UK election hustings update: Labour showing cracks around leadership, too

What an eventful week it was, considering that this is a boring general election campaign.

Conservatives’ Boris gap still exists

No Conservative has yet been able to fill the Boris Johnson gap.

I did say in 2022 that they would rue the day they forced him to resign as Prime Minister over a piece of untouched birthday cake in a Tupperware container during coronavirus restrictions. The Conservatives allowed Labour to dance all over them — and him — in high-heeled boots.

On Thursday, May 30, ConservativeHome posted Andrew Gimson’s ‘Vox pub in Hartlepool: Johnson leaves a gap no other politician has yet filled’. Are we surprised?

Boris was still PM when Hartlepool had a May 2021 by-election, which resulted in a Conservative victory for local candidate Jill Mortimer, a farmer.

Andrew Gimson points out (purple emphases mine):

the Conservatives captured the seat from Labour by the astounding margin of 15,529 votes to 8,584, the biggest swing to a governing party since the Second World War.

That’s a Boris bounce.

Unfortunately, since then — post-Boris — Labour have set a record with an historic by-election upset over the Conservatives.

ConHome visited Hartlepool to assess voters’ moods, especially those who had voted for the Conservatives in December 2019’s general election when Boris was PM.

Excerpts follow:

On Tuesday of this week, ConHome went to Hartlepool to assess present opinion in the town, and set up a research station in the Ward Jackson pub, a large, friendly Wetherspoons where draught beer costs £1.99 a pint.

Outside the pub, a statue (pictured above) commemorates Ralph Ward Jackson (1806-1880), “Founder of this town and first MP”, as “a tribute of admiration for the enterprise and perseverance” with which he built the docks and railways on which Hartlepool’s modern prosperity was established.

Inside the pub, a middle-aged woman said when asked about the general election: “I’d rather not talk about it. It’s too depressing.”

But a moment or two later she added: “When it was Boris we changed over to Conservative and now we’re back to Labour …

“I think if Boris was still in I’d vote for Boris, obviously …

“I don’t want Keir Starmer starting to put flat caps on and pretend he’s something he isn’t” …

Labour triumphed in the recent local elections in Hartlepool, defeating the Conservative-Independent coalition which had run the council since 2019, but the older woman appeared to be predicting defeat for Jill Mortimer, the by-election victor of 2021, who is standing again this time.

A man at the next table, a former Labour councillor, said: “I don’t think it’s going to be as easy as all that. He’s not that popular, Keir Starmer …

“We all voted for Brexit [69.5 per cent of Hartlepudlians supported Leave in 2016], but Paul Williams [Labour candidate in the 2019 by-election] was not in favour of it.

“And why in the world did we elect someone like Jeremy Corbyn as our leader? That’s what did the damage to Labour. People could never vote for him.”

The Labour chap preferred Rishi Sunak to Boris, however:

“He’s a personable sort of fellow. But we live in a different world to one of the wealthiest couples in the world.

“He’s certainly better than Boris Johnson. At least you can believe him.”

A retired local newspaper journalist gave his forthright views on the matter:

Paul Screeton, 78, formerly a journalist on The Hartlepool Mail and author of 13 books about folklore and other subjects, said: “Boris came here and was very, very popular.

“This is a staunch Labour seat but Boris I think to do with his boozing and womanising he chimed with the Hartlepool people. I thought he was one of the lads.

“Not that he chimed with my wife, I might add. She thinks he’s disgusting …

“I’ve voted all over the political spectrum but I’ve never voted for the Labour Party. I can’t bring myself to do it. The Labour Party is a party of envy. At the bottom of it it’s envy, envy, envy. People want something for nothing, basically.

“I come from the background if you want rewards, you’ve got to earn them.

“If you’re voting Conservative here you’re not going to have the cars and the wealth. I can only afford a week abroad a year” …

“But I’m afraid I think Hartlepool will definitely become a Labour seat with a very, very big majority” …

A retired ship’s captain said: “There’s a deep underswell of racism which is only verbalised in the company of fellow Hartlepudlians, because there has been an influx of obvious migrants.

“This is a Labour stronghold, but some people will tell the pollsters one thing and then do something else. They clam up if there is a stranger in the vicinity.

“The people here are very polite. Everybody says sorry.

“Boris is very well-liked up here. They occasionally throw a brick at him, but they love the fact he was a character. Characters are very much appreciated up here. This area is full of characters.

“I believe that the advent of Trumpism, and what is also going on here, is about 30 per cent of the general population don’t have a clue, but we’re not allowed to remove them from the electoral register and we have to live with whatever foolish decisions they make.”

A pensioner who worked as a supermarket cleaner, and whose father worked in the shipyards Hartlepool used to have, said: “All these young ones today, they don’t give a shit, most of them are on tablets, they don’t drink.

“A good drinker, they used to fight all the time, but then you used to shake hands and the winner would buy the loser a pint.

“All these young ones carry knives. It’s too Americanised, carrying a knife, carrying a gun. If I had my way I’d fetch hanging back. It might teach some of them.

“The last time I’ve voted was Conservative. Normally I used to be Labour. It could be 50:50 this time, but I’ll probably still vote Conservative” …

So the likelihood is that Hartlepool will revert to its traditional Labour allegiance, but will do so in a provisional spirit. The fondness which many drinkers in the Ward Jackson expressed for Johnson suggests he has left a gap in British politics no one else has yet filled.

The following day, Friday, May 31, Boris empathised with Donald Trump having been found guilty on all 34 charges, which The Telegraph noted, in the former PM’s words, was a ‘liberal hit job’:

The former prime minister, who enjoyed warm relations with the then president while in office, said: “This was no ordinary political assassination. This was a machine-gun mob-style hit-job on Trump.”

But he said the “anti-Trump lawfare is backfiring”, and has “helped to make his victory more likely, not less” in his rematch with Joe Biden.

No doubt, many in Hartlepool would agree with that assessment.

On Monday, June 3, The Telegraph reported that Trump voiced his appreciation:

Donald Trump has publicly thanked Boris Johnson after the former prime minister denounced his conviction as a “mob-style hit job”.

Two sides of the same coin

I found these two graphics in the comments on a Guido Fawkes post.

Spot the difference between Labour …

… and the Conservatives:

Bottom line:

Study, get a good job and work hard — and we will ‘redistribute’ your money to someone who didn’t.

Ain’t that the truth.

There is no difference now between the two main parties.

It is no wonder that, on May 30, The Telegraph‘s Stephen Davies wrote, ‘Good riddance to the worst Parliament in history’:

… Certainly, the Members of this Parliament have faced challenging circumstances. January 2020 saw the onset of the most serious pandemic since 1918-19. This led to two years of normal life being suspended with massive disruption.

Then, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. This was followed by a massive increase in energy costs, which had however been underway before the invasion. There was a spike in inflation which came as a surprise to the hapless Bank of England but had been foreseen and predicted.

This may appear as a series of unpredictable shocks. What they actually reveal is the growth of a systemic crisis of world order and economy, which means we must expect more of the same.

The majority party (the Conservatives lest we forget) have not responded to this in a coherent way. More generally they have turned a decisive, even historic victory into a situation of total catastrophe, where the Party faces not just defeat but annihilation. A landslide defeat that the Party survives is now the best they can hope for. In the course of this Parliament there have been three Prime Ministers all of whom were, in various ways, manifestly unfit for the job. The changes in Ministerial line-up have been so many and so rapid that it is no wonder the Government has lacked any kind of coherence.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party does not inspire any kind of confidence that it will do better. Given the situation they will inherit and the lack of any real public sentiment behind him other than disgust with the Tories they will soon become deeply unpopular. Also, Sir Keir’s record of ruthlessness and mendacity when dealing with internal dissent in his party, while impressive in a way, does not inspire confidence for good government or open debate going forward.

… What we as a country face is a series of deep and intractable problems, some of which our political class has sedulously ignored for decades. Others are difficult to confront, let alone deal with, because they force voters to make difficult choices that they would rather avoid. The political process and the institutions of the state are meant to deal with precisely these kinds of challenge and in the past have surmounted equally challenging situations. The problem now is that, in addition to growing challenges domestic and global, our political and administrative systems are broken. This has two main elements.

The first is a decay in politics itself as an activity, the entire political process. Since the 1970s politics has been steadily consumed by the media, to the point where it has become a media circus rather than serious debate or practical governance. Policies are invented not to address issues but to get attention. Both big parties, but particularly the Conservatives, no longer exist as civil society membership organisations. They are media content generators and channels for funding. This in turn has destroyed the old type of political career …

The second is decay in the quality of governance and administration, which goes back several decades. This makes relying on experts and processes a disaster … The common element is the dysfunctionality of large, complex institutions dominated by mechanical process and elaborate rules rather than judgment. Until this is resolved we will not be able to address the challenges we face.

He concludes by saying that the people must resolve these issues themselves:

What we as citizens must do is come together and cooperate to recreate politics and government in a process of radical reform. This is a challenge but it can be done.

But HOW? We are stymied at every turn.

Another Conservative defector: Logan’s run … to Labour

I have been wondering whether Rishi called an election just to stop Conservative MPs crossing the aisle to Labour.

May was a humiliating month for him.

We had Dr Dan Poulton, then Natalie Elphicke, both of whom spoke relatively regularly in parliamentary debates. Then Telford’s MP Lucy Allan, not standing for re-election, put her support behind the Reform candidate on social media, for which she was suspended.

The latest defector is Mark Logan.

I know of him only because I watch BBC Parliament regularly. That means he was never a big contributor and, if I remember rightly, his last contribution showed him nearly in tears over Palestine, not a Conservative stance.

On May 30, a source suggested that, overall, Logan was upset that he was not offered a peerage.

Let me repeat: one does not become an MP with the goal of entering the House of Lords!

Guido told us:

Former Bolton North East Tory MP Logan tells the BBC his application to join Labour is “going in today“. Nice timing…

A Tory source tells Kevin Schofield: “He has been lobbying No.10 for a peerage, so he didn’t have to bother with voters and has now jumped ship. People will reach their own conclusions as to his motivations.” Indeed…

The Guardian had this:

Although Logan is stepping down, the move is in effect another defection to Labour. Natalie Elphicke and Dan Poulter crossed the floor this year, while Christian Wakeford defected in 2022. The outgoing Tory MP for Telford, Lucy Allan, said this week that she was backing Reform.

Logan, a Brexit supporter who represented one of the most marginal constituencies in the UK after winning with a majority of just 378 votes in 2019, told the BBC that he was applying to join Labour and wouldn’t rule out standing in future.

“When I look back to my teenage years, in 1997, when Labour came to the fore at that time and we obviously heard the song Things Can Only Get Better, I feel that we’re at that point again in British politics and British history,” he said, comparing the present juncture to Tony Blair’s landslide victory.

Dear, oh dear.

ConservativeHome told us:

Mark Logan, the (newly) former Conservative MP for Bolton North East, has announced he will now be backing Labour at the next election. Logan told the BBC that Keir Starmer’s party had been on a “journey” and offered “centrist politics” that could “bring optimism into British life”.

According to Logan, “it’s right that we get some stability back into the UK” alongside “optimism” and “new and fresh ideas”. For Logan, it’s “more about not the push factor of the Conservatives but the pull factor of Keir Starmer, the new cabinet that would come in, the fresh faces, the fresh ideas” …

As The Spectator points out, Logan had previously quit as a ministerial aide over Boris Johnson’s handling of the Chris Pincher scandal, and has disagreed with his party’s line on a ceasefire in Gaza …

In other defection news, Conservative Party members in the Kent constituency of Dover and Deal are scrambling to find a replacement for Natalie Elphicke.

Will the real Robert Largan please stand up?

In a stranger turn of events, Robert Largan (High Peak) cannot make up his mind if he is still Conservative or not.

On Saturday, June 1, The Telegraph reported that he has been using other parties’ logos for his re-election campaign:

A Conservative candidate has posted an election advert on social media which appears to make him look like he is standing for Labour.

Robert Largan, who is seeking re-election as in High Peak, Derbyshire, posted a picture of himself in front of a red background with the words “Labour for Largan”.

He also posted a similar blue advert which says “Reform for Robert” and uses Reform UK’s party colours.

The Tory oak tree silhouette logo is faint in the background, and in small font in the bottom left corner it says that the ad is “on behalf of Robert Largan, of High Peak Conservatives” …

The Tory candidate claimed in the posts on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday, “so many local Labour voters have told me they’re going to vote for me, because they want to keep me as their local MP”.

Before this, I thought he was a sensible man. Apparently, so did his fellow MPs:

Mr Largan is a government whip who was elected to Parliament with a narrow 590 majority in 2019.

You don’t get to be a whip by chance. Few are called and even fewer are chosen.

Is Rishi winning or losing?

On Saturday, June 1, The Guardian reported on the latest Opinium poll:

… the latest Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday gives Labour a 20-point lead – the highest level it has recorded since Truss was briefly running the country.

This is despite Labour having endured a torrid week on the election trail and days of infighting over whether veteran Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand again.

Labour is on 45% – up four points on last weekend, while the Conservatives are down two points on 25%. Reform is up on one on 11%, the Lib Dems down two on 8%, and the Greens down one on 6%.

The poll also showed more people (45%) thought the Tories’ big announcement last weekend – the reintroduction of a form of mandatory national service for 18-year-olds – was a bad idea than thought it was a good one (35%).

Some 28% said their opinion of Sunak had become more negative since the start of the campaign, against 18% who said it had become more positive. By contrast 28% said their view of Starmer had become more positive against 18% who said it was now more negative.

Yet, the day before, The Telegraph‘s Camilla Tominey, who also has her own Sunday current affairs show on GB News, told us, ‘Whisper it, but Rishi Sunak is making an extraordinary comeback’:

The polls may not reflect it yet; in fact they remain positively dire for Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party. But many good things have happened for the Tories this week. Credit where it’s due – that feeling we have had for weeks and months now, that the Conservatives are facing some sort of electoral apocalypse, about to be made as extinct as the dinosaurs, has been replaced by something rather more nuanced …

Sunak’s decision to call a snap general election on July 4 is fast being vindicated as a rare example of sound strategic political thinking from the PM. Not only did it catch Reform off guard, but it has also caught Sir Keir Starmer with his socialist pants down. The Labour blow up over Diana Abbott’s candidacy in Hackney North has dominated the headlines, completely overshadowing Wes Streeting’s NHS proposals and Rachel Reeves’s economic plans. It has also reminded the electorate that Labour is as big a basket case as the Tory party.

Hmm. Time will tell.

Labour’s purge of far-left candidates

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer spent last week purging the Party of some of its more radical MPs and parliamentary candidates.

The most controversial decision, however, was to restore the Party whip to Diane Abbott, the first black MP, whom many consider to be legendary. She had made an anti-Semitic remark many moons ago and had the whip removed.

A dispute arose as to whether Abbott could stand as a Labour MP now rather than as an Independent. Abbott told the press that Labour would not let her stand as one of their candidates. Starmer disagreed and said she could run under the rose rosette. Deputy leader Angela Rayner said publicly that Abbott should be able to stand for Labour.

On Friday, May 31, the dispute was resolved.

Guido told us:

Starmer now says Diane Abbott is ‘free to go forward’ and stand as a Labour candidate. A defeat – Execution stayed…

Guido hears Starmer and Angela Rayner had a “long chat” over dinner last night. Rayner scores a win over Starmer…

Remember: Should Labour win on July 4, Angela Rayner could become Prime Minister temporarily if Starmer were ever unable to fulfil his responsibilities in that regard.

Writing for UnHerd, veteran journalist Michael Crick told us about the latest Labour purge, which does not appear to involve input from Party members, only the Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC):

… Led by campaign chief Morgan McSweeney and candidate supremo Matt Faulding, Keir Starmer’s inner circle have shown themselves to be more ruthless than any leadership team in Labour history …

Only four years ago, when running for Labour leader, Starmer promised party members that he would be different. “The selections for Labour candidates need to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates,” he tweeted in February 2020. “Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.” There were no caveats; his promise couldn’t have been clearer.

More than a year later, when we briefly chatted at a book launch in London, Starmer was still singing the same tune. He once again insisted that Labour would embrace greater transparency when it came to parliamentary selections …

Back then, I could not have predicted how ruthless and clinical those same advisers would be. On Monday and Tuesday, no fewer than seven Labour MPs announced they were standing down at the election. This sudden rush of departures was remarkable, but no coincidence.

In the 16 months between September 2022 and January 2024, for example, just two Labour MPs announced they were stepping aside. And yet, it was obvious to many that significantly more had made the decision to retire, but were deliberately holding back to help the party leadership. For as we saw this week, by delaying their announcement until very close to the election, they would allow the NEC to claim it’s far too late to involve party members in the selection decision. They would, as a result, have to “parachute” someone in.

Within hours of this week’s retirements, sources within Labour HQ told me who their lucky replacements would be. In each seat, the NEC went through the process of interviewing a shortlist of names — but everyone knew who they were going to pick.

… on rare occasions the suspension of local party democracy can be justified. But you should still be open and honest about what you’re doing.

This time around, by contrast, it’s bogus to argue that Labour had no option but to impose candidates from head office on the grounds that there isn’t time for a proper form of selection. The Conservatives, after all, are still involving party members in their last-minute selections, many of which will take place this weekend. Even if the Tories’ final three-name shortlists have been influenced by CCHQ, at least they get some sort of choice.

Moreover, it’s not even as if this week’s NEC parachute operations have yielded a raft of future political geniuses. Indeed, no fewer than five of the leaked names are themselves members of the National Executive …

What’s also interesting is how most of the parachuted candidates owe their sudden success to the NEC and Starmer’s close advisers, rather than Starmer himself. The Labour leader seems to have had little involvement apart from pushing for two Labour figures from his own Camden [London] council …

Nor does this week’s operation offer an encouraging prequel to how a future Starmer government might behave. Having suddenly got the power to impose their favoured candidates, his senior advisers are handing out seats to their factional friends and NEC cronies …

Angela Rayner free to hit hustings

For the past few months, Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner has kept a low profile because of questions over her past living arrangements.

Last week, Greater Manchester Police and HMRC (His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) both said that they will not be investigating circumstances surrounding two former homes of hers.

On May 31, The Guardian reported that the youthful grandmother is now back on the hustings:

Angela Rayner has been described as a huge electoral asset by Labour’s campaign chief, but until this week she has been one the party was unable to fully deploy.

For months, Labour’s deputy leader has faced questions about her historical living arrangements, with the police investigating claims by the Tory party that she may not have paid the right amount of tax.

This week Greater Manchester police cleared her of any criminal wrongdoing, while the local council and HM Revenue and Customs both announced that they were taking no further action. Rayner is, finally, let loose on the campaign trail.

“I’m going to [be] powering up my battlebus and going up and down the country making the case for a Labour government,” she says gleefully. “I love campaigning and getting out to speak to ordinary people and I really feel like this is a time where people are calling out for change.”

Despite her enthusiasm, she admits the last few weeks have been tough. “It was very difficult personally, because I’ve never been in trouble and I’ve always tried to do the right thing,” she said.

The problem is that she was always among the first to accuse Conservative MPs and even their family members — e.g. Rishi’s wife — of wrongdoing. She also called Conservatives ‘scum’ in a parliamentary debate. So, no sympathy for her.

Rayner also confirmed her commitment to socialism:

Yes. Socialism for me is about looking out for each other. It’s about your community. It’s about understanding that you whilst you’re an individual, you’re also part of a society and community.

Resolution Foundation director now a Labour candidate

Labour MPs are fond of quoting Resolution Foundation statistics on poverty and other dire social conditions.

In the past, Guido Fawkes has exposed the fact that some former Resolution Foundation employees now work for the Conservative-created OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility), which, with their bogus forecasts, advises the Chancellor on financial decisions.

On May 31, Guido told us that the Resolution Foundation’s director, Torsten Bell, is now a Labour candidate in Wales:

The current director of the Resolution Foundation, Torsten Bell, has been selected as Labour candidate for Swansea West this afternoon. He was told that Starmer’s team were desperate to have him. Co-conspirators may remember Bell, Labour’s Director of Policy under Ed Miliband, touring the news studios applauding the Chancellor for breaking the Tory manifesto promise not to hike NI contributions. Maybe he can serve as Labour minister for breaking tax pledges in a new government…

Bell’s Resolution Foundation released a landmark report in December called “A New Economic Strategy for Britain“.

Guido went on to list the report’s many recommendations, a few of which follow:

• • Make everyone pay inheritance tax by scrapping the nil-rate band.
  • Raise Capital Gains Tax on shares to 37% and real estate to 53%.
  • Charge Capital Gains Tax on death and when moving out of UK.
  • Hike basic rate of Dividend tax from 8.75% to 20%.
  • Charge national insurance on rental income.
  • Cut the £270,000 cap on tax-free pensions to £40,000.

Oh, my.

Guido says:

Richard Hughes, the chairman of the OBR’s Budget Responsibility Committee, and Laura Gardiner, its Deputy Chief of Staff, are ex-Resolution. While [possible future Chancellor, Labour’s Rachel] Reeves pledges to hand the keys to the Treasury to the OBR, Labour MP Bell will have the ear of its top staff…

Ugh.

How much more would Labour tax us?

On May 30, the libertarian-leaning veteran commentator Brian Monteith wrote for The Telegraph about Labour’s tax plans, ‘Rachel Reeves’s seemingly empty waffle has been decoded — and it’s terrifying’:

… what will Keir Starmer’s Labour actually do if fortunate enough to gain power? …

Fortunately a new and reliable source of illumination that can reveal Labour’s real intentions is at hand. The international banking and finance consultant, Bob Lyddon, has spent a great deal of time poring over the Mais Lecture given by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in March and sought to decipher what her seemingly empty waffle and cryptic euphemisms actually meant … 

Lyddon, who gained a first in modern languages at Cambridge and is fluent in Norwegian, Dutch, German and French has now added “Reevespeak” to his lexicon and is letting us in on its secrets …

In short, Lyddon wrote a 56-page report called ‘Stripping away the jargon’, summarised below:

To deliver this cocktail of excessive state spending and centralised regulatory direction Reeves also promises to establish new unaccountable institutions – yet more quangos and agencies for Labour’s nomenklatura, whose loyalty and secrecy is bought with eye-watering taxpayer-funded salaries and pensions.

Although taxes will have to go up – but no fresh details were given that could be decoded – much of the bill will be presented not to us, but to the generations of the future, our grandchildren especially, who cannot be asked if they accept the burden. It is wrapped up and presented as “securenomics” but such is the economic devastation it risks, there is nothing secure about it, and where it is economic it is only in evading telling the truth.

So there we have it. While Labour will continue to avoid admitting its real intentions, its direction of travel is clear and the means to achieve it are already understood. Lucid journalists have less than six weeks to ask the right questions and then, no doubt, further question the ambiguous answers until we get to the truth.

Labour speaks, deliberates and issues orders through political cyphers. Thank goodness Bob Lyddon cracked Labour’s enigma code.

Labour ‘will oversee the final dissolution of Britain’

On May 29, The Telegraph‘s Allister Heath warned, ‘Starmer’s Labour will oversee the final dissolution of Britain as a nation state’:

Labour’s real plans for office remain shrouded in mystery, but we know one central fact: Sir Keir Starmer’s party is a fanatical believer in “international law”. It will be predisposed to accept any new treaty that limits Britain’s ability to govern itself, and will cheer any ruling from a global court striking down the actions of a national government. It will reflexively take sides with the “international community”, Davos man, the human rights lawyers, post-national technocrats, Foreign Office mandarins and NGO activists.

None of this should come as a surprise. Labour in 2024 is the party of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), of the UN and its agencies, however corrupt or wrong-headed, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the World Health Organisation, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. It considers criticism of such bodies, even when their decisions are absurd, to be taboo. 

Their international nature supposedly imbues them with legitimacy and superior authority. National governments are deemed untrustworthy, at all times susceptible to veering into demagogic racism as a result of electoral pressure, but global institutions are treated as obviously well-meaning, even when they have been captured by rogue states or funded by autocracies.

This is a staggeringly naive approach, yet the modern Left believes that legitimacy emanates, top-down, from international organisations, rather than bottom-up from democratically accountable nation states. Such an approach might sound brilliantly rational to a 17-year old follower of Descartes, but in practice it is the most idiotic, ahistorical doctrine imaginable.

International law doesn’t actually exist. It started off as a noble lie, a convenient fiction to protect minorities and discourage states from invading their neighbours. It has since been hijacked to impose global rules and regulations, or to gang up on tiny countries. It has taken the world 79 years to put Jews on trial for fighting Nazis, using institutions specifically set up to prevent the rise of a new Nazism.

The perversity is unbearable, but Labour backs the anti-Israel hate spewed by international “courts”. Many in the party believe that Israel is breaking “international law” and that we shouldn’t sell arms to it – both entirely nonsensical claims – but have little to say about real repression around the world.

International law has been exposed as a sick joke, weaponised by malign actors, used to victim-blame and ignored by the superpowers. America exercises arbitrary power via its control of the dollar and its military. Russia is an evil dictatorship. China doesn’t care about human rights.

It is only the Western Left that actually believes and follows “international law”: it is merely convenient for Iran and other genocidal tyrannies to pretend to do so. They relish the prospect of “international courts” – in reality, clownish, parti-pris forums that can’t compare to genuinely independent British justice – moving to make warfare by Western democracies effectively illegal, on the insane grounds that almost any civilian death is a war crime, thus disarming us.

Currently, this is the way Parliament has traditionally functioned:

In Britain, domestic law is different to international law (a “dualist” approach). Parliamentary legislation is required to implement international obligations we sign up to. In some “monist” countries, international law is deemed a direct, superior part of domestic law and takes precedence over national rules. Germany, for good, historic reasons, is an example of this approach.

Uniquely, Britain’s Parliament also yields total power: it can write or repeal any law of any kind, and overturn judges on any issue, unlike in countries governed by the separation of powers and a written, hard-to-amend constitution.

However, this arrangement is anathema to left-wing thinking:

Left-wing lawyers have long considered these two defining features of Britain’s polity to be an archaic abomination, a key driver of our cultural conservatism. This is why they backed devolution and the Human Rights Act, as well as the quasi-constitutional Equality Act.

Many would love to make us more like Germany, and dream of a day when lawyers can constrain MPs and parliamentary sovereignty is abolished. Labour won’t go that far, but its obsession with “international law” risks inflicting further catastrophic damage on the foundations of the British state.

French journalist warns against the Left

On that note, The Telegraph‘s French journalist Anne-Elisabeth Moutet said she made a ‘terrible mistake’ by voting for Francois Mitterand in 1981 and says that France is still paying the price in ‘France stands as a chilling warning for the UK today’:

Like many undecided British voters today (and quite a few exasperated Tory ones), I recall what it felt like after two decades of increasingly uninspiring and stale Right-wingers in power: I wanted them out. I was voting for the first time in my life, the year was 1981, and I cast my ballot for François Mitterrand, a hitherto lacklustre Socialist who’d promised Cabinet seats to the then powerful French Communist party. 

… Together with most of my friends and professors, we celebrated the victory of the Forces of Progress well into the night of May 10.

I was wrong. Barely 18 months after, a series of disastrous policies – three devaluations of the franc; exchange controls; the nationalisation of all banks, insurance companies, large industrial concerns, from steelworks to chemicals to engines to electronics; the lowering of pension age from 65 to 60; the effective handing over of the management of the Ministry of Education to highly politicised unions (who ever since have decided on most education policies); the delusion, still entertained today in Brussels, that technocrats are best placed to decide what cutting-edge industries will produce – the economy minister, one Jacques Delors, was warned that the IMF was considering paying him a visit.

France then embarked on a major U-turn, in which every austerity remedy was frenziedly applied to stem the debt haemorrhage. It soon became obvious that reversing popular policies would not be easy …

… Moral superiority was assumed. Public debate became polarised, decades before the era of Trump.

Jacques Chirac, who twice served as PM after the Gaullists had won the parliamentary elections, eventually replaced Mitterrand as president in 1995, but France has been paying the price of those 10 years of socialism ever since. Even more than the financial cost of our ever-ballooning debt (currently at 111 per cent of GDP), it lies in the illusion that it is more just to citizens to spend public money rather than try to build a self-reliant society, and that partisanship in a bloated state apparatus was better than the small, selfless cadre of neutral civil servants who rebuilt France in the thirty years after the Second World War. 

The intractability of today’s French political debate is directly inherited from those years, and I don’t wish it on Britain: better the current lumbering lot than the bright-eyed ideologues who Know Better Than You.

D:Ream say no to Labour

The band D:Ream, creators of Tony Blair’s 1997 theme tune, Things Can Only Get Better, have forbidden Labour from using their songs in their election campaigns.

The last time the iconic song was heard nationwide was when a heckler blasted it from a boombox while Rishi Sunak announced the July 4 election.

On Saturday, June 1, The Guardian reported:

The pop group that sing Things Can Only Get Better – which became an anthem for Labour at the 1997 general election victory – will deny any request from Keir Starmer to use the track at this year’s election.

D:Ream’s founding members Peter Cunnah and Alan Mackenzie said they were dismayed to hear their song play through a loudspeaker as the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, called a 4 July general election on a wet afternoon in Downing Street.

The pair told LBC their first thought was: “Not again” …

The band members expressed regret at letting Tony Blair use the track for his general election victory celebrations in 1997, saying they were accused of “having blood on their hands” after the UK got involved with the war in Iraq.

“I remember clearly, there was this wonderful sea change, and the nation had this feeling that there was a need for change,” Cunnah said.

“Everyone was really behind it and giving Labour the benefit of that doubt. But after the war, I became politically homeless” …

When asked what they would say if they were approached by Starmer, Mackenzie said: “There’s no way – our songs and politics, never again.”

Scotland’s SNP must return £450m to Brussels

In an amazing turn of events, considering that Scotland’s SNP are continually banging on about losing money from Brussels because of Brexit, their government must now return $450m to the EU as it was unused.

How could that be, especially when Scotland is crying out for money — all day, every day?

This does not bode well for the country’s new First Minister John Swinney.

Veteran journalist Iain Macwhirter told us in The Sunday Times on June 2, in ‘Why Swinney’s bid to make Brexit an election issue isn’t working’:

… the last thing Swinney needs, as he relaunches his campaign, is the revelation that the Scottish government is to hand back £450 million of EU money. The cash is in so-called “structural” funding which the Scottish government has somehow failed to spend. This comes at the same time as the SNP leader condemns Westminster for “austerity, Brexit and a cost of living crisis”.

One can imagine the surprise of faceless Brussels bureaucrats, not exactly renowned for their own budgetary probity, at this uninvited rebate. “Those crazy Scots: is this a joke or are they trying to bribe us into letting them into the single market?” Nope. It looks like plain old budgetary incompetence.

As revealed by The Sunday Times, the unspent £450 million was earmarked for things like rural economic regeneration and poverty reduction. And it isn’t small change. The Scottish government is handing back more than five times the sum raised by Yousaf’s tax raid last year. The new advanced rate of income tax on those earning more than £75,000 is expected to yield less than £80 million. So much for the SNP leader’s promise to “eradicate child poverty”.

Other regions of the United Kingdom are underspent too but not on this scale. Scotland is handing back 28 per cent of its structure fund allocation. Wales will hand back 9 per cent and Northern Ireland just 2 per cent by the funding deadline.

The Scottish government disputes the figures, of course, and says the true underspend won’t be known until 2025. But since the scheme ends this month they’re going to have to get their skates on if they want to spend nearly half a billion pounds in 30 days. Structural funding is for specific projects that have to be approved by the Brussels machine. It’s not just a bag of cash that can be tossed into the kitty.

So it looks very much as if Swinney’s bid to make Brexit a general election issue is not going to work — at least in the short term …

You couldn’t make it up.

Outgoing SNP MP wonders what she’ll do next

Mhairi (her preferred pronunciation is ‘Murray’, rather than ‘Vahry’) Black was the youngest MP in the House of Commons since 1832.

She was first elected at the age of 20 in 2015, defeating the well-respected and high-profile incumbent, Labour’s Douglas Alexander.

She ended up being quite critical of the Commons and announced some time ago that she was standing down at the next general election. That time has now come.

The Guardian interviewed her and published an article on Monday, June 3:

… for Mhairi Black it was the end of “a sort of purgatory”, as she prepared to step down as MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, a position she has held for almost a decade. She will turn 30 in September. “I’m about to be exactly where I was 10 years ago, asking: ‘What am I going to do with my life?’”

The Scottish National party’s deputy leader at Westminster announced last summer that she intended to leave the Commons, a place she has variously described as “defunct”, “depressing”, “sexist”, “poisonous” and “one of the most unhealthy workplaces that you could ever be in”.

But as the finish line approaches, she adds an essential clarification: “I genuinely don’t regret any of it. That’s not to say I’ve enjoyed every single second, but I would still rather have done it than not.”

When she was sworn in, aged 20, she was the youngest MP to be appointed since the Reform Act of 1832. In many ways, Black was the distillation of all that the Westminster establishment feared most about the SNP’s landslide in the 2015 general election, when it won all but three of Scotland’s 59 constituencies: she was young, fierce and a lesbian with an unmodulated accent who had unseated a Labour veteran – the former secretary of state for Scotland, Douglas Alexander. The photograph of their awkward election night handshake became a visual shorthand for Labour’s bloody demise north of the border.

Her extraordinary maiden speech was a withering attack on then chancellor George Osborne, in which she declared herself to be the only 20-year-old in the country whose housing bills he was prepared to help with, just after he’d abolished housing benefit for the under 21s. It got 10m views online in its first week. She was being talked about as a future leader of her party. She still gets effusive emails from people who have just discovered the speech today, a contrast to the torrent of online abuse she receives on a regular basis. Black took the dubious honour of first member to use the C-word in the Commons when she read out excerpts – … – in a 2018 debate on hate crime.

Despite her outer toughness, she had to take a break from attending the Commons:

After the 2017 general election, Black was signed off work for several months, initially for a physical complaint but “then my mental health started to deteriorate as well. It was a domino effect.”

She is circumspect about the support she received from her own party. Individual colleagues were helpful, she says, but on a formal basis “there could have been more support … I do feel lessons could be learned.”

The response from her political opponents were even worse. She describes some Labour MPs “going to town on it, saying that I just deliberately wasn’t turning up … It was right dirty politics.” She shakes her head. “Any perceived weakness is weaponised immediately.

“I spoke to the Labour whips about it, I spoke to the Labour MPs. I said: ‘You know what the script is here, you’re supposed to be the party of looking after workers’ health and you’re having a pop at me.’”

Looking ahead to the immediate future:

She will be knocking on doors for the SNP for the election, and after that she will let the pieces fall where they may. “Ask me again in a year when I can’t pay bills,” she laughs. “Until then I’m ready to close that chapter and look to new adventures.”

I will be interested to see if Labour win back her seat.

And finally, the Reform Party: Nigel Farage’s BBC comeback

On Thursday, May 30, Nigel Farage appeared on BBC’s Question Time for the first time since 2019.

Piers Morgan was also on the same panel. The two had a row over their respective television shows.

Farage also hit back at an audience member’s recollection of statistics, which did not please host Fiona Bruce. No surprise there.

———————————————————————————————————-

So that was our week in politics. No change there, then.