Memorandum of Understanding

When you see it. And Michelle O’Neill has signed this specifically on behalf of Sinn Féin. I have been told that this may not have been the original document. But in that case, then one of the others must have released it in this form. If anything, that would be even worse. It would not exactly bode well. Either way, call it something to flag up. Still, that is where Sinn Féin is in government. Or ever will be.

Even as a spoof, this expresses a profound truth. In 2024, those who had hitherto displayed the Ulster Banner rioted side by side with the Tricolour-wavers who returned their hospitality in Dublin last April. They even brought their own flags, as their hosts had done as guests. Such are the connections formed in and by the overlapping worlds of British intelligence and organised crime. If the holders of placards in support of Palestine Action wanted to be treated like those who rather more noisily expressed support for rather more justifiably proscribed organisations, then they might need to branch out. The cops and the spooks would show them how. For a cut of one sort or another, of course. Will the same advice soon need to be taken by Médecins Sans Frontières? That question would have been outrageous enough even before those who were demanding such a proscription renewed their perennial support for Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands. Like anything else from them, it should be unconscionable now.

Argentina itself maintains an embassy in London, so there may as well be an Israeli one. But neither of those has illegally deployed its own country’s Marines on our streets to extract a diplomat accused of the possession of child sexual abuse images. Add that to everything else of late, and the American Embassy should probably be closed, while the American bases on British soil should certainly be told to pack their bags and get out. The hitherto deluded Unionists in Northern Ireland must now see that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are no friends of theirs, but what of the deluded followers of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon and Daniel Thomas, the deluded Restore Britain, the deluded Reform UK, and the deluded right wing of the Conservative Party? Or, indeed, the deluded right wing of the Labour Party?

While it retained those sorts of links, even if only in its own mind, then Reform could probably have all the money in the world and not win a General Election. Governments should beware of setting vindictive precedents that could be turned against them once their opponents had returned to office. But they never do, and while retroactive legislation does leave an unpleasant taste, it is not unprecedented, nor did Reform object at the time to a retroactive ban that passed the House of Commons before Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne had given that party £72 million that it could not possibly spend in British politics. For example, since even Lee Anderson suggested this on Politics Live, American-style hiring or being hired as a paid canvasser before, during, or after an election constitutes illegal employment under the Representation of the People Act 1983. Might Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, or any of the Conservative defectors to Reform, be able to name the Prime Minister in 1983? Robert Jenrick gave his daughter the middle name Thatcher. Not Margaret. Thatcher. Think on.