Mutated Virus

So Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth can seize "the largest tanker ever seized", but they have to blow fishing boats and their crews to smithereens? Say what you think of that on your social media, and then apply to visit the United States, not with any view to going there, but just to make someone have to read it. Anyone who did wish the place harm should be recruiting early teenagers in the Visa Waiver Program country of Australia, who on their sixteenth birthdays will be able to Waltz like Matilda past Uncle Sam's border guards having left no trace.

Not so Derbyshire County Councillor Stephen Reed, who drew the tumultuous applause of his Reform UK colleagues when he denounced immigration in his Australian accent. Reform was already facing the fury of its own supporters because one of its candidates for Portsmouth City Council was Addy Mo Asaduzzaman, a Bangladeshi who is exercising his rights as a Commonwealth citizen. I had wondered how they would react when a Reform candidate was an Anglo-Australian or a white South African. Over to them. Meanwhile, Advance UK is dependent on Elon Musk, none of whose three nationalities is British.

A certain Britain showed itself at the Unite the Kingdom rally, and will attend Stephen Yaxley-Lennon's carol concert. With the flu running rampant, then nothing would suit that Britain better than another lockdown. I am fully vaccinated, I adhered strictly to the previous lockdowns, and I would adhere strictly to another one. But a lot of people are not, a lot of people did not, and between the unpopularity of this Government and the memory of the Downing Street parties, an awful lot of people would not. They would be ripe for recruitment.

If their violent reactions made them subject to juryless trials, or to Magistrates' Courts from which they had no automatic right of appeal, then their supporters would explode. Town centres and housing estates would burn. Yet on any given day, between 10 and 20 per cent of Crown Courts are sitting idle. On its own, opening them up may not fix the backlog. But it would be a good start. Whereas abolishing almost all juries would make no difference, because they are not the problem.