Special Recognition

Keir Starmer has not appointed Sue Gray because she is left-wing. He has appointed her because he is not. Held up as the politically neutral "centre ground", with no attempt to explain how it could be both, these people's violently extreme and extremely violent ideology is not even within mainstream public opinion. But there is rarely any realistic way of voting against it, and in any case these are always the defining prejudices of the permanent functionaries.

Much is being made of the claim that Gray "loyally" served seven Prime Ministers, but she was certainly not loyal to Boris Johnson, and the money markets probably got in before her against Liz Truss. Unlike those markets, imagine what Gray would have done to Jeremy Corbyn. I once applied for a lowest level desk job with the Labour Party, and there was a space on the form in which you had to write your party membership number. Gray already has one, or this appointment would be unconscionable. Either that, or Starmer considers that no one in his party is capable of being his Chief of Staff, just as he considers that only 10 of its MPs would be capable of being Ministers. Which is it?

Who is Sue Gray? Since this appointment was announced, then it has become the Authorised Version that she was born and raised in London, but her accent will need some polishing in order to keep that one up, because everyone had always assumed that she was obviously from Northern Ireland, although no one knew where, exactly. She still has two possible years of birth. Until recently, this was "the woman who [ran] the country", and she will soon be running the Labour Party.

Many years before she ran either, her fiefdom was a public house in Newry. We are expected to believe that it was normal in the 1980s for a civil servant to take such a "career break" in an IRA stronghold, before resuming a seamless rise through the permanent British State. The IRA once declined to hijack her car because its members had recognised her, so it seems highly unlikely that she came across as remotely English, and that incident should be seen in the context of the very high level of intelligence penetration of that organisation.

As should the arrest of four Protestants, at least one with known Loyalist paramilitary connections, in relation to the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell. One shies away from this kind of thing, but there has always, always, always been a school of thought that the New IRA was a false flag operation. These arrests are one of three stories in the last week that the spooky media can barely bring themselves to mention, along with the devastating submissions to the Spycops Inquiry, of which there are even more to come, and findings of the Manchester Arena Inquiry, although even those managed to miss out the worst stuff of all.

If there ever could be a good time to be trying to make a spycop Prime Minister, then this is not it. But they are. After all, while a Head Boy of Winchester knows the rules, if he was only Goldman Sachs then he can never know the facts, but a Director of Public Prosecutions is the icing on the cake. The cherry on top is the woman who kept the Loyalist paramilitary safe house behind IRA lines in 1980s Newry, and they do not even have to get her elected.

"They" are the beneficiaries 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, and of the staggering Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, recently joined by the even more stunning Public Order Act, and soon to be joined by the Online Safety Bill, by the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, and by the National Security Bill.

They are already so convinced that Starmer is going to win a General Election in December 2024 that they are openly staffing his office at the very highest levels. The opinion polls bear no resemblance to Labour's abysmal electoral performance under Starmer, so ask yourself how the spooks could possibly be so certain. Yet they are. Think on.

Think on, that the United Kingdom is going to be the worst-performing economy in the G7 this year, so a lid needs to be kept on any popular dissent. It is time for a security emergency, thanks to one or both of the Loyalist paramilitaries and the dissident Republicans. If those did not exist, then our rulers would have to invent them. And at different times, those did not used to exist.

Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries have always been heavily involved in traditional organised crime in general, and in drug-dealing in particular, leading to generations of professional and social interaction of the kind that also takes place routinely among, for example, rival Mafia families, when they are not letting each others' blood without mercy. Welcome to the world of Sue Gray.

There has never been any secret that the Loyalist organisations were off-the-books arms of the British State, while the old IRA was also 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.

In March, four Protestants, at least one with known Loyalist paramilitary connections, were arrested in relation to the attempted murder of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell, for which the New IRA had already claimed responsibility. In May, there were a further 11 arrests, including of eight Protestants. There has always been a school of thought that the New IRA was a false flag operation. The Spirit of Northern Ireland, indeed.

There has never been any doubt as to the true nature of the likes of the UDA, the UVF, and Ulster Resistance, which provided the then Queen's Government with confidence and supply from 2017 to 2019. Across that ostensible divide, it is all heating up over there just as it is all threatening to heat up, by our standards, over here.

That is all unconnected to any sincere pursuit of a United Ireland. Sinn Féin is so shot through, so to speak, with British Establishment payroll voters that they have first swung it in favour of the EU and now, if only in all but name for the time being, they have swung it behind NATO, of which whether Ireland was in fact a member has always been the non-Yes-No question that British membership of the EU has also become.

In either case, if you think that the answer is a straight "No", or even "No" at all, then you are not in the club. Sinn Féin wants to be in the club. It has lately received the President of the United States before attending the King's Coronation, so it already is. It knows the rules.

But Sinn Féin still formally believes the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland as the legitimate successor of the Second Dáil, although that Parliament's only surviving member in 1986, Tom Maguire, conferred legitimacy on the Continuity Army Council, so that it was the Continuity IRA that provided a firing squad at his funeral in, almost unbelievably, 1993, and so that it has been Republican Sinn Féin that has held commemorations at his graveside.

Anyway, that is what Sinn Féin believes. That the Provisional Army Council is the sovereign body throughout Ireland as the legitimate successor of the Second Dáil. For all practical purposes, it has functioned as such since 1998 in the Six Counties, whence hail most its members. Anyone doubting that need look no further than the funeral of Bobby Storey, followed by the decision of the Police that no Covid-19 regulations has been breached.

Storey's coffin was borne to its rest by Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris, Sean Hughes, Gerry Kelly, Martin "Duckster" Lynch, and Sean "Spike" Murray. At any given time, there are seven members of the Army Council. Of the deceased and his six pallbearers, only Ferris was from the 26 Counties. There, however, Sinn Féin might have entered government if it had fielded enough candidates at the last General Election to the Dáil. It will certainly field enough next time.

Handpicked for Leadership by an Army Council that was based almost entirely in what it never called "Northern Ireland", Michelle O'Neill as First Minister would be a detail, since that Council has effectively been in charge there for 25 years, regardless of how many votes its partisans, who had sometimes included its members, had obtained.

But handpicked for Leadership by an Army Council that was based almost entirely in what it never called "Northern Ireland", Mary Lou McDonald as Taoiseach of what that Council did not regard as the real Republic of Ireland would be a seismic event, effectively extending the exercise of the IRA's claim to sovereignty across the entire territory claimed, and to the means of a sovereign state's participation in international affairs.

Who would need a border poll? Why would the IRA want one? No referendum would ever endorse rule by the Army Council. Once that were established across the whole of Ireland, then the beneficiaries would never wish to give it up, and everyone else would find it practically impossible to make them. That day is now well within sight. But there will always be dissidents of one sort or another. They are too useful for there ever to be allowed not to be.

Still, 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.