National Concessionary?

No, BBC, "most disabled people" do not qualify for the English national concessionary travel scheme, any more than we qualified for Personal Independence Payment. Such things are very, very, very difficult to get. But like probably millions of others, no one would ever insure me to drive, and from their own point of view they would be right.

The boundary changes effectively abolished the Red Wall as an electoral factor, and did in fact abolish a number of Red Wall seats such as North West Durham, so that only about one in seven of this year's Labour gains could have been so described. The needs of towns and villages that lost their employers in the 1980s and 1990s, making it a necessity to commute to far from well-paid work, have therefore never been an issue at a General Election. But before the same changes that destroyed those industries, almost everywhere in Britain had a regular and affordable bus service, so we know that it can be done. Likewise, it has been established that things in the private sector can be capped by the State. If bus fares, then why not water company dividends? Or the "bonuses" that were paid mechanically to bankers?

This change will close some routes, stranding people who could not afford either to drive or to move, and whose services were already far from comprehensive even though they did not necessarily live very far from the jobs that they were doing, paying at least National Insurance accordingly. And even for those who could still get to work, with an increase in their employers' contributions, there will be no increase in their pay to match the 50 per cent increase in their travel costs.

Voting for all of this, as he did both for the two-child benefit cap and to withdraw the Winter Fuel Payment, will be Jas Athwal, who on top of everything else turns out to be the landlord of an unsafe private care home where children have gone missing and been left at risk of criminal exploitation. Athwal was the Leader of Redbridge Borough Council when its funding of this Heartwood Care, Athwal's tenant, increased by 503 per cent. At that time, Athwal's Deputy Leader, responsible for children's care, was Wes Streeting.

At the same time, with fewer than half of households in the lowest fifth of incomes having access to a car, fuel duty will not be increased in line with inflation, nor will the five pence cut from 2022 expire in 2025, despite the inclusion of that expiry in the calculation of the fiscal baseline. This is class war. This. Not anything to do with Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who will certainly repeat his trick of emerging from a brief incarceration looking as if he had done 20 years in the gulag, and whom I am expecting to do so as Azzam Al-Irlandi.

Throughout my time in prison, officers and inmates at every level of each told me that I ought to apply for political status. But I would have been released by the time that it had ever gone through. As would Yaxley-Lennon, even before taking account of the 40 per cent release scheme. As much as that? I was released after 25 per cent, having been a guest of the old Queen for less than a fortnight when an entirely unsolicited letter informed that I would be so for "good behaviour". Hours earlier, Labour had lost control of Durham County Council.

Yaxley-Lennon will get none of that, because he is not a political prisoner. He tapped his supporters for who knows how much for his defence, then he pocketed the loot and pleaded guilty. They should sue. Or he should be prosecuted for fraud. Or both. He libelled a child, he lost the libel action, and he broke the injunction not to repeat the libel. Lucy Connolly incited arson with intent to endanger life on racial grounds. Peter Lynch participated in an attempt to commit such arson, and after his death Ann Widdecombe said that he had rightly been sent down, so Reform UK's denunciation of Yaxley-Lennon is not a novelty.

This time, though, Reform has lost its Yaxley-Lennonist base. It was always going to have a job overturning a Labour majority of 14,696 at Runcorn and Helsby. But could it now collect the 10 signatures to get onto the ballot paper, there or anywhere else? Yet anyone endorsed by Yaxley-Lennon probably could. The absence of such a candidate would be cowardice to rank with that of Laurence Fox.