Lost Authority

As the wastes of space from the Palestinian Authority are run out of the funerals in Jenin, add that to the list of things that you read here first. Specifically, you read it here:

The boys of the Jenin Brigades know that the Israelis made their families refugees. But they also know that the Palestinian Authority has a large share of culpability for the fact that they themselves were born that way, in a giant refugee camp that had been under Palestinian rule since before they were glints in the eye. With their purely homemade weapons, these extreme youths, in both senses, are no Iranian proxies. They have risen as much against Fatah, Hamas, and even Islamic Jihad, as they have against the Occupation. Next, head down the road to Nablus, and watch out for the Lions' Den.

With only 70 votes against, the House of Commons has this evening passed legislation that defined the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and even the Golan Heights, as parts of Israel, and made it illegal for anyone who happened to be a local councillor to criticise, not only any foreign state without central government permission, but Israel, thus defined, under any circumstance whatever. Labour abstained, because it wants these powers for itself, and because it has already made criticism of Israel, thus defined, expulsionable from the 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 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.