t care. Putin’s tanks have ended all debate. Most people think this war is Gandalf versus the Orcs. They rejoice to see NATO (i.e., Gandalf) expanding still further. They regard calls for peace negotiations as “appeasement” and demand to know which parts of Ukraine I propose should be given up to the aggressor (and indeed which parts of my own country I would hand over in the same circumstances). You can feel them ceasing to listen within about 30 seconds of any attempt to counter these thrusts with tedious complexities.

The flag of Ukraine flies from government buildings in London as if we had merged our two countries. The same flag flies from people’s front gardens and from university colleges. Politicians wear the Ukrainian colors on their lapels. The media have become openly politicized in ways that make me start whenever I hear or see them. News reports state as fact the contentious assertion that the war was unprovoked. Attempts to question this are met with bafflement mixed with mistrust. If I say it was provoked, I am instantly deemed to be sympathizing with the aggression, even after I have made it clear that I think that the stupidest thing to do, when provoked, is to respond to that provocation. I have been accused of being a Kremlin shill, a “useful idiot,” and a Putin apologist so many times that I no longer really notice.

Yet this war was entirely avoidable, and will in my view do enormous harm to the peace and stability of Europe and the world. Many of the arguments used to sustain it are as questionable as WMD was in its time. It is even possible that if the Clinton administration had not begun NATO expansion thirty years ago, and if the Wolfowitz Doctrine had not been invented around the same time, that a reasonably free, peaceful, and prosperous Russia might now occupy the territory now ruled by Putin’s sinister tyranny. Look at the miracle wrought in countries such as Poland. I might add that if people are so concerned about Ukraine, they could have done a lot more good there in the past thirty years, by encouraging clean government and intelligent investment, than they have done with military and political meddling.

Why has a great nation so often chosen the path of war in its efforts to utopianize the world? Why does my own country so often trail behind when the USA embarks on these benevolent yet heavily armed adventures? These are fascinating subjects that could only really be discussed if we had proper oppositions and proper independent media. Yet these have shriveled and gone, with amazing speed, since 2003.

Is it war itself that these idealists want: Iraq then, Russia now, who knows where next? Is it war without end? If so, I suspect it means the disappearance of the freedom we have left, and indeed of debate and truth. “Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war.”

Taking An Interest

As with Credit Suisse, I told you in October about Deutsche Bank. And is the interest rate on your savings account now 4.25 per cent? Thieves.

Just as we never voted for these "independent" pay review bodies, which are in fact appointed by the Ministers who set their terms of reference, so we never voted for the Bank of England to which Labour farmed out monetary policy without a manifesto commitment, or for the Office for Budgetary Responsibility that the Liberal Democrats decreed into existence, or for the Economic Advisory Council that Jeremy Hunt has created out of thin air.

On none of those occasions have the salaries of the First Lord of the Treasury, of all other Treasury Ministers, and of all senior Treasury civil servants, been halved, as in each of those cases they should have been. Likewise, if Ministers are not going to set the rates of pay in their areas of responsibility, then their own pay ought to be reduced accordingly. Better still, those Ministers should indeed set those rates, accountable to Parliament.

A sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect. Those means therefore require to be under democratic political control.

Rachel Reeves does not understand any of this, and Keir Starmer does not know what the words mean, but when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 595

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

To Protect The Female Category

It turns out that we were right about people who had gone through male puberty competing in women's sport. Hormones matter. Biology matters. It is women who pay the price of denying these facts.

And we are turning out to have been right about the expectation that women poison themselves in order to be permanently available for the sexual gratification of men, in order to prevent a single wage from being able to support a family that therefore had plenty of time to be a family, and in order to cultivate the notion that the problem with the world was that it had people in it, to the tremendous detriment of mothers both before and after birth. Hormones matter. Biology matters. It is women who pay the price of denying these facts.

You will never thank us, but we never expect that.

To Prioritise Fairness

It turns out that we were right about people who had gone through male puberty competing in women's sports. Hormones matter. Biology matters. It is women who pay the price of denying these facts.

And we are turning out to have been right about the expectation that women poison themselves in order to be permanently available for the sexual gratification of men, in order to prevent a single wage from being able to support a family that therefore had plenty of time to be a family, and in order to cultivate the notion that the problem with the world was that it had people in it, to the tremendous detriment of mothers both before and after birth. Hormones matter. Biology matters. It is women who pay the price of denying these facts.

You will never thank us, but we never expect that.