Sunday 31 December 2023

A Significant Spiralling?

What, exactly, does anyone propose to bomb in Yemen? There was precious little there before, with British Officers in the control room, the Saudis and their associates began a war to install a puppet regime. That went on for nine years, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, but it still ended in failure. Organised mass abstention in support of it was the largest Labour rebellion of the Corbyn years. But notice that apart from Bahrain doing what a service station exists to do, no Arab country is playing any part in this latest excursion.

Everything that was said about Afghanistan is being said about Yemen, and everything that was said about the Taliban is being said about the Houthis. It was all true then, and it is all true now. But the Taliban still won. You were beaten even by that, and you will be beaten even by this. It took you 20 years to lose to a rabble in Afghanistan. Are you prepared to spend 20 years losing to a rabble in Yemen? Although while the Houthis are poor, they are not unsophisticated as such. Brush up on Zaydism, which is about to become important. And on Ibadism. You read it here first, as you often do.

An overall majority for either main party would be taken as a public endorsement of this war, among so very many other horrendous things at home and abroad. 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.

RIP John Pilger

Just when we needed you most.

Oh, well, as we fortysomethings so often have cause to observe, it is up to us now.

So That Thoughts From Many Hearts May Be Revealed

Here is your weekly reminder that this could not have been an executive summary of this. That would have been impossible, since they bear no resemblance to each other. It is all here, including on the ludicrous definition of "grooming" that was used to hound Canon McCoy to his death, and including on the nonsense about Timothy Gardner. Something has changed since 3rd May. What is it? And where is the original report?

I do not resile from this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this,this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this or this. Rather, I reiterate every word of each and all of them. There was no cathedral sex party. The move from the old Bishop's House to the new one made a profit. There was no allegation of sexual assault against Bishop Robert Byrne CO, who should sue every media outlet that had suggested one.

Although I am often asked, I know neither where nor how Bishop Byrne is. But I am often asked. I am not doing Marko Rupnik, because that would involve siding with the people who had done nothing for Bishop Byrne. They and Rupnik can all go to Hell in the same handcart. Nor am I interested in anything that you might have to say about Bishop Joseph Strickland unless you had fought for Bishop Byrne.

I may not, but I may, accept the present report when Bishop Byrne had done so, and to the extent that he had done so. His Lordship has yet to do so to any extent. At least while that remains the case, then I reject the whole thing out of hand, and so should you. The sum total of the charge sheet against Bishop Byrne is that he did not automatically do as he was told by the hired help. But Pat Buckley does not like Bishop Stephen Wright, so Bishop Wright must be all right.

Indeed, His Lordship preached well at his Enthronement. He clearly has a deep spirituality. There was also a speech by a self-identified survivor of clerical sexual abuse, one Maggie Vickerman. Neither her case, nor those to which she referred, had anything to do with Bishop Byrne, if they really happened at all. How do we know? At most, they were long before his brief time in this Diocese. If anything, certain people with some responsibility for them were in that sanctuary. Nor did Ms Vickerman make any attempt to disguise her theological agenda. Well, nor do I make any attempt to disguise mine.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 173

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Carol Lawrence, Jenny Holmes, Sister Frances Orchard CJ, and Sir David Behan.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Monsignor Andrew Faley, Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Father Christopher Hancock MHM, Father Jeff Dodds, Canon William Agley, and Catherine Dyer.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Paul Brown, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Robert Appleby.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 173

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Sir Max Hill KC, Monica Burch, Rebecca Lawrence, Mark Hammond, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Dawn Brodrick, Steve Buckingham, Mark Gray, Sandra McKay, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Mark Hammond, Michael Dunn, and Deborah Harris.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Sir Max Hill KC, Rebecca Lawrence, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 877

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 877

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Saturday 30 December 2023

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 172

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Carol Lawrence, Jenny Holmes, Sister Frances Orchard CJ, and Sir David Behan.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Monsignor Andrew Faley, Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Father Christopher Hancock MHM, Father Jeff Dodds, Canon William Agley, and Catherine Dyer.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Paul Brown, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Robert Appleby.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 172

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Sir Max Hill KC, Monica Burch, Rebecca Lawrence, Mark Hammond, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Dawn Brodrick, Steve Buckingham, Mark Gray, Sandra McKay, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Mark Hammond, Michael Dunn, and Deborah Harris.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Sir Max Hill KC, Rebecca Lawrence, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 876

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 876

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Thursday 28 December 2023

Dearth

Of course Britain is in recession. When were we truly last not? Perhaps on the day of the 2010 General Election? But the memory of one was still fresh enough, as it had been far longer after the event in 1997. With no term limits, and being practically impregnable, Britain only ever changes its Government because of an economic crisis, even one that was over by the time that the Election came round.

Not that that will be the case next year. Unlike in 1997 or 2010, it will not be that the Government had solved the problem that had initially brought it to office, and presided over fat years, but then found that the lean ones had returned, as they do if you do not understand the money supply, or if you find it politically expedient to affect such ignorance. Since 2010, there have been no fat years, not even for the people and places, the same people and places in both cases, that had experienced them under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

Yet what are even those people and places, never mind the rest of us, offered instead? Quite explicitly, no change. None. That is considered to be the Opposition's selling point. 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. By the way, here is the original of the photograph that Starmer used for his Christmas tweet.


And here is what he turned it into, complete with AI hands the size of his head. What a ridiculous little man he is.


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.

Cascade Configuration

You have no right to comment on the Fall of Artsakh, or indeed on any threat to Christendom in general, unless you are doing whatever you can, at this very moment, to save the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem, which might very well have fallen by this time tomorrow. Via the Turkey that refuses to turn off the supply, the principal source of gas to Israel is Azerbaijan, which has its eyes on the gas-rich Gaza of which the SAS is preparing to install Tony Blair as Viceroy, in a deal with Benjamin Netanyahu that must have been struck long before the wildly improbable intelligence failure of 7th October.

The Armenian Quarter is 1700 years old, give or take. Intermittently, there have been 402 years of anywhere called Israel, there have been 508 of an Israel or Judah with any part of Jerusalem in it, and there have been 460 with the Old City in it, ending 2610 years ago. It has been 2953 years since the Old City, including what is now the Armenian Quarter, has been in Israel, which it only ever was for about 80 years, themselves about 2000 years after the foundation of Jerusalem. Among other sources, read the Bible.

It is Iranian nuclear weapons time again, I see. France and Germany kind of owe the United States, with Britain as ever along for the ride, because while it took the Taliban 20 years to defeat "the international community", it took the Houthis a couple of days to cause the Coalition of the Clearly Unwilling to fall apart before it had done anything at all.

The Houthis have already held out for nine years while Saudi Arabia and its little helpers have tried to install their own puppet regime in Yemen. Such a thing does technically still exist, but look who in fact controls the Red Sea. Its backers have as good as given up, even though, inter alia, the organised mass abstention in support of the Saudi genocide of Yemen was the largest Labour rebellion of the Corbyn years. In its own terms, the Labour Right needs to be challenged on its liberal credentials when it prefers the Wahhabi to the Zaydi, as it still officially prefers ISIS in Syria, even if it has mercifully never been in a position to give it the active assistance that Israel has.

Imagine how the regions on all three of the land borders of Iran would look if there really were an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. It could not be more obvious that there is none. Of course, we have been here before. 100,000 military age males had not been murdered in Kosovo. The attacks of 11th September 2001 had not come from Afghanistan; the suggestion that they had done so is the only 9/11 conspiracy theory that has ever done any active harm. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Therefore, those weapons were not capable of deployment within 45 minutes. Saddam Hussein had not been feeding people into a giant paper shredder. He had not been attempting to obtain uranium from Niger.

A genocide had not been imminent in Benghazi. Gaddafi had not been feeding Viagra to his soldiers in order to encourage mass rape. He had not intended to flee to Venezuela. It was not an undisputed fact that Assad had gassed Ghouta. Sergei and Yulia Skripal were not dead, as announced on the front page of The Times on 12th March 2018. And 40 people in Salisbury had not required treatment for nerve agent poisoning, as claimed by The Times on 14th March 2018.

In the same way, as the Israelis themselves now admit, there were not 1400 dead Israelis on 7th October, although seen from most of the world, even that would not have been awfully many, and certainly not enough to have justified subsequent and ongoing events. There was no more than one dead baby, who had been neither decapitated nor incinerated; most of the dead were military personnel. As most of the world has always simply taken as a given, it was the Israelis who bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, and there were no Hamas bases under that or any other hospital, or school, or church. Just as there was no pornography in Osama bin Laden's den, so there was no Arabic translation of Mein Kampf under the bed of a murdered child in Gaza.

Believe those of us who never believed any of those lies. Believe everything that we tell you about Ukraine, which is turning out exactly as we predicted from the start. Believe everything that we tell you about Israel, Gaza, and now also the West Bank. Believe us that you should be keeping an eye on Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, and then believe what we tell you about each and all of them. Prepare to believe us about Taiwan. And believe us that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons programme.

The older and purer Tory tradition is becoming re-established at the Foreign Office, and that process will be accelerated by the Emirati acquisition of the Telegraph Group. The Daily Telegraph as we have known it is manifesting a delirious combination of demob happiness and the death rattle. Sadly, there is no sign of either on the blood-drenched Labour frontbench.

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.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 170

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Carol Lawrence, Jenny Holmes, Sister Frances Orchard CJ, and Sir David Behan.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Monsignor Andrew Faley, Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Father Christopher Hancock MHM, Father Jeff Dodds, Canon William Agley, and Catherine Dyer.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Paul Brown, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Robert Appleby.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 170

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Max Hill KC, Monica Burch, Rebecca Lawrence, Mark Hammond, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Dawn Brodrick, Steve Buckingham, Mark Gray, Sandra McKay, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Mark Hammond, Michael Dunn, and Deborah Harris.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Max Hill KC, Rebecca Lawrence, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 874

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 874

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Wednesday 27 December 2023

At The Threshold

We all know that "could" is journalese for "won't". But if inheritance tax is unpopular, then that is because far more people expect to pay it than ever would. The cuts that would be necessary to abolish it, or to reduce it considerably, would be very, very, very unpopular, indeed. Even before people worked out that such abolition or reduction would either benefit Rishi Sunak's daughters by hundreds of millions of pounds, or would make no difference to them, since all the paperwork would be in place for them to avoid inheritance tax altogether.

As for income tax, 42 per cent of adults have incomes that do not reach the threshold for it. No, not "before benefits". Those are taxable income. Two in five adults have gross incomes, from all sources, of less of than one thousand pounds per month. Of those in that position, the great majority are in work, rising to the overwhelming majority of those below pensionable age. If that does not sound like the Britain that you know, then you need to get out more.

Jeremy Hunt's headline measure on 6th March may be something like an increase in the income tax threshold. But I doubt it. The boundary changes have once again made decisive the votes of those who veered between one side of the Austerity Coalition and the other. Hence the return of David Cameron, who won the 2015 General Election.

And whatever Hunt did come up with, then Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves will say that it did not go far enough. They are already doing so. The last Labour Government effected the biggest upward redistribution of wealth in British history. Labour is now the greater evil, worse than the Tories. We should no more want it to win the next General Election than most of its MPs wanted it to win the last two, or than any of its staff wanted it to win the last four.

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 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.

Weighed and Measured

Long ago, I was taught that a gentleman drank champagne by the pint. The only Briton ever to have been President of the European Commission was later known for taking a pint of claret to his desk in the House of Lords to get him through the afternoon.

But it turns out that only 1.3 per cent of people want any extended use of the imperial system, so that is the end of that. The peculiarly British compromise between the metric and the imperial systems is the most lasting monument to this country's bitterest culture war in living memory, the one between scientists and humanities graduates in the 30 or 40 years after the Second World War.

The question of turning away from the Old Empire and towards Europe was also in the mix, but it was secondary. Much of the Old Empire was going metric at the time, and almost all of it has now done so. Rather, this was and is about whether the weights and measures used in everyday life, and taught in schools, should be the ones used in science, or the ones named in Shakespeare.

Only named, of course. The imperial system dates only from 1824, making it not yet 200 years old. Far from being Arthurian, it suppressed numerous customary weights and measures across these Islands and the Empire, replacing them with ones that often bore the same names, as certain customary units on the Continent still have names such as livre, but which had most definitely been devised by a committee. Scottish pints and gallons were more than halved.

Britain joined the EU in 1973. New Zealand has had only metric road signs, which there has never been any serious suggestion that Britain might adopt, since 1972. Was that the work of the EU? Although New Zealanders still sometimes give their height in feet and inches, and by convention announce their children's birth weights in pounds and ounces, they have, again since 1972, measured even milk in the metric system, unlike the practice in Britain.

By 1973, all schools in Australia were teaching only the metric system. Was that the work of the EU, too? All road signs there converted to metric in July 1974, and all cars made after that year have had only metric speedometers. Australians now rarely even convert their babies' birth weights into pounds and ounces, and such units are employed for trading purposes only when exporting to the United States. 

Where there is residual use of imperial units in casual conversation in Australia, then it tends to be attributed to the cultural transmission of American English. But the reason why the American system is different, despite using much of the same vocabulary, is because it is older. Nor does it ring true that the United States went to the Moon using non-metric units. If, for the sake of argument, that were the case, then it was more than 50 years ago. There is no way that the Americans are doing anything remotely comparable in anything other than the metric system today, even if they were doing so in the 1960s, which itself strikes me as highly unlikely.

Corresponding to the lazy assumption that the imperial system is ancient is the lazy assumption that the metric system is foreign. Unlike, I believe that it is correct to say, any part of the imperial system, the metric system was invented by an Englishman. It has a very long history in this country, having been devised by John Wilkins, who managed to be both a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell and later a bishop in the Church of England. It is not a product of the French Revolution. The first attempt to mandate it in Britain was made in 1818, six years before the imperial system existed. Britain legalised the use of the metric system in 1875. Numerous industries have used nothing else in living memory, if ever. Even leaving aside how long ago Imperial Britain's industrial zenith was, the bald claim that that was achieved entirely by the application of the imperial system does not stand up to the slightest analysis.

Why not teach both systems? Have you ever met British scientists and my lot, British humanities graduates? In any case, who could possibly teach the imperial system these days? But at popular level, a remarkably enduring compromise has taken hold. Britain is the only country in the world where the use of two completely different systems of weights and measures, but with only one of them taught in schools, could result in anything other than total collapse. We should cherish the fact that in ordinary conversation everyone gave their height and weight in imperial measures when only the metric system had been taught in schools since before most people had been born.

The only problem is the legal ban on selling certain items in imperial measures by name, a piece of domestic legislation enacted by a Conservative Government. By all means let that ban be repealed. In practice, that repeal would change almost nothing. Corporate retail giants would have absolutely no intention of adopting the imperial system, but small traders should be free to use it if customers wanted it. At a significant markup, I expect. Almost no one under 60 would ask for imperial, since almost no one under 60 would ever have been taught it, but let those who wanted it have it. If they could afford it.

I hate to advocate for the other side, but Britain is in fact rather good at science. Yet imagine that the imperial system really were to be reincorporated into school Maths. Would you fail if you could not do it? That would be most people these days, deprived of the Maths certificate necessary to progress to further scientific education, for want of competence in a system that was not used for such purposes anywhere in the world. If you could find anyone to do so, then by all means teach it. But even those of us who probably quoted Shakespeare in our sleep ought not to wish to make anything else conditional on it. It is not as if it is anything important like Classics.

We await much taking of the opportunities of Brexit to pursue an egalitarian economic policy by harnessing the powers of the liberated British State. Brexit makes it possible to renationalise the railways, but no one is trying to do that anymore. Brexit ought to be a spur to pursue an independent and peaceable foreign policy. But after a very brief moment of hope, then no one is trying to do that anymore, either.

Instead, we have had blue passports, which we could always have had if we had wanted them, and which look nothing at all like the old ones, since those were black. The new, blue ones are being made in Poland by a company that is French and Dutch. And we were to have had the Conservative Party's vague suggestion that it might repeal its own Act of Parliament outlawing some, but not all, use of the imperial system of weights and measures. Have you ever had any trouble buying a pint of beer? Good luck to any licensed premises that sought to revert to the old measures of spirits, since those were shorter.

The never threatened pint of milk or beer will always be readily available in the Irish Republic, which will never leave the EU. Our own and so many other traditional weights and measures survive for the sale of bread or beer all across Europe because they are perfectly adequate, and even ideal, for the sale of bread or beer. But they are at least arguably too imprecise for anything much more than that, and an international scientific and technological culture could not function without a universally accepted system of weights and measures.

And so on. Let anyone who wanted to do so buy or sell a pound of potatoes, although that is not an arduous thing to do within the present law. But if this and the complete novelty of blue passports are all that we are getting out of Brexit, then we need a Government in the tradition of those who had always opposed the EU, and not made up of the fanboys of a Prime Minister who had gone off it only when we now know that she had been in her early dotage.

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.

The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 169

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Board of the Catholic Safeguarding Standards Agency, currently Nazir Afzal, Amanda Ellingworth, Wesley Cuell, Bishop Paul Mason, Carol Lawrence, Jenny Holmes, Sister Frances Orchard CJ, and Sir David Behan.

That purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.comby each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Committee, currently Monsignor Andrew Faley, Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Father Christopher Hancock MHM, Father Jeff Dodds, Canon William Agley, and Catherine Dyer.

And that purely factual statement is acknowledged as such, unless and until it had been expressly repudiated to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, by each and all of the members of the Hexham and Newcastle Diocesan Safeguarding Team, currently Meriel Anderson, Ian Colling, Paul Brown, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Robert Appleby.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and the allegation at the base of any outstanding charge has been made in order to incite my suicide. I should emphasise that there is absolutely no risk that I might ever give anyone the satisfaction of my suicide.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The CPS Challenge: Day 169

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service as part of its organised persecution of the opponents and critics of Keir Starmer, which is its principal national priority.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from contesting the next General Election.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a thinktank 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.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from establishing a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually also a fortnightly satirical magazine.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to prevent me from taking journalistic, political or other paid work for fear of losing my entitlement to Legal Aid.

I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service out of the same racism that has caused it to refuse to prosecute the Police Officers in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

And I am morally and factually innocent of every criminal offence with which I have ever been charged, and any outstanding charge is being pursued by the Crown Prosecution Service in order to incite my politically motivated murder, a murder that the CPS has already decided would never lead to any prosecution.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Board, currently Max Hill KC, Monica Burch, Rebecca Lawrence, Mark Hammond, Simon Jeffreys, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan, and Kathryn Stone.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the CPS senior leadership, currently Dawn Brodrick, Steve Buckingham, Mark Gray, Sandra McKay, Gregor McGill, Grace Ononiwu, and Baljhit Ubey.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, currently Simon Jeffreys, Mark Hammond, Michael Dunn, and Deborah Harris.

Each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the members of the CPS Nominations, Leadership and Remuneration Committee, currently Max Hill KC, Rebecca Lawrence, and Monica Burch.

And each of those eight statements stands as a matter of record unless and until it had been expressly denied to davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by each and all of the 279 members of staff of the CPS North East Area, by definition including, but not restricted to, Chief Crown Prosecutor Gail Gilchrist, and the Area Business Manager, Ian Brown.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Clergy Challenge: Day 873

I invite each and every bishop, priest and deacon of the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if he thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me.

Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know. The current total is zero.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

The Representatives Challenge: Day 873

As already stated on the day after my release: "The instant that Labour lost control of Durham County Council, then I was granted an unsolicited tag for more than 10 weeks of future good behaviour. I invite each and every Member of Parliament for the area covered by Durham County Council, each and every member of Durham County Council, and each and every member of Lanchester Parish Council, to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. No name would be published except at the request of its bearer, but if anyone ever did get in touch, then the readers of this site would be the first to know." The current total is zero.

Furthermore, I invite each and every other candidate for the parliamentary seat containing Lanchester to contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com if they thought that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. Not legally guilty; Bill Cosby is legally innocent. Factually and morally guilty. In this case, names most certainly will be published, including as part of my election literature. The current total is zero. If that remained the case when the next General Election was called, then my literature would state that each and all of my opponents, by name, did not think that I was factually or morally guilty of any criminal charge that had ever been brought against me. At least in that event, then I challenge Oliver Kamm to contest this seat.

This post will appear daily until further notice.

Tuesday 26 December 2023

Fry, But No Delight

3647 people, in at least 18 countries, read this blog on Christmas Day. Take that, Stephen Fry. If Fry thinks that anti-Semitism is the last acceptable racism in Britain, then he has obviously never been here. Thank goodness for Alexei Sayle. Fry attended the King's wedding, so he is the alternative to what, exactly? His "Alternative Christmas Message" was produced by B'nei Akiva, which is an IDF recruitment and training operation, for Channel 4, which is publicly owned.

At least Fry did not repeat his previous, unretracted statement that, "It's a great shame and we're all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place – you get some of my sympathy – but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy." When Fry's novel The Hippopotamus was filmed, then the central character had to be aged up to 16. But he is younger than that in the book. The Liar has never been filmed.

This is all very much of a piece with Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile. 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 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.

Lookalike Lookers

These are both Lady May. There is clearly a look required for the title.




And one of these is Annabel Elliot, the Queen's sister, while the other is the late Haydn Gwynne, playing Camilla in The Windsors. I bet you can't.




One and All

Spot the people who have never cooked for themselves in their lives.



And this is funny even before you spot the Russian flag in the corner.


Have you ever been in a pub that looked like that? And has Lady Starmer drunk so much that her knees have given way, or is her much shorter husband standing on something or someone? If the latter, then on what or whom is he standing, and why? See also the first picture, in which Rishi Sunak is pointedly the only one standing up among four people, two of whom are little girls.

Synonymous With Double Standards

Patrick Wintour writes: 

Richard Haass, the distinguished global analyst, once wrote: “Consistency in foreign policy is a luxury policymakers cannot always afford.”

But, equally, glaring national hypocrisy can come with a high price tag, in terms of lost credibility, damaged global prestige and diminished self-respect.

So Joe Biden’s decision to defend Israel’s methods in Gaza so soon after, in a different context, condemning Russia’s in Ukraine, is not just an occasion for handwringing from liberals and lawyers.

It is already having a real-world impact on relations between the global north and south, and west and east, creating consequences that could reverberate for decades.

The Biden administration, reluctant to change course, may say the parallels between Gaza and Ukraine are far from exact, but it also seems to know it is gradually losing diplomatic support.

When the US and Israel are joined at the UN general assembly by only eight other nations, including Micronesia and Nauru, as happened when they rejected a ceasefire resolution for Gaza this December, it is harder to argue that America remains the indispensable nation – a phrase from former secretary of state Madeleine Albright frequently referenced by Biden.

By contrast, Vladimir Putin, after a period of his own global isolation, “really feels everything at this point is trending in his favour”, according to Fiona Hill, the former US state department official specialising in Russia.

In a context in which many rising nations anyway viewed the “international rules based order” with scepticism, the script for Sergei Lavrov, the veteran Russian foreign minister, writes itself. Speaking at the Doha Forum in December, Lavrov complained: “The rules were never published, were never even announced by anyone to anyone, and they are being applied depending on what exactly the west needs at a particular moment of modern history.”

For Hill, Biden’s speech in October linking Ukraine and Israel together in his effort to persuade Congress to release funds for the former “may have been good congressional politics, but perhaps not good global politics”. The victim in all this, she fears, would be Ukraine’s president, Volodymr Zelenskiy. He was “going to have a hard time navigating this”.

But America’s selectivity, as perceived across much of the Global South, is likely to cause a wider reckoning. Quite often in the past Palestine has been treated as a special historical case in global politics, and as an accepted preserve of the US.

But now, according to the Israeli specialist Daniel Levy, the issue has hurtled “to the heart of what some people have called the poly crisis”.

Levy says: “A US monopolistic exercise [regarding the fate of Gaza] is out of sync with the world we live in today and with contemporary geopolitics. In that respect, something important and interesting has happened, and perhaps even a source of some hope, which is, we’ve seen that for so much of the so called Global South and in many cities in the west, Palestine now occupies this kind of symbolic space. It’s a kind of avatar of a rebellion against western hypocrisy, against this unacceptable global order, and against the post colonial order.”

At a time when multilateral institutions are fighting what António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, calls “the forces of fragmentation”, how the US handles Gaza matters, not just to Gaza, but to multilateralism.

If the US defence of Israel continues to go wrong, one or two outcomes are likely. The trend to shifting transactional non-ideological alliances will grow. Forum shopping by countries or strategic hedging, requiring active portfolio management like financial hedging, will become even more the norm. Alternatively, America could find itself confronting larger and more assertive alternative blocs, whether it is an expanded BRICS, led this year by Putin, or other Chinese-led alliances.

Six short months ago it looked so different. After a period of so-called westlessness – code for the division and malaise fed by a Trump presidency – the west in 2022 rediscovered itself and was proud it responded to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with unprecedented solidarity. Not afraid of war, or of losing Russian energy sources.

Russia’s army had not just been repelled at the gates of Kyiv, but been exposed as a morally bankrupt force guilty of heinous acts of barbarism in Bucha and elsewhere. Ukraine became the beating heart of today’s European values, as Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said.

The liberal order, tattered by Iraq and defeated in Afghanistan, had revived itself. A total of 140 nations at the UN general assembly condemned Russia’s invasion. Moscow’s allies were silent.

Biden staged democracy summits, and launched infrastructure schemes for the global poor to rival those of China. Biden, it was said, was making a pitch to the Global South as part of a distinct democratic tradition that harked back to Franklin D Roosevelt’s anti-imperialism, Truman’s advocacy of the UN Charter (signed in 1945), and Kennedy’s efforts to forge closer links with non-aligned governments.

Yet even then alongside this self congratulation was a nagging question of why so many of the west’s natural partners viewed Ukraine differently. For instance, at the UN general assembly, when asked to do something practical to support Ukraine, such as impose sanctions, the number of countries supporting Kyiv dropped closer to 90.

Some leaders just shrugged their shoulders with indifference. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, said: “It is possible in my case that I don’t have to take sides with either side since I have nothing to contribute to this debate. It is in the hands of other countries, it does not concern me.”

Evidently, large tracts of the world did not see Ukraine as a global anti-imperialist struggle but a regional conflict within Europe, bringing them only higher food prices.

“We believed that the invasion of sovereign territory and the extremely serious violations of international laws committed by the Russian army would automatically put countries on our side. We underestimated how strong Russian influence was on the African continent,” said Alexander Khara, an international relations specialist at the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv-based thinktank.

Indeed, as Hill explained in the Lennart Meri lecture, held in Tallinn, Estonia this May, Putin skilfully tapped into a pre-existing well of resentment with a dying Pax Americana. “This is a mutiny against what they see as the collective west dominating the international discourse and foisting its problems on everyone else, while brushing aside their priorities on climate change compensation, economic development, and debt relief. The rest feel constantly marginalised in world affairs.”

India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar put it succinctly: “Somewhere Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”

Now with Gaza, the latent anti-American mood has been given boosters. That any legal or moral parallel exists between Russian and Israeli behaviour is of course rejected by the Biden administration, which instead says the true parallel lies between the war crimes of Hamas and the Russian army.

Putin’s invasion and destruction of Ukrainian cities was not an act of self-defence. It was not a response to a specific outrage in which Ukrainian forces had crossed into Russia and massacred young party-going Russians. It was a Russian assertion of empire and its sphere of influence.

But once the bombed-out buildings of Gaza get juxtaposed on social media alongside those of Mariupol on social media, it gets more complex. The issue of proportionality comes into play. The Israeli response looks closer to the US post-9/11 revenge, which Biden had specifically counselled Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against.

Yet, by and large, the west, with some exceptions, fell silent about Gaza when Israel’s assault began. Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, was one who broke ranks, saying: “I think that to deprive a civilian population of the basic services – water, food, medicine, everything – is something that looks like being against international law.”

By contrast, the UK representatives at the UN in no less than 11 security council debates urged Israel to comply with humanitarian law yet never said whether the country had failed to do so.

Pressed for weeks to say if the loss of 18,000 mainly civilian lives could be in breach of international law, western leaders spoke only in conditional tense, adding they could not pass judgment since this was a matter for the courts. “We will not be drawn into a judge and jury role in the midst of all this,” Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, recently said.

Contrast that with the words of John Kerry, US secretary of state in 2016 on the Russian role in the destruction of Aleppo. He said: “It is inappropriate to be bombing the way they are. It is completely against the laws of war, it is against decency, it is against any common morality, and it is costing enormously.”

Or Biden in Poland on the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “They have committed depravity, crimes against humanity, without shame or compunction. They’ve targeted civilians with death and destruction. Used rape as a weapon of war. Stolen Ukrainian children in an attempt to steal Ukraine’s future. Bombed train stations, maternity hospitals, schools, and orphanages.”

Nor was this just presidential stump rhetoric. In March 2022 the state department formally declared that, based on information then available, the US government assessed that members of Russia’s forces had committed war crimes in Ukraine. “Our assessment is based on a careful review of available information from public and intelligence sources,” said the state department.

In a speech to the Munich Security Conference, in February 2023, Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, repeated that the US had formally determined that Russia has perpetrated crimes against humanity. “We will seek justice for the war crimes and crimes against humanity continuing to be committed by the Russians,” she said. Not much equivocation or deference to higher judicial authority.

Moreover, Ukraine broke a logjam in the US Senate about war crimes and its ambivalence towards the international criminal court, to which the US is not a state party. Within weeks, the Senate, under the urging of the Republican Lindsey Graham, had unanimously passed a resolution pushing for accountability measures, both internationally through the ICC and bilaterally.

The resolution asserting “the US was a beacon for the values of freedom, democracy and human rights” led to the (US) Justice for Victims of War Crimes Act, which was ultimately sponsored by a bipartisan coalition.

The act dramatically expanded the scope of those who could be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act. Previously, the justice department could prosecute war crimes wherever they occurred, but only if either the perpetrator or victim of the war crime was a US national, a US lawful permanent resident, or member of the US armed forces. The amended law allows for the prosecution of anyone present in the US, regardless of the nationality of perpetrator or victim.

At the same time the US as a member of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group for Ukraine started furnishing the ICC with its evidence of war crimes, deploying a team of investigators and prosecutors to assist the Ukrainian prosecutor, general Andriy Kostin, “in documenting, preserving and preparing war crimes cases”. A more comprehensive reversal of congressional attitudes is hard to imagine.

By contrast, after two months of destruction in Gaza, the US state department has said it sees no need to begin any formal internal examination of whether Israel has committed war crimes, even though the weapons it has been using were supplied by the US, and by some counts more civilians were killed in Gaza in two months than were killed in Ukraine more than two years.

Even the news that unguided dumb bombs had been used in almost half of the Israeli strikes, or that the president himself said he feared the bombing was indiscriminate, led the State Department to say it felt the need to conduct a formal investigation into breaches of humanitarian law.

A cursory journey round the world reveals the impact this has had. The US, whether it likes it or not, risks becoming synonymous with double standards.

Udo Jude Ilo, the Nigerian born executive director of Civilians in Conflict, is only one of countless African figures to give a warning. He said: “We are now in a situation where the identity of the aggressor or the identity of the victim determines how the world responds, and you cannot maintain an international framework of protection if it is available a la carte.” The result he said is that respect for international humanitarian law is hollowed out.

Mandla Mandela, Nelson Mandela’s grandson, said: “US officials are asked about the Israeli army’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza, and the response is: ‘We are not going to talk about specific strikes’. But isn’t this a question of principle, in light of the past weeks and the past wars in Gaza?”

At a more stolid official level, Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, said: “The Global South is looking very carefully at the progression of this conflict and is making comparisons. And I believe that it is losing confidence in the viability of the values that have been projected by the Global North. This is a very dangerous situation because it can cause the unravelling of the world order.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, and this year’s chair of the G20, said at a Voice of the Global South summit in November this year that it was necessary “to restore the primacy of international law, including humanitarian law, which applies equally to everyone, free of double standards or unilateral measures”.

Malaysia’s prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, himself a former political prisoner, has repeatedly denounced Putin’s invasion. “We’ve been asked to condemn the aggression in Ukraine, but some remain muted in front of the atrocities inflicted on the Palestinians. It doesn’t concern their sense of justice and compassion,” he complained at the gathering of Asia-Pacific leaders hosted by Biden in San Francisco this November. 

The Biden administration, with its unique relationship with Israel and insular political culture, has sometimes sounded tone deaf.

“Name me one other nation, any nation, that’s doing as much as the United States to alleviate the pain and suffering of the people of Gaza,” said John Kirby, the NSC coordinator for strategic communications. “You can’t. You just can’t. The United States, through [Biden], is leading the effort to get trucks, food, water, medicine and fuel into the people of Gaza … and name another nation that is doing more to urge the Israeli counterparts, our Israeli counterparts, to be as cautious and deliberate as they can be in the prosecution of the military operations. You can’t.” 

Or take the deputy ambassador to the UN, Robert Wood, casually scrolling through his iPhone as the Palestinian ambassador made an impassioned plea for Palestinian survival. Or Biden, one minute defending Israel, the next suddenly admitting indiscriminate bombing was happening. These are unforced errors, and they ricochet around the world, and on to Arab satellite channels, in seconds.

Julien Barnes-Dacey, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, argues that the damage to American standing may ultimately be felt most not in the Global South but in the west itself.

He said: “That blow may be felt more by Europeans than the Global South. The west’s response to what’s happening in Gaza, and our inability to call out Israel, hasn’t suddenly woken the Global South up to double standards but it has re-confirmed to them what they believe the West is about.

“If you are a citizen in the Middle East or Africa you’ve experienced double standards for quite some time, whether it be through European migration deals or compacts with authoritarian governments. But this conflict is forcing an unprecedented degree of self-reckoning in Europe that is creating deep discomfort among many here.”

The same is true in left-wing politics in the US where, according to the Pew Centre, 45% of Democrats think Israel is going too far militarily while just 18% think it is taking the right approach.

Matthew Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to the senator Bernie Sanders, said: “If we simply say that those rules can be ignored by countries we like, or countries we have a special relationship with, we’re not really creating a rule-based order at all. We’re creating an order of might makes right.”

So what comes next?

Putin feels he already knows. He recently told a group of new diplomats: “The world is undergoing cardinal transformation. The underlying change is that the former unipolar world system is being replaced by a new, more just, multipolar world order. I believe this has already become obvious to everyone. Naturally, such a fundamental process will not be smooth, but it is objective, and – as I want to emphasise – irreversible.”

By trying to dominate the diplomacy around Israel, and exclude other countries, Biden showed he did not understand the world being forged, he argued. Putin hopes all he has to do is encourage some sanctions busting, and wait for 5 November 2024 – US election day – when Donald Trump could be re-elected. Trump’s pledge to “end the war in 24 hours” is widely seen as requiring a significant loss of Ukrainian territory to Russia.

To prove Putin wrong, and to protect himself, Biden occasionally seems to realise he needs the Gaza war to end and this requires ending his self-defeating unconditional support for Netanyahu. The Arab states, however much they dislike Hamas and political Islam, want the conflict over, and so does much of Ukrainian civil society for which Gaza has been a triple tragedy – it diverted world attention, it discredited the concept of rules-based order, and it divided the west, weakening Biden and the EU.

It is understandable why Zelenskiy took the unambiguously pro-Israeli position he did, but Timothy Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said: “If you are arguing for a rules-based international order, if you want to be pushing back against countries taking territory with the use of force, then Ukraine should not be seeing itself as aligned with the Israelis.”

For others such as Borrell, the worry is that the pre-existing trends towards a more more multi-polar, yet less multilateral world will accelerate.

Only the memoirs will reveal how much senior figures in the Biden administration feared, in real time, about the scale of the cumulative reputational damage being inflicted not just on Biden but to American prestige.

For the moment they give the impression of an administration slowly realising the limits of their ability to direct not just the outcome of this war, but what global order will come in its aftermath.