They Are Going To Brand Us All

It has been five weeks since Dispatches was watched by fewer than one third as many people as watched Russell Brand every day even then, never mind now. Brand has never so much as been brought in for questioning, much less arrested.

If there was ever any suggestion of an investigation into allegations of sexual assault, then there no longer is, and if they cannot even make harassment stick, then they really do have nothing, since a Bench of Magistrates will automatically convict anyone of harassment on the say-so of someone who was well enough connected that the Crown Prosecution Service would take up her case. There is also no sign of any attempt to extradite Brand to California.

As from the first, I say that Brand's anonymised and voiced up accusers on the state broadcasting networks, and in what are always the Government of the day's semi-official Murdoch papers, simply do not exist. Prove me wrong. And for 20 years, the law on sexual offences has been the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which is the crowning glory of Harriet Harman, the preeminent British feminist politician of the Baby Boom. Any complaint about its operation should be addressed to her.

But be warned, as you always have been. If you have the slightest doubt about any aspect of #MeToo, or of gender self-identification, or of "sex work", or of Net Zero, or of the policy response to Covid-19, or of the war in Ukraine, or if you still believe in Brexit, then they are coming for you as they came for Jeremy Corbyn the first time, and as they are now coming for all opponents of the starvation, white phosphorus bombing, and whatever came next of the people of Gaza, where 60 per cent of the population is aged under 30, 50 per cent is under 18, 40 per cent is under 14, and there has been no election since 2006.

The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the wreath, and the mural, and the "not understanding English irony", and the "friends from Hamas and Hezbollah", and all the rest of those, were total rubbish, as everyone who did bother to check did find out. Anti-Semitism is unlawful by definition, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission found precisely two cases in its entire report, neither of which was taken up by the Police or by the CPS, and neither of which involved Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of the Labour Party. Even in relation to those two instances, it was found in court that it was, "arguable that the Defendant [the EHRC] made an error of law in relation to Article 10 ECHR." Rather than defend that at judicial review, the EHRC recently settled with Ken Livingstone, whom it had continued to pursue despite knowing that he had Alzheimer's disease, and with Pam Bromley. As a matter of record, "Labour anti-Semitism" never existed.

Yet it continues to be screamed at anyone who opposes the two-child benefit cap, or who supports the Triple Lock, or who wants to ban fire and rehire, or who wants to ban zero hours contracts, or who wants to implement John Smith's signature policy that employment rights should begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, or who wants to increase statutory sick pay, or who wants to renationalise the railways, or who wants to renationalise the utilities, or who wants to renationalise the Royal Mail, or who opposes the privatisation of the National Health Service in England, or who supports free prescriptions in England, or who supports free eye and dental check-ups in England, or who supports free hospital carparking in England, or who supports universal free school meals in England outside London, or who supports the universal free broadband that the whole of Europe and the Old Commonwealth apart from England (but very probably including London) will have in 10 years' time and which may even exist in the United States by then, or who supports the taxation of unearned income at the same rate as earnings, or who thinks that taxation ought not in principle to be voluntary for the rich, or who supports democratic political control over monetary policy, or who opposes the war machine, including its attacks on civil liberties at home. All this, and the Online Safety Bill is about to become law.

Britain's unpopular "populists" promote neoliberal economic policies and neoconservative foreign policies with a fanaticism that has almost no international parallel while publicly pretending to hold conservative social views, and Britain's eccentric "centrists" promote those policies just as fanatically while attempting no such pretence. There is no true difference between the two. Each year, you can tell which party is in favour with the deciders by which holds a Conference full of illness profiteers and arms dealers. The mark of a party hack on the up is a sudden conversion to NHS privatisation and to support for American, Israeli and, hitherto, Saudi bellicosity. What, exactly, are our "shared values" with Saudi Arabia? Or with Israel, where even before the Government of National Unity, two of the parties that were in government did not allow women to be candidates for public office?

Enforcement is by a network of nongovernmental organisations, fake charities, astroturfed campaigns, and so on, all heavily dependent on lavish public funding even in these straightened times. The likes of Hope Not Hate make no bones about regarding the "toxically masculine" as of a piece with the "transphobes" and the "whorephobes", who are of a piece with the "climate deniers", who are of a piece with the "anti-vaxxers" and the "Covid deniers", who are of a piece with the "Putin apologists", who are of a piece with the "Brexit racists", who are of a piece with the "Hamas supporters" and other "anti-Semites", the former defined as anyone who had been right about every war of the last 30 years, and the latter as anyone who wanted the economic programme that was favoured in part or whole by between 60 and 80 per cent of the electorate, if not more on certain points. 

On the NHS, we are already beyond the 90 per cent public agreement that we had on Iraq. On Gaza, we are not yet at that level, but we are certainly far more numerous than those who support what is being unleashed, and what will be. Even if all the Jews in Britain agreed with them, then that would be half of one per cent of the population. Half of one per cent of the population told the most recent census that their gender identity did not match their biological sex. Think on.

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.