Turn The Page, End The Chaos?

If I were Donald Trump, then I would pay the air fares of those 100 Labour Party staffers, and put them up for free in my hotels. Labour won a First Past the Post General Election at which no seat, not even the Speaker's, was contested by fewer than five candidates, with most having six or seven, and with 27 having 10 or more. 13 parties secured representation, while six Independents and the Speaker were also elected, but it was possible to win a landslide victory on only one third of the votes cast, and on only one fifth of the eligible vote. Those are purely the facts, and none of them is transferable to the United States.

Since then, Labour has lost 35 per cent of the council seats that it has defended, with the early hours of every Friday morning showing its support in freefall among those of us who were guaranteed to vote even in the midst of collapsing turnout overall. The more advice that the Democrats took from Labour, and the more assistance that they received from it, the more that Trump should rejoice.

Even if they were not campaigning for a California turned Beltway Democrat whom not even the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post could bring itself to endorse, the idea that five score posh London kiddies on a jolly could make any difference to an election for President of the United States is even more ridiculous than the suggestion that the one in 2016 was rigged by Vladimir Putin, and that is saying something. But either Trump's victory or that of Kamala Harris will now define anything that could be regarded as Trumpism as the enemy within Britain. Against it will be unleashed the full force of state power, soft and hard, overt and covert. We on the Left know whereof we speak.

For example, expect a rather more robust approach to events such as today's march and rally in support of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. Nigel Farage and his party were fulsomely denounced, but the distinction is unlikely to be recognised from Keir Starmer down, and will in any case cause Reform UK no end of grief among its 2024 voters. Laurence Fox has made himself even more risible by claiming never to have heard of his party's only ever MP, Andrew Bridgen. And Bridgen, who shares a platform with Mark Collett and Derek Beacon, sat in Parliament for 14 years until 30 May this year. He does not appear to hold a former MP's pass, but it should be made absolutely clear that he never would.