Offside?

Where are the posters? Where are the signs? There is far more interest in a football tournament that Wales and Northern Ireland were never in, from which Scotland has been eliminated, and which no one seems to expect England to win. As appears to be customory, England looks set to be knocked out by a country that did not exist at the time of Italia 90, but football is not my field, so to speak.

It is taken as a given that Labour is going to take a lower share of the vote than it did in 2017, and that each main party is going to take fewer actual votes than at any other General Election in living memory. But there is no outcome to this General Election that would not make the case for my ongoing projects, and I am no longer a candidate, so whichever of them came, then I would make it suit me. This, though, is why you should vote for the Workers Party of Britain where you can, including here at North Durham.

There is no Workers Party candidate at Clacton, so for the sake of the debate on Ukraine, I very much hope that it will return Nigel Farage, even though he has apparently been endorsed by Labour, which has withdrawn all support for its own candidate, even forbidding him from setting foot there. On pain of what, exactly?

Farage is refusing to do hustings, but so are numerous Labour candidates from Keir Starmer down, including the one here. They are still being held, though. For the second time running, the only hustings in this constituency are in Lanchester, this time at the Methodist chapel at seven o'clock on Saturday evening. Just turn up, I am assured. This has now happened in two constituencies, each of which has contained two towns. No hustings either in Consett or in Crook in 2019. No hustings either in Stanley or in Chester-le-Street in 2024. But there is always Lanchester.

My lowest ever vote was 203 for the Lanchester Ward of Durham County Council in 2017. Two years later, I took 414 for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, suggesting that in addition to my irreducible core of 200 votes down here, 30 years of school, local politics and the Church had given me another 200 in the Consett area. 35 years of school, local politics and the Church would also have given me 200 in the Stanley area, which is less Catholic, but where, having been a Burnhope lad when I had first landed in County Durham, I was in the Scouts. Chris Bradburn was in Burnhope today, and I trust that he was well-received. 414 is his number to beat, to have at least done better than I did. One of those votes will be mine.