The Sun endorsed Keir Starmer after most postal votes on Merseyside had already been returned, and too late for any candidate against the Labour Party to put out a leaflet in Liverpool or its environs.
Well, how about that?
Thursday 4 July 2024
Next In Line?
It is easy to mock Kamala Harris, and in many ways we should not let that stop us.
But she locked up African-American men as if it had been going out of fashion, and she kept them locked up past the end of their sentences as cheap labour for her corporate donors.
In 36 hours’ time, we may very well have a similar figure as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. These are not good times.
A Dark Day For Press Freedom
Fraser Myers writes:
On the eve of this summer election day, The Sun has come out for Keir Starmer.
The tabloid’s endorsement of the Labour leader has understandably raised eyebrows. And not just because of his politics. After all, this elite Remainer and human-rights lawyer sits firmly on the wrong side of the culture war for The Sun’s Brexit-backing, anti-woke readership. Far stranger is that The Sun is surely aware of just how big a threat our presumptive next prime minister poses to press freedom.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the liberty to publish and be damned hangs in the balance at this General Election. Labour has repeatedly threatened to subject the press to state regulation. What Labour has floated would represent a level of government intrusion into what journalists are allowed to print not seen since the late 17th century, when Crown licensing of newspapers was abolished and the modern free press was born.
Although it does not appear in Labour’s manifesto, Starmer’s frontbenchers have consistently vowed to reinstate Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. This law’s aim is to cajole dissident news media to sign up to a state-backed regulator, using the threat of legal blackmail. Publishers that refuse to sign up would be forced to pay the costs of anyone who decides to sue them – even if the publisher wins the case! Section 40 was passed in parliament in the wake of Lord Justice Leveson’s show trial of the tabloid media, although it was thankfully never enacted by the Tories and was recently abolished by the Media Act 2024. The incoming Labour government could soon look to revive this menacing, draconian law. Perhaps in a second term.
What’s more, Starmer himself is an avowed enemy of press freedom. As director of public prosecutions in the 2010s, he showed an alarming determination to drag journalists through the courts. He led the persecution of 30 reporters who were arrested and charged under Operation Elveden – most of whom worked for The Sun, as it happens. They spent years on police bail, their careers were left in tatters, and some attempted suicide. Not one was ever convicted of any crime. The police operation began in 2011 and the last journalist was cleared in 2016. This was a witch-hunt against journalists you would expect to see in China, and our soon-to-be PM was the witchfinder general. To this day, Starmer has refused to apologise for this grotesque abuse of state power against the press.
The Sun’s eve-of-election editorial essentially presents the Labour leader as the least-worst option available – as the only credible choice, following the exhaustion of the Tories. But this ignores just how authoritarian Starmer keeps showing himself to be. He may be a man of few principles, but his instincts are consistently, unabashedly authoritarian. A Labour victory tomorrow would be a dark day for press freedom.
Wednesday 3 July 2024
Eve of Poll Card
I have been called worse.
I am not firing on all cylinders, nor will I be for quite some time, but this General Election has no possible outcome that would not make the case for my ongoing projects, most immediately my weekly magazine and my thinktank. Having initiated so much, I shall not have the right not to play my part in providing the necessary extraparliamentary support for the small number of MPs who sought 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. If no one did, then we see in France what would fill the vacuum.
Here at North Durham, we have the privilege of being able to vote for Chris Bradburn, who has already made himself a presence in community campaigning and with whom I look forward to working, as best I could, for many years to come. Vote for the Workers Party of Britain wherever you can, then for those Independents whom it had endorsed, then for other Left Independents, and then for the SDP. None of those is standing at Clacton, so vote there for Nigel Farage so that he and George Galloway could back each other up in daring to state the obvious about Ukraine. If you considered that a good enough reason to vote for Reform UK anywhere else where none of those other options presented itself, then I would not blame you.
The entry of Andrew Feinstein into the British electoral process ought to be huge news. He is vastly better qualified than his Labour opponent at Holborn and St Pancras. Next door at Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn could end this week as the Father of the House. And if a party returns at least one MP, then no vote for it, anywhere, has been wasted. Short Money is £19,401.20 for every seat won at the most recent General Election, plus £38.75 for every 200 votes gained, with a further £213,132.53 in travel expenses divided among the Opposition parties on the same basis. It would not be your possibly ropey local candidate who decided what to do with that money. It would be the Leader. George is on course to hold Rochdale. Vote for the Workers Party.
Doof Doof
As I wrote on Sunday 5 May, Tracy-Ann Oberman's "character would be due for release from prison around about next year".
Chrissie Watts will return to EastEnders this autumn. Who says that I have no grasp of popular culture?
Muscle Memory
Even The Guardian is already expressing well-founded doubts. His Twitter would suggests that he was at least a Workers Party voter and probably a member, yet the day before this General Election, Dan Evans writes:
Keir Starmer, if you didn’t know it already, is the son of a toolmaker. It’s a line he has repeated often, reflecting his team’s wider strategy to highlight the Labour leader’s less-privileged roots and appeal to working-class voters. In fact, recent reporting about his camp has revealed a leadership intensely focused on class.
Starmer’s team is acutely aware of the challenge facing Labour after the long process of deindustrialisation – and the reporting suggests they are keen to put Labour back in touch with the parts of the working class and other low-income groups. Hence the “toolmaker” line and Starmer’s repeated, if slightly awkward, references to his love of football.
If Labour wins, as looks likely, this strategy will probably be hailed as a masterstroke. But if the party is serious about reconnecting with the working class in the long term, which it needs to do if it wants to actually hold on to power, there is a more complicated reality it must reckon with. Despite their humble origins, Starmer and much of his shadow cabinet are now representatives of a different class entirely – indeed, one that has a fraught relationship with the working class.
In 1977, the US sociologists Barbara and John Ehrenreich coined the term “professional-managerial class” (PMC) to describe the growth and consolidation of a technocratic class of managers and elite professionals. As the writer Kenan Malik has put it: “There had developed, [the Ehrenreichs] argued, a new class of college-educated professionals, from engineers and middle managers to social workers and culture producers, that was distinct from the middle class of old but essential to the functioning of capitalism.” The PMC is distinct from “white-collar workers” because of its specific role in managing the state, the workforce, and indeed capitalism itself, on behalf of the old ruling class. It not only developed and administered the technology that sped up the production process, but as social workers they managed the family and community; as advertisers they sold new goods.
The hope among the militants of the 60s and 70s such as the Ehrenreichs was that the PMC and the working class could join forces to take on growing corporate power. But this didn’t happen, and the class gradually came to believe it could run the state more efficiently and benevolently than the old ruling class, eventually reaching political maturity during the Blair and Clinton era of progressive neoliberalism.
Today, members of the PMC in the UK are clustered in politics and the public sector, media, advertising, law, social work and the third sector. They are concentrated in London, university towns and the home counties, but also form the governments of Wales and Scotland and make up much of the parliamentary Labour party. They are of all colours, genders and sexual orientations, but are united by a distinct ideology and culture: a strongly held belief in technical expertise and the power of education, coupled with an increasingly deep hostility to those who do not sufficiently respect these norms.
Starmer is in many ways the ultimate embodiment of the PMC. While he is evidently uncomfortable talking about himself, the interview in which he has appeared the most at ease, casual and animated, was on the High Performance podcast – on which “high-achieving, successful individuals” are questioned on the secrets of their success. He displayed an evident passion for leadership and management strategies, and a distaste for politicians “describing problems and not fixing them” – as if the job of political change was just a set of problems that can be looked at in isolation and ticked off, one by one. He also has a strongly held belief in tech and AI. His shadow cabinet is fixated on the possibility of “reforming” public service provision, particularly the NHS, for which Starmer has said technology will be used “to overhaul every aspect of delivery”. According to this view, there is little need for more money or investment when problems can be solved by better management and more “innovative” systems.
His fervent belief in education, and that it should primarily be used to facilitate social mobility, is similarly part of PMC gospel. But social mobility, by its very nature, means that inequality will be left untouched, while a chosen few with the “right qualities” will be able to make it. Worse, it implies that the lower orders are something to escape. And herein lies the historic paradox of Labour’s complicated relationship with the working class, an issue that goes much deeper than Starmer himself.
Because it was birthed to manage them, the PMC has always had a contradictory attitude towards the lower orders, whom it views with a blend of romantic paternalism and contempt. Working-class people need to be saved, goes the view, to be helped by us – the experts – because they are incapable of helping themselves. This technocratic paternalism has always been latent in the Labour party through the Fabian Society, a middle-class guild that was deeply suspicious of the working class, and whose vision was of a scientific, rational socialism delivered from above.
The PMC instinct is often to ban, prod and moralise to the working class, rather than empower it. Sure Start is lionised as a New Labour success story – and it produced important outcomes – yet it was accompanied by sanctimonious attacks on single mothers, problem families and asbos, while Labour embraced the Thatcherite economic policies of deindustrialisation and privatisation that partly caused community and family breakdown in the first place. Rachel Reeves has similarly demonised those on benefits, while Liz Kendall has promised to push the long-term sick back into work to boost productivity, while keeping the two-child benefits cap.
Every time Labour has got into power, from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair, enthusiasm for the party has waned among working-class voters. One could attribute this to the natural swings of politics, but it appears there is something far more concrete at play. The truth is that many working-class voters are turned off by the authoritarian paternalism that Labour governments exhibit. The progressive PMC has never really understood this, whereas the right has, and exploits it ruthlessly. Margaret Thatcher was so successful because her ideology of “freedom” was able to tap into a long-held working-class hostility to the state bureaucracy and these paternalistic tendencies. Indeed, the perceived officiousness and illiberalism of the PMC has repeatedly allowed elements of the ruling class to present themselves as outsiders.
Amid the speculation about the policies a Starmer government will actually enact, one thing we can bank on is more moralising and nannying – this is the muscle memory of the class he represents. Nigel Farage must be licking his lips.
Therefore, Daniela Gabor writes:
The Labour party has a plan for returning to power: it will get BlackRock to rebuild Britain. Its reasoning is straightforward. A cash-strapped government that wants to avoid tax increases or austerity has no choice but to partner with big finance, attracting private investment to rebuild the infrastructure that is crumbling after years of Tory underinvestment. Labour has already done the arithmetic: to mobilise £3 of private capital from institutional investors, you need to offer them £1 in public subsidies. But every time you hear Labour announce such an infrastructure partnership, think of the hidden politics. BlackRock will privatise Britain – our housing, education, health, nature and green energy – with our taxpayer money as sweetener.
BlackRock has long peddled the idea of public-private partnerships for infrastructure, climate and development. Yet its political momentum has recently accelerated. When its chair, Larry Fink, the world’s most powerful financier, sat with world leaders at the G7 summit last month, he promised the following: rich countries need growth, infrastructure investment can deliver that growth, but public debt is too high for the state alone to invest the estimated $75tn (£59tn) necessary by 2040. Trillions, however, are available to asset managers who look after our pensions and insurance contributions (BlackRock, the largest of these firms, manages about $10tn, as a shrinking welfare state pushes us – future pensioners – into its arms).
If governments work with big finance, Fink explained, they can unlock these trillions. But to do so, they will need to mint public infrastructure into investable assets that can generate steady returns for investors. Why does BlackRock need the state? Why can’t it deploy trillions without the government’s helping hand? The British public remembers all too well PFIs, the private finance initiatives through which the state ended up paying extortionate amounts to private contractors that designed, built, financed or operated public services such as prisons, schools and hospitals before handing them back to the state, often in poor condition.
But for big finance, there is more now at stake. In this golden age of infrastructure, financiers plan to own our infrastructure outright and transform it into a source of steady revenue. Since buying Global Infrastructure Partners in January 2024, BlackRock holds about $150bn in infrastructure assets, including US renewable energy companies, wastewater services in France and airports in England and Australia. It plans to expand aggressively, just like other private infrastructure funds. Direct ownership is the main game, but not the only one. Big finance can also invest in infrastructure indirectly, by lending to private infrastructure companies. The key is returns. For this, BlackRock wants the state to “derisk” investments. This financial jargon was included in the 2024 Labour manifesto, and it in essence involves the state stepping in to improve the returns on infrastructure assets.
The choice here is not merely between public and private financing of public goods, but whether British citizens should tolerate the government handing out public subsidies for privatised infrastructure. Housing is only one example of the areas where these investors can already be glimpsed. Institutional landlords – the most prominent being Blackstone, the private equity fund – can acquire residential housing by participating in the privatisation of public housing. After the global financial crisis, the firm also bought up nonperforming mortgages, and since then it has gone on a global shopping spree, snapping up homes across the US and Europe. In the past year, Blackstone bought new rental homes in Britain worth about £1.4bn from the housebuilding company Vistry.
Look behind Blackstone’s returns – which come from rents and rising house prices – and you will find the state’s footprint. The government has helped to guarantee and derisk these returns through regulations that favour asset owners over renters, through economic policies that support house price inflation and through the provision of income support – such as housing benefit – that allows renters to continue paying their institutional landlords. Although we’re told that partnering with these investors is a means of solving the housing crisis, it often delivers the opposite: higher rents, the displacement of lower-income tenants who are often from minority groups, and less affordable housing. This explains the backlash against institutional landlords, from Copenhagen to Berlin, Dublin and Madrid. Yet such public pressure will only be effective once the state returns to building public housing.
Labour’s strategy raises a bigger set of questions about the type of state we want. Starmer’s vision for government-by-BlackRock reduces the question of state capacity to “how do I get BlackRock to invest in infrastructure assets?” This model involves the state in effect subsidising the privatisation of everyday life. This doesn’t only make it harder to bring public goods back into public ownership; it also allows big finance to tighten the grip on the social contract with citizens, and to become the ultimate arbiter of climate, energy and welfare politics, which will have profound distributional, structural and political consequences.
Already, BlackRock is betting on becoming a key provider of green energy infrastructure – though its actual commitment to tackling the climate crisis only extends so far. The firm has lobbied heavily against European proposals to regulate its lending to fossil fuel interests with penalties, and has instead called for voluntary climate commitments. It is aiming to rapidly grow its green energy profits by tapping the government subsidies that will probably be provided through Starmer’s GB Energy, and through the US Inflation Reduction Act.
But the profits BlackRock will hope to generate through investing in green energy are likely to come at a huge cost. In Britain, we know that the public ownership of green energy is more effective at lowering consumer bills, accelerating the green transition and creating good jobs. The risk is not only that our climate future will be vastly more expensive if actors such as BlackRock are driving it, but that this future will also produce a more unequal society, where citizens equate green measures with unaffordable public services. This may well provide the kindling for authoritarian, far-right fossil-fuel politics that reject the green transition and frame it as an assault on people’s living standards.
Instead, we should plan creatively for a future where extreme climate events necessitate permanent state intervention, from price controls to buffer stocks and public ownership. What’s needed is a big green state. For this, we first need to repair a serious failure of macroeconomic policy imagination that regards the public purse as too small to fund transformative public infrastructure. To do so will require a radical transformation of the state. The state that Rachel Reeves, the likely future chancellor, promises us must break down the neoliberal walls between monetary, fiscal and industrial policy, and scrap low-tax regimes for multinational corporations and individuals with high net worths. It must shrink the power of big finance. This would be a gigantic undertaking, but it is the only realistic one we have.
Thus, Julia Cagé and Thomas Piketty write:
The first round of legislative elections in France produced an unprecedented surge of support for the far right. Next Sunday, 7 July, the National Rally (RN) and its allies could potentially make it to power. Not just with a relative majority, but – and there is a significant probability of this – with an outright one.
Some may argue that the far right is here and we should simply get used to it. Far-right parties have won elections in recent years in other European countries, including Italy and the Netherlands. But we cannot get used to it. A far-right victory represents a major threat to our basic social contract and our liberties. We face the implementation of policies that discriminate against foreigners, migrants, women, minorities and more. Because it has no credible economic platform, the far right will revert to the only thing it knows – the exacerbation of tensions and the politics of hate.
What is the alternative? The left alliance, the New Popular Front (NFP), is France’s best chance.
This alliance takes its inspiration from the Popular Front – which in 1936 emerged under the threat of fascism to govern France. This leftwing coalition of socialists and communists represented a real change for the working classes, with policies such as the introduction of a two-week paid vacation and a law limiting the working week to 40 hours. Such social change was made possible by electoral victory, but also by the demands of civil society and by pressure from the trade unions, which organised a wave of factory occupations. There was a clear sociopolitical competition between working people and the ruling classes that led to a political conflict between the left and right.
The NFP is following a similar path today, with ambitious policies to improve the purchasing power of poor and lower-middle-class people. These reforms include a substantial increase in the minimum wage, wages indexed to prices and free school lunches. Most importantly the NFP wants to prioritise investment in the future by increasing public spending on infrastructure – throughout the country, including in isolated rural areas – as well as in health, education and research. This is the only coherent way to plan for the future and to increase labour productivity, which under Macron has declined by 5% since 2019.
The detailed NFP economic manifesto was launched last month with full costings. Because – and this is new – the NFP’s plans are balanced from a budgetary viewpoint: investment in future growth and productivity as well as in energy and climate transition could be made affordable through progressive wealth taxation, the introduction of an exit tax, effective taxation of multinational firms and a long-awaited fight against social, fiscal and environmental dumping. This programme would also give workers more power within the companies that employ them by improving corporate governance (for example, reserving a third of seats on company boards for employees’ representatives, following similar provisions that have existed for decades in Nordic countries and Germany).
These plans are the complete opposite of the path pursued by Emmanuel Macron since 2017. His agenda has exacerbated both income and wealth inequality, while there has been no change in investment, job creation or growth. To counter support for the far right, Macron’s strategy was to seek support from both the centre right and centre left. In practice, this came to look more and more like a coalition of well-off voters, and as the recent elections have shown, you cannot sustainably govern a country with such a narrow electoral base.
Some now seek to scare leftwing and centre-left voters by claiming that the NFP’s programme for government would be dangerous for the French economy. They are wrong. We are not claiming that this manifesto is perfect – how could it be given that Macron only allowed three weeks to organise for elections? But in historical context, it should be considered a pragmatic, social democratic set of proposals aimed at reducing inequalities and preparing for the future. There is nothing radical in this agenda.
Perhaps more importantly, this programme will allow the left to look towards winning back votes in rural areas and smaller cities where people have gradually turned to the far right.
Last Sunday, the RN won a 1.6 times higher vote share in small and medium-sized cities (50,000 inhabitants or less) than in large urban centres (with populations of above 250,000). The reverse holds for the left. We digitised all commune-level results for legislative elections since 1848, and we have not seen such a large geographical gap in voting patterns since the late 19th century and early 20th century.
In cities with populations of between 20,000 and 30,000 such as Hénin-Beaumont, a former coalmining town in the north-east, and Marine Le Pen’s constituency, the RN scores 60% of the vote. Even in more populous cities such as Cambrai, in a region that has suffered big manufacturing shutdowns in recent decades and is relatively poorly served by infrastructure such as hospitals, universities and public transport links, Le Pen’s party is achieving scores above 40%.
As we show in our book A History of Political Conflict, people in smaller cities and rural areas are drawn to the far right first and foremost because of socioeconomic concerns: they lack purchasing power, they suffer most from the lack of investment in public infrastructure and they feel that they have been abandoned by governments of all stripes in recent decades.
The NFP’s policy platform credibly addresses how to finance a strategy of inclusive investment. By contrast, the far right argues in favour of repealing the existing tax on real-estate multi-millionaires. It claims it will finance its policies by targeting foreigners and welfare recipients, but this will simply generate more economic disillusionment and more tensions.
The only threat in France next Sunday is the one posed by far-right victory. We hope that centrist voters understand what is at stake and turn back to the left.
On the eve of Britain’s turn to Starmerism, think on.
Justice Delayed: Day 14
Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.
Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.
Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.
I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.
Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader, meaning that we are already well over four years into it. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, but things would get an awful lot worse even than this if Starmer ever did become Prime Minister. Vote for the Workers Party of Britain where you can, including here at North Durham. And whatever you do, do not vote Labour.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 357
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.com, by 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, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.
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 Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.
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, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.
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 357
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 seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.
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 Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, 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 Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, 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, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.
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 1061
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 1061
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.
And since Lanchester has been moved into North Durham by the boundary changes, I invite each and every candidate for that parliamentary seat 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. The current total is zero.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
Tuesday 2 July 2024
Are We Nearly There Yet?
Only seven weeks? Even the D-Day carry-on feels more distant than that, and the palaver over National Service feels like a year ago. That betting business seems to have fizzled out, as things that threatened to engulf both main parties generally do. Funny, that.
Boris Johnson? The Conservatives must think that even their own members are not going to vote for them. Anecdotally, they are right. No, they have not packed Reform UK with sleeper agents. They could have done that in their glory days. But these are not their glory days.
By far the most stable Government to have been headed by a Conservative this century was the one that had the Liberal Democrats in it, and it did a great many terrible things, for which both of those parties were equally to blame. But Ed Davey's buffoonish antics have so obscured his direct personal responsibility for the Post Office scandal that he might end this week as the Leader of the Opposition.
Yet even he could not provide less opposition than the Great Abstainer, Keir Starmer, upholder of the two-child benefit cap against Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage. Change will come only if you vote for it. You can vote for it only if it is on offer. Where you can, as here at North Durham, vote for the Workers Party of Britain.
Justice Delayed: Day 13
Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.
Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.
Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.
I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.
Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader, meaning that we are already well over four years into it. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, but things would get an awful lot worse even than this if Starmer ever did become Prime Minister. Vote for the Workers Party of Britain where you can, including here at North Durham. And whatever you do, do not vote Labour.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 356
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.com, by 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, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.
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 Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.
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, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.
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 356
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 seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.
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 Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, 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 Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, 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, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.
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 1060
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 1060
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.
And since Lanchester has been moved into North Durham by the boundary changes, I invite each and every candidate for that parliamentary seat 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. The current total is zero.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
Monday 1 July 2024
Trussed Up No More?
Liz Truss fears the loss of her seat. She may be known only for a speech about pork markets and cheese, but she was and is a disciple of Professor Patrick Minford, who wants Britain to have no agriculture, as would be the “free” market in action. Truss and Minford ought to be made to defend that position on the stump in South West Norfolk.
How different history might have been if Telegraph Blogs had published my last copy, which was based on a charming telephone interview with Sir Jeremy Bagge, 7th Baronet, and Mullah Omar of the Turnip Taliban. This time, James Bagge is an Independent candidate, backed by figures such as David Gauke and Dominic Grieve. Those who have disliked Truss in South West Norfolk have done so far longer than anyone else, and now the country has caught up.
Yet it was Labour that was in an albeit distant second place there last time. The mere suggestion of the mini-Budget crashed the economy, but Labour pretended to oppose only one measure in it, the one that Truss had not included in her prospectus to Conservative Party members, while actively supporting all of the others. Look what those proposals did even without being enacted. Labour would enact them.
The same Labour Party is preparing to install Alan Milburn as Chair of NHS England. In 1997, Milburn, Tony Blair and Paul Corrigan brought the concept of NHS privatisation from the outer fringes of the thinktank circuit to the heart of government. Since then, it has been the policy of all three parties except under Jeremy Corbyn, and of most Labour MPs and all Labour Party staffers continuously. In 1997, Labour’s pledge card had promised to abolish the NHS internal market, and the final week of its campaign had been a countdown of days to save the NHS. Those were barefaced lies, and the opposite of the truth. Here we are again. Except that Wes Streeting is perfectly open about his bought and paid for intentions. He seeks and accepts such income streams because he agrees with what they stand for.
Back when Milburn was running a Newcastle Trotskyist bookshop called Days of Hope, known to its clientele as “Haze of Dope”, it was obviously costing far more than it could possibly have been making, but it clearly suited someone’s purposes to have a distraction from Communist Party bookshop down the road. Yet in 1979, Corrigan was a parliamentary candidate for the Communist Party. Think on.
No Partial Immunity Here
It has only taken Richard Nixon 50 years.
We, on the other hand, have a Government that has given us the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act and the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, and an Official Opposition that, having abstained on them, would not repeal them.
54 Weeks On
Nominations have been closed for 54 weeks, so when is the election?
If I sought election to any other public position now, then I would rapidly find myself just another death in custody, especially under a Starmer or post-Starmer Government, and most especially if Labour had also taken back control of Durham County Council next year.
But I was a public governor of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust from 2017 to 2020, having been elected unopposed, an extremely unusual occurrence. Unopposed among the 90,000 or more people in the part of County Durham that I was elected to represent. I failed to be re-elected by three votes, on a recount. Yet I was again elected unopposed over a year ago, a double feat that I am not aware that anyone else has ever managed, and which has caused the position to be kept vacant ever since. I am determined to have it for at least as long as I was elected to it. Do your worst. As, under the Conservatives, you are already doing to far better than I.
Justice Delayed: Day 12
Even assuming, and it was far from clear, that the Crown had presented any evidence whatever on the morning of Wednesday 19 June, then no later than the afternoon of Thursday 20 June, I would have been found not guilty unanimously in the time that it took to walk to the jury room and send a note to the judge. On Monday 6 November, the only Prosecution witness did not turn up, having been suspended from the Police. Since then, he has been "asked to resign" because of his conduct of my case. On Friday 14 June, my barrister formally complained.
Lo and behold, on the morning of Sunday 16 June, enough Police Officers turned up at my door to take down an al-Qaeda cell, and behaved roughly as if that were what they were doing. Everyone is laughing, and not at me. Late that night, a nonsense additional charge, quite different from the stated grounds of the arrest, was added, with no expectation that it could possibly stick, but in order to postpone what would have been that week's open-and-shut acquittal. Be at Durham Crown Court on Wednesday 26 February 2025, almost exactly two years, although we dispute the timeline, after the original complaint was allegedly made. When I shall be found not guilty. But the process is the punishment.
Rather than embarrass itself any further, the Crown did not even ask for me to be remanded. Nor did it dispute that the Police had found nothing on my laptop or on my phone, even though the latest allegation therefore cannot be true. And nor did it dispute that its only witness had been sacked from the Police because of my case, or that this latest action against me was a revenge attack for my barrister's complaint, both of which are now on Monday 17 June's record of Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court, as is the cleanliness of my devices, of which the Police are nevertheless keeping possession, requiring me to replace them at considerable expense.
I wish that my solicitor had used such terms as "Mafia hit" and "punishment beating". I am using them now. This is a punishment beating for the sacked policeman. And it is a Mafia hit by some Fredo Corleone, because the latest complaint was supposedly made before I had withdrawn from the General Election, a withdrawal that has rendered it pointless in its own terms. Other than the unpaid position to which I was elected unopposed a year ago, and which has therefore been kept vacant ever since, I have no intention of contesting another election to public office.
Welcome to the Starmer State, which institutional Britain has treated as the status quo since Keir Starmer became Labour Leader, meaning that we are already well over four years into it. I am not the only dissident that it persecutes, but things would get an awful lot worse even than this if Starmer ever did become Prime Minister. Vote for the Workers Party of Britain where you can, including here at North Durham. And whatever you do, do not vote Labour.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
The Safeguarding Challenge: Day 355
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.com, by 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, Sarah Kilmartin, Jenny Holmes, Sir David Behan, and Sr Una Coogan IBVM.
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 Committee, currently Gail McGregor, Paul Weatherstone, Fr Christopher Hancock MHM, Canon William Agley, Catherine Dyer, Canon Martin Stempczyk, Canon Peter Leighton VG, Maureen Dale, and Tony Lawless.
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, Andrew Grant, Kirsty McIntyre, Lisa Short, Yvonne Brown, and Petra Scarr.
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 355
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 seeking the position of General Secretary of Unite the Union on a programme including disaffiliation from the Labour Party, a proposal that would be hugely popular two years into a Starmer Government.
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 Monica Burch, Stephen Parkinson, 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 Tristan Bradshaw, Dawn Brodrick, Mike Browne, Steve Buckingham, Matthew Cain, 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, Stephen Parkinson, Michael Dunn, Deborah Harris, Dr Subo Shanmuganathan.
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 1059
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 1059
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.
And since Lanchester has been moved into North Durham by the boundary changes, I invite each and every candidate for that parliamentary seat 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. The current total is zero.
This post will appear daily until further notice.
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