The Writing On The Wall

If, after 55 or so years in politics including 37 as the MP for Stamford Hill, Diane Abbott refuses to do the Labour Party's ridiculous "anti-Semitism training", then good for her. Central to that is the mural hoax. The most basic of checks would have confirmed that the mural, and the wreath, and the "not understanding English irony", and the "friends from Hamas and Hezbollah", and all the rest of those, were complete dross, as everyone who did bother to check did find out.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission found precisely two cases in its entire report, neither of them involved Jeremy Corbyn or indeed anyone who was still a member of the Labour Party, and even in relation to those, 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 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.

But it does now. Labour has expelled more Jews under Keir Starmer than under all its previous Leaders put together, most or all of them for what has been found to be the protected characteristic of anti-Zionism; there would not be enough time left in this Parliament to change the law on that. It is no wonder that Andrew Feinstein is standing against the Leader who has turned Labour into an anti-Semitic party.

Every week, listen to Starmer and Rishi Sunak "clashing" under parliamentary privilege over whether or not Starmer had tried to put an anti-Semite into Downing Street, and whether or not he had changed the Labour Party from one in which anti-Semitism had been "rife". Pure fiction, but what else would they have to "clash" over? If they have any point of political disagreement, then it is that Sunak has not handed over the health portfolio to someone who was still a paid lobbyist for the privatisation of the NHS, but had appointed a Foreign Secretary who was at least occasionally willing to criticise Israel. 

The threat to Abbott has brought attention to her reposting of #ItWasAScam tweets, and thus to the exposure of that gigantic fraud. But since we are about to have a General Election about nothing else, then such talk in front of the servants will never do. What next, vulgarly mentioning that Starmer had deliberately caused the 2019 General Election to be held at all, specifically in order to lose it?

If the 2017 Parliament had run its course, then a General Election no later than June 2022 would have returned a hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party. Terrified at that prospect, and having been publicly ordered by Tony Blair to deliver "a rugby tackle" to bring down Corbyn because he was leading in the polls and he was defeating the Government in the division lobbies, Starmer announced the lethal policy of a second referendum on EU membership. Boris Johnson seized his chance, and we all know what happened next.

Having seen off that idea of a second referendum at the now forgotten Leadership Election of 2016, Corbyn should have sacked Starmer and said that the policy remained the 2017 manifesto commitment to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union. Even then, though, the damage would have been done. Of the 54 seats that, having endorsed Corbyn's economic and foreign policies in 2017, changed from Labour to Conservative two years later, 52 had voted Leave.

This is before we start about how the 2017 Election was thrown by the Labour Party's own staff, the same people whom the Forde Report found to have abused Abbott in terms that the former Ruth Smeeth is being allowed to try and blame on Corbyn. The fundamental flaw in the Corbyn project, its Original Sin, was its failure to sack the party's entire staff on day one and start again from scratch.

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent is most notable for having lost her seat to Jonathan Gullis, but she literally led a lynch mob through the streets of London against one of Britain's most distinguished anti-racists, Marc Wadsworth. An MP for only four years, and never more than a Parliamentary Private Secretary, why does she have a peerage, and what is the basis of her vast influence under Starmer?

Still, when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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. We have made a start.