Though All Their Law Be Fudge?

Elected with only 18 per cent of the eligible vote, thus lacking the mandate of five out of six of the people who might have given it, and with even its base collapsing, this Government is defined by its hostility to most of the country. But its huge Commons majority, though built on tiny constituency majorities, means that it is completely out of control, from puberty blockers and 10 extra days including seven additional sitting Fridays for the House of Lords to pass a Private Member’s Bill on assisted suicide, to digital ID and the abolition of almost all trial by jury. None of this was in anyone’s manifesto.

While the freezing of income tax thresholds until well into the next Parliament clobbers the precarious, at least £1.8 billion has been found for digital ID, according to a highly sensitive document that was accidentally published early on the Internet. When comparable errors dragged us all before the courts, then we would face a single salaried employee of the same State that had brought the prosecution and who would then determine guilt before passing sentence. Has anyone asked the judges whether they wanted this? They are public figures, yet in that capacity they are to determine guilt of the kinds of charges that were currently tried by jurors who, as such, very definitely were not.

It is one thing never to have had particular civil liberties, but it is quite another to legislate them away. A country that did that would not deserve extradition treaties, trade agreements, defence agreements, visa-free or visa on arrival access, or membership of international bodies, with countries that had taken better care of their inheritance.

And it is one thing to have sharp practice, as to some extent everywhere has, but it is quite another to write that into the law. Both verdict and sentence by the same State employee, sitting alone and able to lock you up for five years? I would be surprised if that were the black and white in North Korea, and stunned if it were in China, or Russia, or Iran.

Initially, this is to convict and imprison Palestine Action. When Yvette Cooper calls for a response to the crisis in Sudan comparable to the response to the crisis in Gaza, then she means it. Via the United Arab Emirates, Britain is still arming the Rapid Support Forces, just as Britain is still arming Israel. And anyone who objected could expect the same treatment as was being meted out to Palestine Action.

Yesterday, opponents of the proscription of Palestine Action were arrested a very short distance from the arrests of farmers, but all bail conditions on Ivor Caplin were lifted despite his having tried to meet a 14-year-old boy for sex. Caplin was a Whip at the time of the Iraq War, with Phil Woolas, and with Dan Norris, who was close to Caplin and whose proxy vote is still cast by the Whips. All three were made Ministers soon after the vote on Iraq. The then Chief Whip was the political patroness, both of Anna Turley, and of Caplin’s close friend, closest ally, former lover, and constituency successor, Peter Kyle.

Kyle joined his old boss in supporting the brief Leadership campaign of Jess Phillips. “I would stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front,” said the woman who was now “Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls”. She has accused British Pakistanis of importing wives for their disabled sons. She claims to have been rude and abusive towards Diane Abbott, although it is possible that she has built her reputation on lying about having used gutter language towards a woman who was old enough to be her mother. Phillips laughs at male suicides, at male cancers, at other men’s health issues, at violence against men, at problems in boys’ educational attainment, and at fathers denied access to their children. She has said that attacks of the kind that were seen in Cologne on the New Year’s Eve of 2015-16, “happen every week in Birmingham.”

 

And on Tuesday 2 September, Phillips told the House of Commons that, “South Yorkshire police should never have been left to investigate themselves in this matter, and moving those investigations to the NCA is absolutely the right thing to do. I would be lying if I said that over the years I had not met girls who talked to me about how police were part of not just the cover-up but the perpetration.” Read again those words of the Minister who refused a statutory inquiry, an inquiry that had been, and still is, demanded by the Muslim candidate whom she had beaten by only 693 votes at Birmingham Yardley, which he intends to contest again, the wonderful investigative journalist Jody McIntyre.

Phillips’s Leadership Campaign was chaired by Wes Streeting, who would have become Leader when, as expected in 2019, the Conservative majority had been much reduced in 2024 but Boris Johnson had remained Prime Minister. Yes, that was only six years ago. If he were still an MP, then Streeting would certainly become Leader after the defeat of Labour by Reform UK in 2029, and he would do so unopposed because the nomination process now made a contested Labour Leadership Election effectively impossible. Streeting may then be Prime Minister within 18 months, since almost all Reform MPs will be freshers. The only thing stopping this is the high likelihood that Streeting will lose his seat to Leanne Mohamad. But although the Greens came fifth at Ilford North last year, they took well over three times more votes than Streeting’s margin of victory.

Meanwhile, the Chief Whip of Caplin, Woolas and Norris has had the gall to endorse a mercifully ignored book that claimed that the accused of the Cleveland child abuse scandal had been guilty all along. False allegations of sexual violence are fundamental to the demonisation of working-class and nonwhite males, which leads to violence that is not restricted to, but which undoubtedly includes, sexual humiliation such as at Medomsley Detention Centre, and such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, in a June 2024 report that was also highly critical of Hamas, found to be inflicted on Palestinian men and boys by the Israeli Defence Forces. A month later, the unrepentant Sde Teiman rapists held a defiant press conference, and their supporters rioted, among them Members of the Knesset and men in the uniforms of the IDF’s Force 100. Fear of the black male is fundamental to the capitalist system that was founded on the transatlantic slave trade, and the slave trade financed enclosure. There has always been One Struggle.

The least of anyone’s worries is Nick Brown. If that were true, then he would be in prison. Nor is the great danger from social media, the restriction of adolescents’ access to which would intentionally deprive them of any political perspective beyond the ideology that was rammed down their throats by the schools and by the official media. I wish every success to Noah Jones and Macy Neyland before the High Court of Australia. No, and speaking of Australians, the threat to all of us comes from those who would make a Julian Assange of every one of us.