Tulips and Sultanas

Bangladesh did not become independent directly from Britain, but it is extraordinary that places that were British territory 80 years ago do not have extradition treaties with the United Kingdom. Tulip Siddiq's sentence of two years is only two thirds of what the Government wants to be imposed by, as in this case, single judges sitting alone. In certain cases, they will be able to bang you up for longer than that, and even for life. Specifically, those would relate to financial wrongdoing.

Muhammad Yunus was supposed to have been the Bengal Tiger until he came after Siddiq, who resigned because she had done nothing wrong and who was so obviously innocent that she refused to attend her trial. If Siddiq were anything but a right-wing Labourite, then she would be out. Perhaps unfairly, but life is hard, politics is very hard, and she comes from a political family, so she has known that from the start. As for having an aunt who had been sentenced to death for war crimes, being closely related to a convicted war criminal makes her only as Royal as the King, but not even that old Mitläufer and Minderbelasteter was ever lined up to be another Charles I, Louis XVI or Nicholas II. Siddiq must be the bluest-blooded blueblood in Britain.

So she had better watch her back. Plenty of MPs have been republicans, of course, and in principle that is at least arguably not a breach of the Oath of Allegiance as phrased. But it is extremely unusual for a sitting MP to declare publicly that, "We should abolish the monarchy itself." Not in an independent Scotland. Not in an independent Wales. Not in a United Ireland. Just, "We should abolish the monarchy itself."

Zarah Sultana is the only MP listed on Parliament's website as a member of Your Party. Interviewed by Owen Jones, she initially claimed that her call to "nationalise the entire economy" had meant only workers' cooperatives, the traditional public ownership of the things that used to be in it, and the elected workers' representation on corporate boards that Theresa May had been going to introduce, all of which would be to the good. But towards the end, she could no longer help herself, and Jones, the most sympathetic mainstream interviewer that she will ever have, could barely contain himself. His interview with Jeremy Corbyn was like a digestif, not least for both of them.

Not that it made any difference, but rather than the thinktankers-for-hire preferred by his enemies, Corbyn was advised and endorsed by world class economists, in the tradition of the contributors to the Alternative Economic Strategy of his mentor, Tony Benn, one of the greatest defenders of the sovereignty of Parliament and of the primacy of the House of Commons, who would have been horrified at Your Party's 16-member Leadership with no MPs allowed and presuming to direct MPs in the exercise of their parliamentary responsibilities.

Like "a workers' MP on a worker's wage", these ideas are not new. Just as, although never a member of Momentum, I was in the hall when its North East Regional Conference thankfully voted down that one, so in 1981 a section of those who proposed it and the anti-parliamentary measures that Your Party had now adopted, as well as economic maximalism, cast just enough votes to deny Benn the Deputy Leadership, mirroring the handful of MPs who had in 1980 given Michael Foot the Leadership because they had already resolved to set up the SDP. As defined in such circles, does Sultana now draw only a worker's wage? No other Labour MP had defected to Your Party even before this. None will do so if this were what was expected.

Nor should they. An MP is a worker, since being an MP is a job, so that the set remuneration package is the trade union rate for the job. Taking less to curry favour or because "I don't need that much" would be scabbing. Since I am having to explain the basics, and while there are grey areas, if something would obviously have to be rescued by the State rather than allowed to go bust, then it belongs in public ownership, just as if something obviously would not, then it does not. Water? Obviously. As Jones put it, "Little café kiosks"? Obviously not.

It is not only on the Labour side that parliamentary service makes improbable people inexplicably well-to-do. Jonathan Gullis had only previously been a teacher, yet his five years in Parliament made him worth five million pounds. How? From where? From whom? For what? On 31 March 2024, Richard Tice tweeted, "With a special Easter message to Tory MP Jonathan Gullis: Given the multiple bits of embarrassing personal information we have on you, I suggest you pipe down on your attacks against me." But that was before Reform UK was projected to take Stoke-on-Trent North. As well as both Bolton West and Great Grimsby, the respective former MPs for which, Chris Green and Lia Nici, have also just joined Reform, taking to at least 21 the number of former Conservative MP who had gone turquoise.

All five Reform MPs have been Conservative Party members, two of them have been Conservative MPs, and one of them was returned as such to this Parliament. This evening, Nigel Farage has had to deny that he was negotiating a pact with his original party. But the real story is that, entirely openly, that party is taking over his present one. Never mind the SWP and Your Party. Nothing about the undeniably bizarre Your Party Conference, which tellingly concluded with Imagine rather than with The Red Flag or even The Internationale, compared to the Conservative Party Conference's exhibition of Margaret Thatcher's clothes for the, er, delight of these future Reform MPs.

The only person ever to have sat as Reform MP without ever having been a member of the Conservative Party is James McMurdock. In Saturday's polls, a hypothetical party led by the former Conservative Rupert Lowe started on 10 per cent. On Sunday, we learned that 43 per cent of Reform supporters would vote for it. And yesterday, it was launched. It is called Great Yarmouth First, and Lowe has paid the membership fees of the first 500 of his constituents to have signed up.