Scrotes Deal

You do realise that Lee Anderson is not the Prime Minister, don't you? He is not a Minister at all. He is one of four Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party. There are also four Vice Chairmen. The Chairman is a Minister without Portfolio. But none of those eight is even that.

As for Jonathan Gullis, apart from wondering how someone who had only previously been a teacher had come to be worth five million pounds in a little over three years as an MP, consider that this was the person to whom Ruth Smeeth, Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent, lost her seat before taking a peerage at the age of 43 rather than dare face him again at the ballot box.

Electrify Your Thinking

Like Shell, the previously publicly owned BP was bad, as was the Centrica that now owned British Gas. But EDF is a foreign state, as such. It has reported huge losses overall, yet its British arm is thoroughly profitable, because it is allowed to charge whatever it likes here. There is no point calling for regulation. There is already a regulator. What the hell does Ofgem do?

Rumour has it that Gazprom is planning to set up a private military company, like the Wagner Group. I am not sure how a nationalised industry would do that, but there we go. I have considered doing something similar. I might name mine Oliver's Army, after Kamm, who now sends me incomprehensible little missives that lead me to suspect that his illness has come back.

But British utility providers do not need to raise private armies. In a merger of state and corporate power to the point of physical violence, a phenomenon for which there is a word, they are already able to, for example, secure the compulsory granting of warrants to enter people's homes and install prepayment meters, a service for which they pay what is euphemistically described as a fee on each of the hundreds or thousands of occasions at a time that they had applied online, with the warrants themselves issued over the telephone.

The solution is obvious, it would be massively popular, and there would be nothing to stop it now that we were outside the European Single Market and the Customs Union. You know that Jeremy Corbyn voted Leave. Had he stuck to his Bennite guns against Keir Starmer, then there would have been no General Election until the spring of 2022, when the heavy Conservative losses to the Liberal Democrats in the Remainer heartlands of the South would have seen the night end with Labour as the largest party in a hung Parliament. Heaven knows what would have happened then, but that would have been the result.

The renationalisation of the utilities would be inexpensive compared to what we were already well into spending on prolonging the war in Ukraine, and it would cost hardly a penny compared to what we had already spent on the waste and corruption of track and trace, of PPE fraud, and so on. Yet Starmer's Labour refuses to consider public ownership, and it will soon be expelling anyone who did.

But when I say that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

The opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and in any case even the Labour poll lead has halved since Sunak took over. Halved. The Labour vote has gone through the floor at all but one by-election since Starmer became Leader, with one of those recording Labour's lowest ever share of the vote. Council seats that were held or won under Corbyn have fallen like sandcastles, taking control of major local authorities with them. That is the bread and butter of the party's right wing, who are not otherwise the most employable of people.

With nearly two years still to go until the next General Election, Starmer's personal rating is negative not only nationally, but in every region apart from London, and it is still in decline. Starmer's dishonesty is becoming a story. He lied to his party members to get their votes, so he would lie to anyone else to get their votes. We are heading for a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Protocol

The DUP thinks that it is still in a confidence and supply arrangement. But this Government has a majority of 80. It is questionable exactly what constitutes membership of the ERG, but no more than 50 MPs, and perhaps as few as 40, could in any way be so described. The seven of them in the Cabinet have no intention of resigning for anything. All in all, an absolute maximum of 60 votes against whatever the Government proposed in relation to the Northern Ireland Protocol, but more like 50, one in 13 members of the House of Commons. If that. A rebellion of, at most, around one in seven Conservatives. Who cares?

For its annual £200,000 of public money, all paid into one account, what research does the European Research Group produce? Three years after Brexit, research into what? As for the Democratic Unionist Party, it would lose its deposit in any seat in Great Britain, and it would struggle to get onto the ballot in most of them, but far from having decommissioned any weapons, Ulster Resistance has never even declared a ceasefire. Is that what this is really all about? Yes. Yes, it is. Tell me again about the bullet dodged at the last two General Elections.

The Grounds of Windsor, Indeed

I do have a good record of rat-smelling where this sort of thing is concerned. That has nothing to do with liking anyone. I would die in his stead to keep Julian Assange's work going, I am opposed to the marrow of my bones to the political cause to which Alex Salmond has devoted his life but I expect that we would still get on, I doubt that Ched Evans and I would find much to talk about, I know that Freya Heath's victims and I would have more than enough for a very heated discussion indeed, and I am sure that I could stand no more than a few seconds in the company of Andrew Tate.

But I was right from the start about Assange, Salmond, Evans and Heath (whose conviction was merely set aside on a procedural technicality), and just as I would not be at all surprised if little or nothing ended up coming of the Tate furore, so it is increasingly obvious that I have been right all along about Prince Andrew.

After Alan Dershowitz, Virginia Giuffre's credibility was already in free fall. The prosecuting authorities in the United States did not prosecute Ghislaine Maxwell in relation to Giuffre. Prince Andrew should never have given her a penny, and he should get back with interest, costs and a penalty every penny that he had given her.

People who did not happen to think that they were somehow advancing their republican principles by joining in the vilification of Prince Andrew would be fighting his corner just as tenaciously if he were anyone else. Giuffre had to file a civil suit because she would have stood no chance of winning a criminal case in a jurisdiction that still had a proper burden of proof, unlike England and Wales, where, in my direct personal experience, the concept of conviction beyond reasonable doubt has been unilaterally abolished by the judiciary.

Even from his cell, Jeffrey Epstein was still making donations to "Petie" Mandelson. Hey ho, like Epstein before her, Maxwell is now on suicide watch. Prince Andrew is an utterly unimportant person. Epstein's British connection that matters is to Mandelson, who pretty much ran the Labour Party when it was last in government, and who is back running it now, having solicited a large donation from Epstein's cell as a convicted and incarcerated paedophile.

In the meantime, Mandelson has been European Commissioner for Trade, President of the Board of Trade, Lord President of the Council, and First Secretary of State. In all but name, he was Deputy Prime Minister under Gordon Brown, and arguably under Tony Blair as well. Prince Andrew has never even run his own bath. Mandelson, however, is now running Keir Starmer, who is the most inexperienced politician ever to have become the Leader of the Opposition.

Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions when the decision was made not to prosecute Jimmy Savile. Due to Savile's fame and connections, of course it is inconceivable that that decision was made by anyone other than Starmer, just as of course he was sly enough not to have left a paper trail.

And there are the Royal Family and the political elite again. The rest of us live our entire lives without ever encountering a paedophile, yet our betters have the misfortune to trip over them every time that they go out. As with illegal drug use, they extrapolate from their own experience and present such behaviour as normal, not even so much because they want it to be, as because they sincerely believe that it is. 

Although every specific allegation that Jeremy Corbyn was an anti-Semite has been easily refuted, the idea lingers in the air. It never made any electoral difference. Starmer's change to Labour's Brexit policy caused both the 2019 General Election and its outcome, or else an Election last spring would have delivered a hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party. But it was there, and it still is.

The lingering idea of Starmer and "oh, something to do with paedophilia" would, however, have a great deal of electoral cut-through if anyone were prepared to push and twist the knife hard enough. Between Savile and Mandelson, that ought not to be difficult to do. Why did Starmer let Savile off? Why is Starmer so dependent on Epstein's closest associate in Britain, indeed one of Epstein's closest associates in the world? What sort of person therefore wants Starmer to become Prime Minister?

The age of consent in London was and is 16. In New York, it was and is 17. And how prepubescent does the then Virginia Roberts look in the infamous photograph of her with Maxwell and with Prince Andrew? How genuine does that photograph itself look? It has never been tested in court. The more you look at it, the more you think that expert witnesses called by Prince Andrew's London barrister or New York attorney would tear it to pieces.

In relation to Dershowitz, the now Virginia Giuffre has effectively admitted her own incredibility. Prince Andrew should sue everyone who had called him a paedophile, a paedo, a nonce, or anything in that vein. And he should demand the late Queen's money back.

Too Big To Jail

Reading Martin Vander Weyer, I found myself wondering what sort of creature could make a living by doing media relations for HSBC:

It would be hard to invent a more contrasting pair of protagonists for a thriller plot than Stephen Green and Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán. Green — tall, soft-spoken, cerebral, an Anglican priest in his spare time, later a trade minister in the House of Lords — was chairman from 2006 to 2010 of HSBC, the UK-based bank which grew to be the world’s largest during his tenure. Guzmán, now incarcerated for life in one of America’s most secure prisons, was the small, cunning and murderous head of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, one of the world’s most sophisticated ventures in the distribution of cocaine, heroin and other narcotics. Remarkably, Guzmán was one of Green’s biggest HSBC customers.

In a very indirect sense, of course. The plain truth — told in Too Big To Jail with pace, gusto and a strong sense of moral outrage by veteran City journalist Chris Blackhurst — is that after HSBC acquired a Mexican subsidiary in 2002, its business there grew at a phenomenal rate on the back of Sinaloa’s billion-dollar cash flows from the United States. These were sometimes deposited in containers so large that the bank’s counter-screens had to be altered to accommodate them.

The money was then laundered into legitimate accounts, many of them in an entity labelled “the Cayman Islands branch of HSBC Mexico”, which did not even have a physical presence in Grand Cayman, but existed only as an accounting device within the bank’s Mexico City headquarters.

These facilities enabled Guzmán’s organisation to prosper in its business of dealing deadly drugs to American users whilst assassinating any competitor or official brave enough to challenge its monopolistic misrule. HSBC’s breathtakingly slack anti-money laundering procedures and checks on dubious account-holders did nothing to impede its growth.

The Mexican authorities eventually nabbed El Chapo — despite several Keystone Cops near-misses and one spectacular prison break via a mile-long tunnel — and extradited him to the US, whose Department of Justice eventually also got its teeth into HSBC. The prosecutors then received a request from George Osborne, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, asking them not to impose too severe a punishment (which might have included being barred from US markets) on this proud flagship of UK banking in a way that might upset markets or disturb the wider financial sector. The Americans having demurred, all that ensued was a “deferred prosecution agreement”, carrying a fine equating to just a few weeks’ profit rather than a criminal trial of the institution or its senior executives, most of whom sailed on with their careers unstained.

Blackhurst’s cover strapline calls this story “the greatest banking scandal of the century” — a big claim, given the number of banks that have disgraced themselves in one way or another since the turn of the Millennium. The author is making a crucial distinction in his title, Too Big To Jail: other banks such as RBS, which had been ruined by reckless risk-taking before the 2008 crisis, were deemed “too big to fail” because of their systemic importance, which is why they were rescued by taxpayer bailouts. HSBC, by contrast, sailed through 2008 unscathed and — with Stephen Green setting a high moral tone from the top — held itself up as a model both of ethical behaviour and of strong management grip on a global network.

In Blackhurst’s account, revelations from Mexico exploded that reputation — though the story is still not as well-known as it deserves to be. In a race for growth that saw a near-doubling of HSBC staff numbers to 330,000 in the mid-2000s, ethics lost out because in reality bosses in London had little idea what was going on in the more exotic parts of their operational map — and were slow to deal with problems when they did find out.

Too Big To Jail deserves to become a set text for managers of large organisations on the need for ethical vigilance and tight risk procedures at all levels. Beside that worthy purpose, the book is a highly entertaining read, balancing what might in less skilful hands be rather tedious detail of HSBC’s inner workings with terrifyingly bloody scenes of Guzmán and his gang at work: stitching onto a football the severed face of a butchered member of a rival gang, for example.

Blackhurst is eloquent in his regret for the fact that so few senior executives are held fully responsible for bad stuff that happens on their watch, not so much by ill-intent as by boardroom complacency or blinkered pursuit of growth. A mix of both in this case resulted in bespoke wealth management services being made available to some of the world’s nastiest criminals.

Amends are rarely made for such errors of judgement. Blackhurst’s concluding paragraphs on that theme prompted your reviewer to imagine a fictionalised final scene for a cinema version of Too Big To Jail: the Revd Lord Green as a prison visitor, taking the gospel to El Chapo in his supermax cell.

Amare Nesciri?

This is your weekly reminder that there has been a liberal coup in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, with a heavy dose of anti-intellectualism, inverted snobbery, and school bullying thrown in. At least two months after any allegation must have been made, and with no charge or even arrest having followed, it is fair to assume that there has never been a Police investigation into Bishop Robert Byrne CO, who should now sue every media outlet that had suggested that there was one. An Oratorian does not take a vow of poverty, and the English Oratories have friends who could afford any lawyer in London.

All talk of a "sex party" is long gone, and there is still no evidence even of any kind of drinks party that had breached the lockdown. While that event would have been wrong if it had happened, both the then Prime Minister and the present Prime Minister have received fixed penalty notices for attendance at similar. But as with the allegation that drove Canon McCoy to suicide, the damage is done.

Therefore, brook no compromise. Disregard the possibility that any of this may be genuine, and do not allow any development whatever to dissuade or distract you. Pray for the repose of the soul of Canon McCoy. Pray for Bishop Byrne. And console yourself that the Evil Ones may not be praying, but ought at least to be hoping, that there will be another liberal Pope after this ailing 86-year-old, because otherwise the Oxford Oratory would be as well-connected as it was possible to be, and there would be hell to pay for what they had done. As there should be.

Quite Reasonable, In My View

Peter Hitchens writes:

A year ago, I did not know that Russia was going to invade Ukraine. Nor, in my view, did ­anyone else apart from Vladimir Putin himself. I thought and said and believed that Putin would be mad to do such a thing, and now think that he was mad to do so. As well as being cruel and lawless, the invasion is a disaster for Russia from which it may never recover.

But a certain type of person nowadays likes to pretend that everyone knew the ­invasion was a certainty, and that even to doubt it was some sort of thought crime. They should note that one of the main doubters was President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. On February 12 and 13, 2022, news media reported that the much-admired leader was far from convinced that an invasion was coming.

For instance: 'Mr Zelensky also cast doubts on US reports of an imminent invasion, requesting, "If anyone has any additional information about a 100 per cent chance of an invasion, give it to us."'And Ukrainian president Volod­ymyr Zelensky also called on Washington to share intelligence which suggests Russia is planning to invade his country on Wednesday. He told the US, "If you have 100 per cent certain information about a Russian ­invasion of Ukraine, please share it with us."' 

The famed Ukrainian novelist and patriot Andrey Kurkov wrote from Kiev at the same time about how 'Zelensky again reassured Ukrainians and said that everything was under control. He has repeatedly accused Western politicians of exaggerating the danger of a Russian attack.' Quite reasonable, in my view. Intelligence claims just aren’t always right.

And:

Steven Spielberg has made enough successful, profitable films to risk making a dangerous one. The Fabelmans, illuminated by the beauty of Michelle Williams and full of great music, will upset a lot of people. It is pretty much Spielberg’s autobiography up to the age of 18.

And, as far as I can recall, it is the only major Hollywood film to show just how painful and miserable a marriage break-up is for the children of parents who split up. The modern world likes to pretend that divorce is fine and the children cope perfectly well and no damage is done. But this is very often a huge lie, and it is shown here as a lie. It is about time, but it will not be popular.

It is also a clever re-creation of the feeling of much of that strange era, which stretched from the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s – the once-overarching power of the movies as the most potent art form we had ever seen, Davy Crockett hats, suburban luxury (as it then seemed to be) and then the disturbing sound of the new music that would sweep away almost everything we had known.

How clever to choose the nonsensical lyrics of Da Doo Ron Ron (the work of the crazed Phil Spector) to herald the end of the young Spielberg’s domestic security. Yes, it was all very thrilling and the sound of it still wafts me back to impossibly distant summer evenings. But after it was over, it left a lot of pain behind it.

And:

And still the people whose lives were ruined by a Post Office computer malfunction – which nobody would admit – cannot get justice. Francis Duff, 80, has had most of his compensation for the gross injustice he suffered clawed back in tax and bankruptcy proceedings.

Is there nobody with a sense of justice in government, who can ensure that these unforgivably persecuted individuals can at least live their last few years in serenity and security? Contrast the unfair treatment of these innocents with the uncontrolled, barely monitored spending by officials and MPs awarded government credit cards.