Supply and Demand

At the point of privatisation, the water companies were debt free, as befitted the monopoly suppliers of something that everyone had to have, and the raw material of which fell out of the sky for free.

The money that those companies pay out in dividends would easily cover any infrastructure costs. Yet leakage is out of control, raw sewage is being pumped into our rivers and our sea, and last year, Thames Water, typically of the sector, declared a billion pound profit in order to pay dividends, despite being £12 billion in debt.

So we are all expected to bail it out, at whatever rate happened to be demanded by the shareholders, themselves largely foreign states as such. They should be told to forget it. Those shares are worth what anyone else would now pay for them. How much is that?

More broadly, since dividends are supposed to reward investment, then they should be limited by the Statute Law to the bankrate plus risk on the capital provided by the original share issue, with customers awarded shares for all capital converted from their payments.

None of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the SNP would ever do that on their own or only with each other, just as they would never renationalise England's water, even though that is what the huge majority of people in England wants.

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 Keir 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.

Compass Points

Neal Lawson committed an obviously expulsionable act, so the story here is that it took the Labour Party two years to get round to kicking him out. It moves rather more quickly against other people, and it did so on numerous occasions during that period. Keir Starmer has hitherto protected what used to be called the Soft Left. But he has clearly gone to war with it now.

Meanwhile, the Change UK lot have been welcomed back with open arms, although it is still only three and a half years since they stood against Labour under assorted banners at a General Election. Starmer has been endorsed by at least one defector to that from the Conservative Party, who then contested a Conservative-Labour marginal seat that the Conservatives went on to hold. She attended Theresa May's Cabinet. Lawson's politics may not be mine, but they are a whole lot better than Anna Soubry's. Starmer wants to create 100 Peers to staff his Government. Think on.

Electoral pacts are wrong in principle, because votes belong to voters, not to parties. And Proportional Representation, a generic term for any electoral system that is not First Past the Post, is one of those issues on which both sides' arguments are rubbish, so the case for change has not been made. Where, exactly, does it keep the Right out of office? Even if you count the Irish Labour Party, then no party remotely of the Left has ever led an Irish Government. That is the supposed Holy Grail of the Single Transferable Vote. Every Taoiseach, ever, has been either the Leader of Fianna Fáil, or the Leader of Fine Gael.

Two of the last four British General Elections have delivered hung Parliaments, and in both cases the Leader of the Conservative Party has either become or remained Prime Minister. In 2017, the Liberal Democrats had the same number of seats as the DUP, so I am not convinced that a system that always delivered hung Parliaments would keep the Lib Dems in office. But in any case, who would want that? The Coalition was by far the most stable Government since 2010, and it delivered the austerity programme and the war in Libya. The Hard Right ought to be the leading agitators for permanent Cabinet seats for the Lib Dems. The rest of us ought not to want a hung Parliament either to bring them back for one Parliament, or, as did not happen last time, to change the electoral system on the highly questionable assumption that that would bring them back in perpetuity.

Rather, we should accept the fact that there is going to be one, and prepare to make it work for us. 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.

Insoumise

Emmanuel Macron is demonstrating how violently authoritarian "centrism" is when challenged, and how racist it is fundamentally, both of which are foretastes of any Starmer Government that we might ever have the misfortune to suffer. The authoritarianism has already begun explicitly under Rishi Sunak, and the racism is at least implicit, with the same people at the bottom of the Conservative Party's hierarchy of racism at at the bottom of the Labour Party's.

Marine Le Pen is the dynastic standard-bearer for a continuously minoritarian tradition that regards the French Republic as illegitimate. That can make it through to the second round of a Presidential Election, but it can never win one, no matter what the political issues of the day. The other candidate is bound to defeat it and become President. In 2022, that should have been Jean-Luc Mélenchon. In 2027, it absolutely must be.

Last year, enough of Mélenchon's supporters decided that Macron was the lesser evil. But he was not, and it is now beyond dispute that he is not; he is just a different evil, when he is even that. It came as no surprise when Macron's supporters gave two of the six Vice-Presidencies of the National Assembly to Le Pen's. In my day, and no doubt still, A-level History students had 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.

Consider the direction of Justin Trudeau's Canada. Consider the tendencies of Sunak and of Joe Biden, whose long record is terrifying. Consider the records of Stamer and of Kamala Harris. Consider to whom and to what Mario Draghi has ceded. Such is the Franco-American republican tradition that arose from the international transmission of English Whiggery through the Masonic Lodges.

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. Mélenchon poses such a threat. Let battle commence.

And not only in France. 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 Right Audience

Are you listening, Joe Biden?

"This morning, the Holy Father Francis received in audience Ms. Stella Assange, with family members."

She has confirmed that they were her and Julian's children.

On This Rock.

Health Warning

Will the King ever be treated by anyone without a five-year, full-time medical degree? Will Rishi Sunak? Well, there you are, then. Yet what are we offered instead? Wes Streeting, the greatest threat to the very principle of the National Health Service since it was founded, and the true heir of Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan in their 1997 transfer of the idea of NHS privatisation from the outer fringes of the thinktank circuit to the heart of government, where all three parties have kept it ever since.

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 Keir 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.

Nothing Has Stopped

Of course the Wagner Group is still recruiting in its own right. The people who hated it, liked it for a day, and now hate it again, have no idea what they are talking about. I have been politically active since the big story in foreign policy was the breakup of Yugoslavia. Those people had no idea what they were talking about then, and they still do not.

In the meantime, they have had no idea what they were talking about when it came to Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, or anywhere else at all. Right now, they have no idea what they are talking about when to comes to Iran, to Sudan, to Ukraine, to several parts of China, or to Russia, where they are obsessed with someone called Alexei Navalny, of whom no one in Russia has ever heard, much as they imagined someone called Juan Guaidó to be the rightful President of Venezuela, and possibly still do. They could not, however, locate Venezuela on a map. Such is our permanent Government.

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 Keir 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.

I Like It, I’m Not Gonna Crack

Excellent news that lithium is to be mined in Cornwall. 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. 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.

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 lithium, 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 we were the world leader in clean coal technology until the defeat of the miners in 1985. Do not vote for anyone who will not say that the miners were right.

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. Again, in Britain, we must be unequivocal about regretting the defeat of the miners.

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.

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 Keir 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.

To Take A Different Course

The next Minister of State for the Commonwealth will not be an uncle of two of Imran Khan's sons. But three cheers for anyone who calls out a lynch mob, a witch hunt, a kangaroo court, or a show trial. And while Zac Goldsmith's Greenery is a disappointing devolution from the views of his robustly pro-industrial and pro-coal father, that paternity does give me a certain affection for him.

In September or October 1996, in one order or the other but I cannot remember which, I received out of the blue a letter addressed to "Dr David Lindsay" from Jimmy Goldsmith, and a letter addressed to "The Reverend Dr David Lindsay" from a Reverend Doctor who, at almost exactly the same time, admitted me as an undergraduate for the next year at the Durham college of which he was Principal.

I must still have the signed copy of his book that he enclosed even though I had no idea how he had ever ever heard of me, but Sir James was corrected, although he continued the correspondence even once he knew that I was a 19-year-old barman. My other correspondent left both his position and this country very soon afterwards. To this day, I have never met him, so I can only assume that he thought that there were two David Lindsays at this address, presumably a father and son.

Goldsmith is the only person without a doctorate ever to have assumed me to have held one, but people with their own have done it with remarkable frequency. I have no idea why, but academically distinguished people read my work and just assume me to be a PhD. Of course, I always correct it. But I thoroughly enjoy the fact that it drives certain people up the wall. No one has ever made that mistake after having read their effusions. Nor ever will.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 693

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 693

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.

On This Rock

Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo Ecclesiam Meam.

If your authority either on Ken Loach or on the Pope is David Baddiel, then while everyone has to be the Holy Father’s target audience, let us just leave that there while asserting confidently that you are not Ken’s.

This is very difficult for the Labour Right, which is symbiotically related to liberal Catholicism in their common historic heartlands such as the North East of England. For the first time, people like that must miss Benedict XVI. He would also have done this, but that would have been far easier on them.

And Baddiel really is their idea of an intellectual. Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home) is high art to them. If you imagine that I am joking, then you have never met them. They think that The Masque of Anarchy was written by Jeremy Corbyn, and that it is therefore rubbish. They have no more seen a Ken Loach film than read a Papal Encyclical. But I digress.

Considering the claims that the See of Rome makes, then, while individual Popes might be or have been charlatans or lunatics, the institution itself is either telling the truth in making those claims, or else it is indeed the Antichrist, and any professing Christian who does not submit to Rome on Rome’s own terms must believe it to be so.

Who will call good evil by pointing to the Papacy’s defence and promotion of metaphysical realism, of Biblical historicity, of credal and Chalcedonian orthodoxy, of the sanctity of human life, of Biblical standards of sexual morality, of social justice, and of peace, and by then saying, “Behold, the Antichrist”? That is the question.

Ah, Faith of Our Fathers. Father Faber, like a striking number of Tractarian or Tractarian-influenced converts, had an ancestry that was largely Huguenot, as is part of mine, although another side is Highland Catholic. So his “fathers chained in prisons dark” were not quite as his thoroughly rousing hymn would suggest. I have no idea why people think that that hymn is Irish. Faber actively disliked the Irish.

Buy the book here.

Maintaining Contact

Nigel Farage has had his bank account closed, and cannot open another one anywhere, because of claims that he denies, but which were made under parliamentary privilege by Chris Bryant.

And this is before they have made us all cashless.

Defying Convention

Not even the brilliant mind of Suella Braverman could convince anyone that Rwanda was both a demi-paradise, and so horrific that no one would ever run the risk of being sent there.

But as for the European Convention on Human Rights, it has not prevented the enactment of the Public Order Act that Labour has entirely predictably promised not to repeal, despite the fact that even the Police have apologised for arrests made pursuant to it, which had led to no charges so pursuant.

You have called us cranks and worse for years when we have pointed out that most Labour MPs and the whole of the party’s staff were well to the right of at least half of Conservative MPs and comprised a downmarket reserve team for when the Conservatives needed an occasional spell out of office. Well, here we are. Again.

Of course, nor has the ECHR prevented the enactment of the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, of the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, of the Nationality and Borders Act, of the Elections Act, or of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. It will keep off the Statute Book neither the Online Safety Bill, nor the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, nor the National Security Bill. No one seriously imagines that a Labour Government would repeal any of those, either.

The ECHR does not preclude the Home Secretary from stripping people of their British citizenship, now without even having to tell them. It has presented no obstacle to vaccine passports. It is doing nothing for Julian Assange. It is not breached by the Trade Union Act 2016. Most countries that subscribe to the ECHR already have identity cards. Thus defined, Keir Starmer is indeed a human rights lawyer.

Nothing that had largely been written by David Maxwell Fyfe ever did have anything to do with those of us who sought 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. Not the European Union into which he castigated Anthony Eden for not having taken the United Kingdom at the start. And not the ECHR, either.

There was a reason why the ECHR’s incorporation into British domestic law was never attempted by any Labour Government until Tony Blair’s. It duly proved useless as civil liberties were shredded; it was the House of Commons that stopped the detention of people for 90 days without charge. And it duly proved useless as the poor, the sick and the disabled were persecuted on a scale and with a venom that had not been seen since before the War, if ever. That persecution continued into and as the age of austerity. Long before Brexit, Covid-19, or the invasion of Ukraine, even as Red Cross food parcels were distributed to our starving compatriots, human rights legislation was of only the most occasional use, if any. That has always been the intention.

In May 1948, the pompously self-styled Congress of Europe assembled in the Hall of Knights, in The Hague. Addressing that assembly, Winston Churchill called it “the Voice of Europe”. But in fact it was mostly made up of politicians who had recently been defeated at the polls, of the representatives of Royal and Noble Houses that had fairly recently been dispossessed at least in political terms, of the likes of Churchill who fell into both categories, and of people whose lives’ work was trying to delude themselves that so did they.

In the name of the order that had held sway for a century between the defeat of Napoleon and the First World War, the order to which the Reichsbürger would wish to return, their aim was very explicitly to check the social democracy that was sweeping Western Europe at the time. The material that they produced had that intention, and it has had that effect. Lo and behold, Blair had it written into British domestic law. And lo and behold, the body that he created for its enforcement, when it has not been sacking its black and disabled staff first, and when it has not been failing to find anything wrong with the Government’s handling of the Windrush scandal, played a key role in bringing down Jeremy Corbyn. Not that Corbyn helped himself by backing down when he ought to have been fighting back. But “Equality and Human Rights”? What equality, exactly? Which human’s rights?

Bound, But Not Gagged

The whole of the existing Lanchester ward is to be transferred into the parliamentary constituency of North Durham on no grounds whatever, but so cut up for local government purposes that Maiden Law will be in Consett North for no apparent reason. The bus will leave this newly single-member ward as you left Lanchester for Maiden Law, but re-enter it as you passed from Maiden Law into Burnhope.

Yet the Boundary Commission has also gone through with its madcap scheme to move the Lanchester ward in its present form into the North Durham parliamentary constituency, of which it would therefore comprise one tenth of the population but more than half of the land area. This is an act of pure partisan spite.

As is the abolition of the North West Durham seat. That is a shameful capitulation to the right-wing Labour machine's petulant insistence that if it could no longer have this seat, then the seat itself must cease to exist. The failure to open the Labour selection process here suggested inside knowledge of the Commission's machinations. Our boundaries might always have had a sense of "Oh, well, what else could we have done?", but now we are to be split four ways. Yes, four.

The proposed new constituency of Blaydon and Consett is a crude gerrymander that should have been laughed out, although the considerable body of Independents in the Consett area, as well as in the Burnopfield and Dipton that are ridiculously going to be put into this thing, should give the smug and entitled Labour Party a run for its money, either in one of their own persons, or behind a Conservative candidate who might very well be Richard Holden.

The redrawn Bishop Auckland constituency will not only be ludicrously large, but it will not contain North West Durham wards that, if this carry on had to be done at all, would belong in that rather than in the Durham City to which they have been reallocated. And here in Lanchester, because no one ever knows what to do with us, we are to be put into North Durham, which is of a piece with many decades of official attempts to force Lanchester people to go to Stanley for things. That is nothing against Stanley. But it is not naturally our town. Why is there such a determination to treat it as if it were?

Although we have not yet finished, some of us have spent many years fighting very hard to restore even part of the situation whereby Lanchester was well-served by public transport. The buses to and from Consett, which are from and to Durham, run twice as often as the Stanley buses during the day, and run later in the evenings. Distances on the Internet are as the crow flies; anyone with any local knowledge will take it as a given that in practice it took less long to reach either Consett or Durham from Lanchester than it took to reach Stanley.

The previous Labour administration on the County Council cut the buses as an expression of its Blairite belief that economic, social, cultural and political life should be strictly reserved for the able-bodied affluent. Politically, Lanchester has been told that again by being placed in a parliamentary constituency that contained neither Durham city centre nor Consett town centre.

Moreover, the present Lanchester ward includes Castleside, which is an integral part of the Consett area, and the North Durham constituency is not centred on Stanley, but on Chester-le-Street, which is not, and has no cause to be, directly linked to Lanchester. It beggars belief that, being in this ward as presently constituted, Castleside will not be in a constituency with the word "Consett" in its name, but rather in one that was centred on Chester-le-Street.

At best, although that would still be saying almost nothing, Burnhope should be in North Durham, Castleside should be in Blaydon and Consett, and Lanchester should be either in that or in City of Durham. The Burnopfield and Dipton ward, however, is indeed to be in Consett and Blaydon, despite having been in North Durham in the past.

The addition of the Lanchester ward is the only proposed change to North Durham, yet Electoral Calculus claims that that would quadruple the Labour majority from 4,742 to 16,077, higher than it had been at any of the last four General Elections, with Labour wildly improbably predicted to win every ward. Look them up. If Labour intended to run a campaign smugly based on that, then I would take great pleasure in giving it a run for its money despite the near-total lack of mine. By the way, I do not know why my lowly 414 votes are blamed, although not by Laura herself, for the defeat of Laura Pidcock. Richard's majority was 1,144, and 1,173 people voted Green.

At Blaydon and Consett, the predicted Labour majority is 15,265, with a clean sweep of wards the suggestion of which is downright laughable, since it bears no resemblance to the results in Consett over the last 20 years. With the support of the Independents, and assuming a Liberal Democrat paper campaign, then Richard, whose office is already prominent in Consett town centre, would stand every chance against an MP whose office was prominent in the centre of Blaydon.

Special Demonstration?

Until the very recent enactment of legislation that the Official Opposition did not oppose and would not repeal, demonstration was not illegal. Yet there was a Special Demonstration Squad, as if peaceful protest had been terrorism, or fraud, or organised crime. Under other recent legislation that the Official Opposition did not oppose and would not repeal, nothing that that Squad had done could possibly be illegal if it happened now, making it even less likely than ever that anyone will be prosecuted for having done it when it was against the law.

I already knew a lot of this through the great man, Dr Dave Smith, whom I managed to miss at last year's Durham Miners' Gala, meaning that I have not seen him since Davey Ayre's funeral. With any luck, he will be at the Big Meeting next month. Unlike any official representative of the Official Opposition that did not oppose and would not repeal the post facto legalisation of all of this, since it is led by a spycop. There would be no fuss over Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie unless it were telling the obvious truth.

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 Keir 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.

Coordinated Campaign of Interference?

I know a lynch mob, a witch hunt, a kangaroo court or a show trial when I see one, and no one stages such a thing quite like the right wing of the Labour Party. You do not have to carry a candle for Boris Johnson, or for any of the MPs or Peers named in today's report, to deprecate the vindictiveness on display. Been there, done that. Still doing it, in fact. As it happens, I do have soft spots for two of those Peers, but you do not need to know everything, and one of them would not know who I was. His father did, though. His father did.

Notice that even most of the 2019 Conservative intake has no time for Johnson, and never really wanted him as Prime Minister, or in Parliament, or in their party. Is he still a member of the Conservative Party? On the grounds cited, how can he possibly be? If he is, then that will presumably not be for very much longer. Like Jamie Driscoll, Jeremy Corbyn is being allowed to autoexclude from the Labour Party, effectively to resign, by standing as an Independent. He will remain a member in good standing until that moment. But if it has not already done so, then Johnson's party is going to kick him out.

The Conservative Right is preparing to go to the stake for a very big spender since long before Covid-19, who even lifted the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him the most pro-immigration Prime Minister in living memory, if not ever, although admittedly only because Liz Truss never got into her stride. Johnson was closer to Stonewall than any Prime Minister before or since. Net Zero was Johnson's. The lockdowns were Johnson's. The Northern Ireland Protocol was Johnson's. The war in Ukraine was Johnson's.

Forget about another run for Mayor of London. Take it from someone who has repeatedly seen the bottom of a poll that that would be where Johnson would place. But a London Mayoral candidate's nomination papers have to be signed by 10 registered electors from each of the 32 London Boroughs and by 10 from the City, so Johnson would never even make it onto the ballot paper. He had an electorate that made him a two-term Mayor of London, and he had a very different electorate that gave him an overall majority of 80 as Prime Minister. He has lost both of those blocs forever. Each of them still exists and always will, but neither of them will ever again want anything to do with him.

Remembrance Sunday, which is still well over four fun-packed months away, will be when we saw whether Johnson were still treated as a former Prime Minister at all. Will he be in that row of them at the Cenotaph? Or will the matter of Evgeny Lebedev have caused his removal from the Privy Council, no longer considered fit to advise the King alongside Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, and assorted Scottish and Welsh Nationalists? I cannot see what especial power simple ennoblement gave Lebedev, and it is worth pointing out that he was a major backer of the Remain campaign, but there we are. Johnson defied the almighty hired help, so he has to be made to pay. Ask Corbyn. Just do not mention Lebedev's ties to Jeffrey Epstein's apartment-sitter, the de facto Deputy Prime Minister in the last Labour Government and in the next one, Peter Mandelson.

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 Keir 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 Clergy Challenge: Day 692

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 692

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.

Development?

Free school meals yesterday, rent controls today. The only time that you ever learn that the Labour Party had a policy is when they ditch it. Lisa Nandy's objections to rent controls assume that other problems in housing policy are laws of physics.

As for not bringing back the Department for International Development, it was created by Tony Blair. It survived David Cameron, Theresa May, and well into the Premiership of Boris Johnson. But it did have its faults. So Keir Starmer has to explain why he does not want to revive it. I guarantee that his reasons will be the wrong ones.

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.

One More Sleep

In 12 hours' time, the Undercover Policing Inquiry's Tranche 1 Interim Report will be published on the Inquiry's website.

To Earth Like Dew

Oh, how I laughed. Jeremy Corbyn quoted The Masque of Anarchy, so the Keir Starmers, David Baddiels, Oliver Kamms and Hadley Freemans of the world assumed that he had written it, causing them to decry it as rubbish. They should be made to pronounce "Bysshe". Corbyn's and Len McCluskey's anthology is going to sell healthily, and the snotty reviews by people who had not read it are not even going to help that. They are going to have no effect whatever.

Tories can be educated beyond their intelligence, and the Left can often be not only intelligent, but also informed and cultured, well beyond their formal academic records. But Labour Righties, well, as the young people say, you do you. We would not want you any other way.

Money Down The Drain

How can you lose money as the monopoly supplier of water to anyone, never mind to 15 million people? And how can you have paid dividends on £900 million of profit last year, yet go bust this year owing £10 billion? Guess who is going to be making up that shortfall. Privatisation was supposed to pass the risk to the private sector. How many times do we have to see that that was not case? And again, what risk? How can you lose money as a monopoly supplier of water?

Did nothing come out when we turned on a tap before 1989? Did cholera? Were there water riots? Are there still in Scotland and Wales? Are there in any remotely advanced country, since apart from a handful of American towns, the only two places to have privatised water have been England and its then prototype, Pinochet's Chile?

Permanent renationalisation is massively popular, but of course the Labour Party is against it. So much for its dominant faction's Europeanism, since privatised water would be unimaginable anywhere else in the EU. So much for the EU, which did nothing to prevent or reverse the privatisation of water. And so much for the Conservative Party's commitment to national sovereignty, that it can allow England's water supply to be 70 per cent foreign-owned.

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 Keir 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 Clergy Challenge: Day 691

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 691

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.

More Than Spiking Costs

Greedflation is now just a fact, resisted only by cultists. If you want to know how dangerous it is to oppose even the IMF from the right, then ask Liz Truss. Ask anyone, in fact, since for the rest of our lives we are all going to be cleaning up her mess and Kwasi Kwarteng's, the mess from mere suggestions that were never even put to a Commons vote, much less signed into law.

Truss should be made to go round South West Norfolk with her guru, Patrick Minford, and make the case for his view that Britain ought to have no agriculture. In general, though, anyone who still believed in Trussonomics ought to vote Labour. Labour opposed only one mini-Budget measure, the only one that Truss had not pitched to the Conservative Party membership, and it would have abstained if there had ever been a Commons division on the mini-Budget.

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 Keir 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.

Linen In Public

A year ago this evening, I was in Newcastle for the first time since the Before Times, although I have been back rather a lot since, to see George Galloway show his unmissable film, Killing Kelly. That ought to be shown on a Freeview channel on or near 17th July, not quite three weeks' time, the twentieth anniversary of the death of Dr David Kelly.

Around this hour, the train from Newcastle to Durham called at Chester-le-Street. As a man in his eighties, completely unknown to me, was getting off, he looked at me and announced, in the unmistakable tones of the old miners, "Brother Lindsay, you might meet a very sticky end, but you'll definitely never starve to death." It must have been the suit. And so far, he has been proved right.

A Meal To Be Made

Pupils on free school meals are not allowed certain items on the menu. Free school meals for all. Why would that be unaffordable? Unaffordable compared to what?

Charging for school meals would boggle the minds and turn the stomachs of many other developed countries. As with so many things, so much for the Europeanism of those who oppose free school meals for all, and so much for the EU that never made us have them. 

Like free prescriptions, free eye and dental checkups, free hospital parking, and so much else besides, free school meals for all will soon be "unaffordable" in England only, with abolition in Scotland or Wales advocated no more by the Conservatives than by anyone else. Why?

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 I say again that on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir 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.

Confronting False Myths and Schemes

Is it the position of the Labour Party that the Pope would in principle be an unfit and improper person to be Mayor of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority?

If not, why not?

What Shall It Profit?

"Soaring corporate profits and soaring inflation do not prove that one causes the other," you say? Well, the IMF thinks that they do, but even so, inflation is certainly not being caused by wages so low that we are well into the second year of strikes over them. If Matt Hancock is worth £1500 per hour, then why are doctors not worth £19? Even for Hancock's supposed day job, is there any suggestion that a pay review body's recommendation to increase the remuneration of MPs might be overridden? Nor will putting up interest rates solve inflation after having failed to do so on 12 consecutive occasions. Yet what are we offered instead? Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.

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 I say again that 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.

Taking The Pledge?

Keir Starmer has moved on from abandoning the policies on which he won the Labour Leadership. He is now abandoning the ones with which he replaced those. A major Shadow Cabinet reshuffle is also anticipated. So much for the presentation of the current Shadow Cabinet as a generationally transformative Government in waiting.

And in The Times, the spooks' gazette with which Starmer has had a very close relationship at least since he was Director of Public Prosecutions, it is blithely announced that he considers only 10 Labour MPs to be capable of being Ministers, so that he is planning mass ennoblements to make up the numbers.

Not existing Labour Peers. Not the Labour parliamentary candidates whose selection is being ruthlessly rigged because, again, they are supposed to be a once-in-a-generation pool of talent. No, a list of anything up to 100 new members both of the House of Lords and of the Government on Starmer's first day, and quite possibly of the Labour Party as well. Will the electorate be made privy to this list before being invited to vote Labour? What do you think?

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 I say again that 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 Clergy Challenge: Day 690

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 690

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.

One Week On

Nominations have been closed for a week, so when is the election?

If you know, you know.

Beyond The Bounds

The whole of the existing Lanchester ward is to be transferred into the parliamentary constituency of North Durham on no grounds whatever, but so cut up for local government purposes that Maiden Law will be in Consett North for no apparent reason.

The bus will leave this newly single-member ward as you left Lanchester for Maiden Law, but re-enter it as you passed from Maiden Law into Burnhope. I give up. This time, I really do give up.

Guarded

No one in the West can possibly know at this stage, but perhaps the Wagner Group really is being moved to Belarus to "guard" the Russian nuclear weapons that were now there.

48 hours ago, the people who are having kittens over that, were wetting themselves with glee that Yevgeny Prigozhin, and thus whoever had paid him, were going to be getting their hands on the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

That is the thing with mercenaries. They belong to whoever pays them more. So a private company with what amounted to vast and expanding territories in Africa and elsewhere may indeed soon have de facto control of nuclear weapons as well.

In Proposing The Universal Call To Holiness

Today is the Feast of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. Pope Francis, who is the first Pope to have dealt closely with Opus Dei while he was a diocesan bishop, has called Saint Josemaría “a precursor of Vatican II in proposing the universal call to holiness”. I am a convinced admirer of Opus Dei, both as a practising Catholic and as a man firmly of the Left. 

Corporal mortification, to get that out of the way, is an integral part of Catholic spirituality. Catholics need to re-learn moderate self-denial on Fridays, on the Wednesdays of Lent, during Holy Week, on the eves of the Church’s greatest Solemnities, and before receiving Communion, as well as the considerable exigencies of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

These are of a piece with the cilice, which is a spiked chain worn around the upper thigh, and with the discipline, which is a small whip used on the back. Convents manufacturing such items still do a roaring trade, and the rise of Opus Dei is itself a sign that the decadent period of disdain for asceticism even within the Catholic Church is an aberration now mercifully coming to an end.

In any case, people who suggested that Ruth Kelly wore the cilice to work merely demonstrated their own ignorance. Both the cilice and the discipline are used by numeraries, who are celibate, live in Opus Dei centres, and give most of their salaries directly to Opus Dei. Kelly was and is clearly a supernumerary, as are 70 per cent of Opus Dei members, and so presumably mortifies the flesh in ways more acceptable to clever-clever opinion, though none the worse for that. 

Opus Dei believes in the sanctification of the world, thus first anticipating and then implementing the Second Vatican Council. By contrast, its opponents believe in the secularisation of the Church, falsely presenting that as “the Spirit of Vatican II”. Therefore, they oppose corporal mortification as they oppose other Opus Dei practices: beginning the day by offering it to God, daily Communion, the Rosary, the Angelus, daily examination of conscience, invocation of the Angels and the Saints, ejaculatory prayer, use of holy water, and so forth.

That is because they disagree profoundly with Opus Dei about sanctification of and through ordinary work, not least because they so look down on the people who do a great deal of ordinary work. They disagree with Opus Dei about living a contemplative life in the middle of the world, taking everything one does with liturgical seriousness, and recognising, as any orthodox Catholic must, that every experience of the true, the good and the beautiful is in fact a religious experience.

Instead, they would rather that even the Liturgy were treated with no more, or even rather less, seriousness than most people attach to a pop concert or a football match, and that even the most obviously ecstatic mystical experiences were somehow explained away by pseudo-scientific, avowedly anti-Christian means.

They disagree with Opus Dei’s, which is the Catholic Church’s, definition of Christian freedom in the Aristotelian yet profoundly Biblical terms given definitive Catholic and commonsensical articulation by Saint Thomas Aquinas, according to which the only true freedom is in accordance with the Will of God. Instead, they would define it in secular and Modern terms, as the freedom of the individual to do as he will, provided that he agree with them, and that he do so as the end in itself.

They disagree with Opus Dei’s (again, simply the Church’s) doctrine of divine filiation, of recognising oneself and every other human being as a Child of God. Adopted by God’s grace and thus in some sense ipse Christus, “Christ Himself”, everything we do is therefore in some sense part of the world’s redemption: the mundane is transcendent. Instead, they would rather make the transcendent mundane. 

They disagree with divine filiation’s very high understanding of the dignity of each and every human life, and with its strong imperative towards evangelisation. And they disagree with its inherent imperative, both to take up the Cross, and to experience a profound joy quite unlike any momentary chemical or sexual “high” of their own formative years. 

Instead, they would rather “modernise” on abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell “research”. They would rather trim Christianity and Catholicism to suit every other system of belief, though even then not with a view to converting anyone. And they would rather have instant gratification, on the cheap in every sense. 

Sanctification through work, the living of a contemplative life in the middle of the world, Christian freedom correctly defined, and the recognition of divine filiation: these are the principles calling all Catholics to rediscover and renew, ever-more-deeply, our beginning the day by offering it to God, our frequent Communion, our daily examination of conscience, our ejaculatory prayer, our use of holy water, and our devotion to the Mother of God, to the Angels and to the Saints. And, yes, our practice of corporal mortification. 

All of this is whether or not we experience any vocation to join Opus Dei, undoubtedly God’s instrument in renewing the Church in this way, but even more clearly so if this renewal becomes the norm among Catholics generally, including our witness to ecumenical partners. 

So much for admiring Opus Dei as a Catholic. But how can a man of the Left possibly do so?

Far from being indifferent or hostile towards the poor, Opus Dei runs ELIS in Rome, the Midtown Center in Chicago, the Moluka medical clinic in Kinshasa, the Los Pinos educational centre in Montevideo, the Braval programme of professional formation for immigrants in Barcelona, the Laguna care centre in Madrid, the Harambee 2002 project, Condoray in Cañete, the Institute for Industrial Technology in Lagos, the Guatanfur agricultural and stock raising school in Temza, the Anauco medical dispensary in Caracas, the Centenario medical clinic in Monterrey, the Informal Sector Business Institute in Nairobi, and many more besides. Google them. 

Ruth Kelly was the most prominent Opus Dei politician in the world; I am not sure who now is, but it ought to be emphasised that Rick Santorum is not a member. The United Nations Secretary-General, former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and former President of the Socialist International, António Guterres, has a long history in Opus Dei.

Its ranks included the late Squire Lance, Saul Alinsky’s chosen successor in Chicago. They also included the late Jorge Rossi Chavarría, sometime Vice President of Costa Rica, and co-founder of that country’s National Liberation Party (PLN), the Costa Rican vehicle for social democracy, affiliated to the Socialist International. Rossi co-founded the PLN as an outgrowth of his work as legal advisor to the Costa Rican Confederation of Workers of Rerum Novarum, Rerum Novarum being the 1891 founding text of Catholic Social Teaching with its very strong critique of unbridled capitalism, a critique continued and expanded by every Pope since. 

Opus Dei included the late Antonio Fontán, the apostle of press freedom against the Franco regime, and the first President of the Senate after the restoration of Spanish democracy under a Constitution that he had co-authored. The strongly anti-Franco academic and journalist Rafael Calvo Serer was also a member of Opus Dei. It still includes, among others, Paola Binetti, Llúis Foix and Mario Maiolo. We may or may not count the Catalan nationalism of Xavi Casajuana as part of the Left, but it is undeniably a very long way from Franco. Most of the Chilean “Chicago Boys” were not members of Opus Dei. Pinochet himself never had any affiliation with it.

So, insofar as it has a political orientation, Opus Dei’s would seem to be towards the Left, if anything. Much like the Catholic Church Herself, in fact. That is yet another reason to hope, work and pray for the Catholic Church at large to become much more like Opus Dei.

After all, it was greatly admired by Saint Óscar Romero, as explained by Filip Mazurczak in an article that I have been quite unable to cut, and to which I have added emphasis:

On March 24, 1980, Archbishop Óscar Romero was shot during the celebration of Mass by the death squadrons of El Salvador’s military government. Today his reputation is undergoing a second assassination: Critics have responded to the floating of his name for beatification by wrongly charging the man with supporting violence, communism, and heresy. Those who would make the archbishop a radical hero have offered their own version of these claims in approving tones. Both are wrong.

Murals and t-shirts showing Romero alongside Salvador Allende and Che Guevara are common in Central America, yet his visage sits somewhat uncomfortably beside theirs. Romero did not hesitate to condemn capitalism, but at the same time he was an anti-communist. In his sermons he cautioned against the dangers of atheistic, materialist Marxism. In one of his homilies, Romero chastised leftists for criticizing American imperialism while turning a blind eye to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 

While the left has come to glorify Romero, right-wing politicians in El Salvador have accused him of inspiring leftist guerrilla violence. In reality, Romero sought a peaceful solution to El Salvador’s troubles. In his third pastoral letter, written in 1978, Romero condemned leftist guerrilla violence as “terrorist” and “seditious.” In the fourth letter written one year later, the archbishop of San Salvador reminded the nation that violence was justifiable only in extreme situations when all other alternatives have been exhausted, citing Catholic just war theory.

The twentieth century was a difficult one for the Latin American Church. In the 1970s and 1980s, military juntas ruled most of the region. In Argentina, the bishops’ close ties to the dictatorship of Jorge Videla and their silence on the tortures and disappearances in the country led many Argentineans to lose their trust in the Church. By contrast, in Nicaragua many clerics supported armed revolution against the Somoza dictatorship and supported the Marxist Sandinistas.

Even a man as saintly as Dom Helder Camara, he bishop who defended Brazil’s poor against the country’s military dictatorship, believed that Marx should do for Christianity in the twentieth century what Aristotle did for medieval Thomism. By contrast, in a 1978 homily, Romero said: “Since Marxist materialism destroys the Church’s transcendent meaning, a Marxist church would be not only self-destructive but senseless.” 

Romero avoided the blinkered anti-communism of Argentina’s bishops and defended the vulnerable against military violence, seeing the hypocrisy of rulers who claim to be Christians yet persecute the people. At the same time, he understood the dangers of Marxism, condemning the Marxist guerrilla movement that terrorized El Salvador’s ruling class. Ernesto Cardenal, the Trappist monk who in the 1980s was a minister in Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, wrote that before becoming a Christian, one first must become a Marxist-Leninist. Romero rejected this: His personal hero was Pope Pius XI for resisting fascism and communism at the same time.

Romero also stood apart from liberation theology, distinguishing between the liberation of communism and the liberation Christ offers. In the 1980s, some Latin American priests inspired by Marxism wanted to deny Communion to the wealthy. Romero resisted this saying in a 1979 homily: “We are not demagogically in favor of one social class; we are in favor of God’s reign, and we want to promote justice, love, and understanding, wherever there is a heart well disposed.” 

Few know that Romero received spiritual direction from an Opus Dei priest and personally knew the future saint and Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva. When the latter died in 1975, he wrote a letter to Paul VI asking the Pope to jumpstart his canonization process, writing: “Monsignor Escriva . . . was able to unite in his life a continuous dialogue with Our Lord and a great humanity; one could tell he was a man of God, and his manner was full of sensitivity, kindness, and good humor.” As recommended by Opus Dei priests, Romero wore a cilice on Fridays as a form of self-mortification until his death. 

One of the firmest supporters of Romero’s beatification has been Pope Benedict XVI. Both before and after his election to the papacy he has expressed his enthusiasm for the cause, going so far as to say that he has “no doubt” that Romero will be declared blessed someday. 

During his 1983 pilgrimage to El Salvador, John Paul insisted on visiting Romero’s tomb despite the pleas of Latin American bishops and the Salvadoran government. John Paul II asked local priests to open the door of the cathedral which was locked up by the military. He immersed himself in prayer for a long time in front of Romero’s tomb.

John Paul II again demonstrated his affection for Oscar Romero by insisting “again against the wishes of many churchmen” that during the 2000 Jubilee Year celebration in Rome’s Coliseum Romero’s name be mentioned among the great martyrs of the Americas.

It is a name we are likely to hear again.

Óscar Romero was indeed beatified on 23rd May 2015, and canonised on 14th October 2018. Ora pro nobis. And Saint Josemaría Escrivá, ora pro nobis.

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The Clergy Challenge: Day 689

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he 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.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 689

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.

Lost

The Russian Civil War must already be on, and Vladimir Putin must be on the cusp of his inevitable defeat.

You see, no outcome can ever mean anything other than the predetermined conclusion.

Neoconservatism is fascinating. It is a thing of hideous beauty.

Utter In The Light

Here is your weekly reminder that this could not have been an executive summary of this. That would have been impossible, since they bear no resemblance to each other. It is all here, including on the ludicrous definition of "grooming" that was used to hound Canon McCoy to his death, and including on the nonsense about Timothy Gardner. Something has changed since 3rd May. What is it? And where is the original report?

I do not resile from this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or this. Rather, I reiterate every word of each and all of them. There was no cathedral sex party. The move from the old Bishop's House to the new one made a profit. There was no allegation of sexual assault against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, who should sue every media outlet that had suggested one.

I may not, but I may, accept the present report when Bishop Byrne had done so, and to the extent that he had done so. His Lordship has yet to do so to any extent. At least while that remains the case, then I reject the whole thing out of hand, and so should you. The sum total of the charge sheet against Bishop Byrne is that he did not automatically do as he was told by the hired help. But Pat Buckley does not like Bishop Stephen Wright, so Bishop Wright must be all right.

Non-Negotiable?

"Labour's fiscal rules are non-negotiable," declares Rachel Reeves as she promises to overrule the School Teachers' Review Body rather than permit a 6.5 per cent pay increase. It is deliciously entertaining to watch people realise what they had done, first in knifing Jeremy Corbyn, not that he helped himself, and then in elevating Keir Starmer. The Guardian and The Observer positively sing with wailing, accompanied by gnashing of teeth. Labour MPs are told that only 10 of them are capable of being Ministers, with peerages being planned to fill the other positions. And now the teachers. The teachers!

Reeves has no view on interest rates, lest that compromise the independence of the Bank of England, but she has no such scruple about the STRB. The difference must be that the Bank of England used to employ her. As, for future reference, did the British Embassy in Washington. But we never voted for any of these "independent" pay review bodies, which are in fact appointed by the Ministers who set their terms of reference, any more than we voted for the Bank of England to which Labour farmed out monetary policy without a manifesto commitment, or for the Office for Budget 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.

The trade unions are winning pay rises at or above the rate of inflation all over the private sector. But half of your exorbitant rail fare is profit to a contractor that the Government undertakes to pay whatever that contractor, usually foreign and often a foreign state, feels like charging, while the Royal Mail, which no one seems to grasp is now a private company because the only thing more bizarre than that is the fact that it is now separate from the Post Office, has flipped from recording a £750 million profit to a £250 million loss rather than pay its staff fairly. And that is before we even start about unambiguously public provision such as the National Health Service.

Michelle Mone, the VIP lane in general, all sorts of other things from the lockdowns, however much money we are really spending to be beaten in Ukraine: of course we could afford this, even before we mentioned that a sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency had as much of that currency as it chose 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.

If a minimum service level were to be defined in, say, the NHS, less than everything that it did anyway, then why should the State pay for anything above that minimum? If companies were empowered to sue unions over strikes, then how would their directors not have a fiduciary duty to do so? And so on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

Not a word of this will come from the Official Opposition. If you believe that it would repeal the latest round of anti-union legislation, then I have some magic beans to sell you. Reeves parrots Trussonomics, even talking about "growing the pie", while entirely falsely claiming that the last two Labour manifestos had been uncosted and that Corbyn had left the party in deficit.

Funded by private healthcare, Wes Streeting wants to give public money to that interest rather than, you know, to the NHS. Once anything had gone, then try getting it back, and be in no doubt that we would indeed end up having to pay upfront for it. Rishi Sunak's declared plan for more of that instead of the NHS was made politically possible by the fact that Streeting had already announced it, meaning that there would be no Official Opposition to it.

Labour is now endorsed by Jeremy Clarkson, who is close to David Cameron, as well as by Austerity Coalition stalwarts such as Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke, Claire Perry O'Neill, and the bet-hedging George Osborne, whose long-time Chief of Staff and then Evening Standard employee, Rupert Harrison, is on the Economic Advisory Council and has just been selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Bicester and Woodstock.

Starmer, Reeves, Streeting, Sadiq Khan and Anas Sarwar were all at Rupert Murdoch's summer party with Rebekah Brooks, even though Starmer's campaign video for Labour Leader had made much of his prosecution of her, failing to mention that she had been acquitted.

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 I say again that 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.