Self-Determination, Self-Diagnosis

Jeremy Corbyn was vilified for allegedly bowing less than low enough at the Cenotaph. Well, look at the British Right now. My erstwhile colleagues Iain Martin and Gerald Warner support Donald Trump over Greenland, while Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson have called for him to annex Britain as well. They are only half in jest. But even if they were entirely so, imagine that a left-wing commentator had said anything remotely comparable in the Corbyn years. Imagine that a left-wing commentator were to say anything remotely comparable today. 

Trump's victory in the popular vote means that the centrists have lost the United States. But they still have the Awami League, lately overthrown in Bangladesh and not even nominally a Socialist party, yet hugely influential in Labour-dominated Camden, where it has provided at least three Mayors. One of Camden's two MPs is Tulip Siddiq, whose election literature has been found amidst the rubble of the palace of her aunt and generous patron, the deposed Sheikh Hasina. The other is Keir Starmer, who made the then Leader of Camden Council, Georgia Gould, a Minister immediately upon her election to Parliament.

If you support self-determination for the Greenlanders, then you should support it for the Chagossians, and vice versa. Likewise, if you support self-determination for the Greenlanders, then you should support it for the Falkland Islanders, and vice versa. British admirers of Javier Milei have serious questions to answer. As does everyone with a history, often a very recent one indeed, of association with Ivor Caplin. The Jewish Chronicle has deleted its article on his arrest, and the BBC has never mentioned it, but now his 40-year-old friend "Steve" has also been arrested. How many people do there have to be to constitute a grooming gang? Caplin, please note, has been bailed, only 50 miles from the Parliament where he still holds a pass and where his pornographic Twitter account is still being followed by the Chancellor of the same Exchequer that still has Siddiq as its Economic Secretary.

That Chancellor has of course crashed the economy, meaning that the Right and the Centre have both done so well within the last two and half years. They are no more economically competent than they are patriotic, so they stage fake culture wars in order to prevent challenges to their failed economic and foreign policies. Tony Blair himself has been wheeled out from wherever it is that they keep him, to launch a culture war over mental illness, Boomerishly implying that there was none of that in his day, and flatly stating that people were getting themselves onto benefits by "self-diagnosing" with depression. What does Alastair Campbell have to say about that? What does Oliver Kamm? This is the outrider for the Government that they wanted, manufacturing consent for its, well, what, exactly? Refusal to provide antidepressants and talking therapies on the NHS? All cheered on by people whose fellow-travelling with Elon Musk's call for that Government to be overthrown ought to make them subject to such media and other restrictions as used to apply to Sinn Féin.