Cumulative Impact

Shabana Mahmood is ignorant. "Jihad" is a very common given name among Arabs, and especially among Levantines. See, for example, Dr Jihad Azour. That he was a candidate for President of Lebanon meant that that he was eligible for that office. If you know, you know, and if you do not, then hold your tongue. Jihad Al-Shamie's father is amusingly called Faraj. And I told you what the family stood for.

Bear that in mind as you consider that two of the six people arrested in connection with the Manchester synagogue attack have already been released with no further action, that no one has yet been charged, that half of the deaths were at the hands of the Police, that they also inflicted the only other injury, and that while the rest of the world is talking about the taking hostage of the Global Sumud Flotilla, that is barely being mentioned here in the state of at least 13 of those hostages, the state under whose flag sailed at least three of their boats.

The 72-year-old RAF veteran Malcolm Ducker is being held in a maximum security prison with bed bugs and no clean water, and without access to his medication, by the people who bombed James Kirby, James Henderson and John Chapman three times to make sure that they were dead. No one knows the fate of Yvonne Ridley. Greta Thunberg, the darling of the liberal haute bourgeoisie on every continent until she took up this cause, has been dragged by her hair, beaten, and forced to kiss the Israeli flag, pour encourager les autres. Britain is arming this, and Britain is flying a nightly reconnaissance mission in support of it, free of charge to the Israelis.

Attacking a synagogue is terrorism, so why is setting fire to a mosque only a "hate crime"? Would the same apply to Dr Azour's church? Or to mine? Sky News could not tell a synagogue from a mosque, anyway. Will big city football clubs hold minutes' silences every time that someone on their patch was stabbed to death? Or killed by the Police? If what happened in Manchester was "the Yom Kippur massacre", then what is happening in Gaza? In 1993, the former President of Bolivia, García Meza Tejada, was convicted of genocide for the deaths of fully eight people. Those were not the only people whom he killed. But legally, since he is now dead, they will always be the only victims of his genocide. There have been rather more than eight victims in Gaza.

Speaking of South America, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was not on 7 October 2023, but during the Dirty War of the Israeli-armed junta in the Nazi asylum of Argentina from 1973 to 1984. Jews were fewer than one per cent of the population, but they provided one in eight of the disappeared, well over three thousand people. During that period, Israel also armed Argentina's war for the Falkland Islands, as a personal act of anti-British revenge on the part of Menachem Begin. Exceptionally close to Israel, Javier Milei continues to stake the Argentine claim to the Falklands. Watch that space.

And speaking of football, are the Police to decide which matches should be played, based on their own assessment of their capacity to police them? They are to be given the power to decide that a demonstration was too big, or that there had been too many in the same location on the same issue over some or other period of time, or that individuals had used up their respective allowances of protest credits. These powers will not be used against any event organised by, or in support of, Israel's guest of honour, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

In Italy, the unions organise a two-million-strong strike in support of Gaza and the flotilla, bringing much of the country to a standstill and Giorgia Meloni to the brink of being overthrown. But in Britain, we fund the party that wants to do this, even having members on its National Executive Committee, which is chaired by Mahmood. The TUC's resolution against identity cards in 2008 was a key stage in watering down the proposal itself and then making even that scheme a damp squib that most people rapidly forgot. This time, the announcement of digital ID was delayed until the TUC had gone home.

Yet what of the other side? "I can out-UKIP UKIP!" shouted Owen Paterson as David Cameron sacked him in 2014, but whatever became of Paterson? The Liberal Democrats even held onto North Shropshire last year. Indeed, their majority trebled. Kemi Badenoch, however, will not oppose the principle of digital ID, certainly would not repeal it if she inherited it, and is trying to out-Trump Nigel Farage by proposing a British ICE. What next, a British National Guard? Perhaps joining one or other of those might be a way of earning indefinite leave to remain? In that case, then they might be created in this Parliament. Under the right Prime Minister. "You shouldn't believe anyone in politics who says they're not ambitious about the top job, because they're basically lying," says Mahmood. Be afraid. Be very, very, very afraid.