Relief and Works

Israel has revised down its own estimated death toll for 7th October, from 1400 to 1200, although in between laughing out the Israeli versions of events such as the bombing of Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital, most of the world has looked at even the first figure in bemusement at quite this sort of reaction, as it did 20 years ago when the Americans were setting fire to several countries over not quite three thousand deaths. Most of the 1200 were military personnel, and only one was a baby, who was not decapitated. There is no evidence that anyone was raped, just as there is none that any hostage is being raped now.

The Israeli media have done sterling work in bringing all of this to light, and there is no doubt more to come out about, for example, the wildly improbable intelligence failure, the potential importance of the Gaza Marine natural gas field to Europe at least while the war in Ukraine was rumbling on, and the plan to install Tony Blair as some sort of viceroy. With that in mind, consider that the SAS is already in Gaza, and it is obviously not there to protect the hospitals, or the schools, or the ambulance convoys, or the media, or the women, or the children, or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which the Israelis are screeching at the UN is a hive of Hamas. It is not, you know. It really, really, really is not.

The venerable Haaretz is calling for a ceasefire. Too bad for both main parties in Blair's own country, one of which is once again controlled by his courtiers. 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.