Strategically Situated

By the time that you read this, Donald Trump will have changed his mind again. The only people who will still care about the Chagossians in a year’s time will be those of us who had done so a year ago, and a lot longer ago than that. The bandwagon-jumpers always used to say that the moral and legal justification for the American base, about which alone they cared, was that there was no Chagossian people.

They still insist that there is no Palestinian people. In discussing the West Bank and Gaza, the United Nations Security Council was chaired by Yvette Cooper, who unlawfully proscribed Palestine Action, and who did so specifically by reference to the charges of aggravated burglary that have now been dropped against 18 defendants, following the acquittal of the other six. Cooper’s is the only British political party to have a member on Trump’s Board of Peace. Specifically, Tony Blair sits on its the Executive Board, and on its Gaza Executive Board. A vote for Labour at Gorton and Denton would be a vote for that.

Advance UK and Restore Britain need to sort themselves out, of course, but Advance’s Nick Buckley may well take more votes than either the Labour or the Green margin of victory over Reform UK. And then whither Matt Goodwin? He could never go back to academia, but why should GB News continue to employ him, either? Nigel Farage’s failure to make him Shadow Education Secretary strongly suggests a lack of confidence in his forthcoming electoral triumph. This time next year, Goodwin will be on Blankety Blank. Not necessarily as a panellist.

Politically, though, who cares? Green and Reform councillors both vote for austerity, just like, and indeed alongside, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat councillors. Just like, and indeed alongside, Conservative and Lib Dem parliamentarians, Green and Reform parliamentarians vote against even such limited workers’ rights as Labour can be bothered to propose. If you vote Green, then you may as well vote for Farage. If you vote Reform, then you may as well vote for Zack Polanksi. The Greens have increased Brighton Council’s surplus by the same £60 million that they have cut from services. A Portsmouth City Councillor of 30 years’ standing, Jason Fazackarley, who had sat both as a Green and for Labour, moved in November from the Lib Dems, who had made him Lord Mayor, to Reform, following at least one other sitting Lib Dem councillor, Jeff Sumner of Burnley.

From Labour to Reform defected, among at least five others nationwide last year, Councillor Mason Humberstone of Stevenage, who contested internal Labour Party elections on the slate of Morgan McSweeney’s and Josh Simons’s infamous Labour Together. Reform expects to take the Stevenage parliamentary seat from Labour. Of the 20 councillors who joined Reform UK on 14 January, five had been Independents, but 14 had been Conservatives 24 hours earlier, and one had been in the Green Party. Yesterday, Robert Jenrick announced that Reform would keep Gordon Brown’s surrender of democratic political control over monetary policy, keep Nick Clegg’s Office for Budget Responsibility, and restore the two-child benefit cap plainly and simply.

Meanwhile, although originally elected as a Conservative, Councillor David Wilkes of Sandwell has just defected again, this time from Labour to Advance, while at least one of Kent’s expelled Reform councillors who have joined Restore has done so after having been rebuffed by the Lib Dems. Expect a lot more of this. The Epstein Class is centrists, right-wing populists, right-wing elitists, and the world’s only famous anarcho-syndicalist and libertarian socialist. Think on.