Osso Buco alla Milanese at Casa Santa Marta tonight, so they were not going to miss that by electing a Pope and then having to go home. The Barbaresco is flowing as I type. The smoke had to be black.
But what colour would the smoke be if, between now and the reconvening of the Conclave, we were all blown to smithereens by either or both of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons? So much for nuclear deterrence, but of course we already knew that.
For a solution in Kashmir based on the self-determination of its people, our nuclear-threatened species obviously needs both India and Pakistan. For India, we need its "special and privileged strategic partner", Russia. And for Pakistan, we need the country to which it relates as Israel does to the United States, China. This is the real world.
But realism is not opportunism. At the 2024 General Election, the Conservatives' only gain was Leicester East, while at Harrow East, Bob Blackman received the highest vote share for any Conservative candidate in the country, he was the only Conservative elected with an absolute majority, and he was one of only three Conservative MPs to be re-elected with increased majorities.
In 2019, the BJP campaigned openly for the Conservatives in 48 marginal seats, rallying a community that was economically right-wing, socially more liberal than visible ethnic minorities in general, and 65 to 67 per cent Remain-voting. The Conservatives have to keep that fairly new base. As the recent local elections demonstrated, socially liberal, pro-EU Thatcherites make a case-by-case judgement each time as to which of the old Coalition partners was better-placed to advance that ideology, or at least that sensibility. Meanwhile, having lost Muslims over Gaza and because Keir Starmer had already repudiated unanimous Party Conference support for Kashmiri self-determination, Labour needs to replace that vote with something.
If local authorities are not supposed to have views on anything much beyond bins and potholes, then someone had better tell Reform UK. Blackman could do it. As Leader of the Opposition on Brent Council, he blocked the two thirds majority that would have given Nelson Mandela the Freedom of the Borough when he came to Wembley Stadium, before going to court to stop any recognition of the fact that there had been a simple majority for that award.
You would have made a wonderful Foreign Secretary.
ReplyDeleteA member of Jeremy Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet once offered me a peerage "when I'm Prime Minister" so that I could be Foreign Secretary because, "You're the international idea of an Englishman."
DeleteThat ranks with the well-connected Corbynites of whom, unaware that I was at the urinal around the corner, one asked the other that if the monarchy were to be abolished, "What would you have instead? David Lindsay?"; with George Galloway's promise live on air to take a seat in the House of Lords if I did; and with another Corbyn Shadow Cabinet member who, on learning the origin of the word "grandee", opined that, "That sounds like something they would give to David Lindsay."
Similarly, one of the lay great and good of this Diocese has "the David Lindsay Rule", according to which, "If you behave like royalty, eventually people will assume that you are and treat you as such." As a canon lawyer in these parts is wont to say, "David Lindsay has the force of local custom."