Shake Off The Fleas

At times like these, I recall an exchange that I once witnessed, although some people think that I made it up:

American Pentecostal pastor: "When did your family become Christians?"

Palestinian Catholic priest: "On the Day of Pentecost."

That rocket attack killed more people than have been killed by all Palestinian rocket attacks, ever. If any Palestinian faction had that kind of capacity, then the whole conflict would be entirely different. Israel originally gloated about having hit the Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital, as it had already hit at least 11 other hospitals and clinics. The Islamic Jihad story was its third in as many hours.

From 2:45, Alex Thomson tears the Israeli account to shreds. Is there any native speaker of Arabic who finds that recording anything other than laughable? The IDF has a history of lying about the deaths of the British James Miller and the American Shireen Abu Akleh, among others. It is now claiming that this missile had been launched from two different places, neither of which matches the video. And so on.

The BBC is cravenly claiming that they had merely "believed" that Keir Starmer had said what everyone had heard him say, but only a few Muslim Councillors have left the Labour Party over Starmer's aiding and abetting of war crimes. Yet so many Councillors had been threatening to do so that the party had been set to lose control of several authorities. There are not enough Muslim Labour Councillors for their prospective departures alone to have made that a credible threat, so yesterday's mealymouthed efforts by Starmer and by David Lammy demonstrated that the disaffection was far wider and far deeper. If only to abstention, but quite possibly to rather more than that, Labour's Muslim vote is going to collapse next year. Christians, and indeed everyone, should also refuse to vote for the Kid Starver of Gaza and Gospel Oak, or for his White Phosphorus Party that would privatise the hospitals at home having already bombed them abroad.

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.