As I Recall

Three years ago, Parliament was recalled at Easter for no better reason than to pay sycophantic and, in terms of its sheer length, unprecedented tribute to Margaret Thatcher.

But again I say that these situations only arise because Parliament is in recess too much in the first place.

Undeniably Exceptional

A comment puts it splendidly: "Donald Trump wants to nuke Mexico if it doesn't pay for his wall. Actually nuke it."

Quite. Not much sanctity of life there. 

Trump now calls himself, "pro-life, with exceptions." 119,530,753 exceptions, it would seem.

I have been active in pro-life for more than 20 years, and it has never been in favour of prosecuting the women.

Whereas Trump was a Clinton donor and a Planned Parenthood supporter until the very recent past, and he has no idea what he is talking about.

Nor is he even sincere about it.

Invasions

White supremacists in Queensland, which was run for decades by an avowed and active ally of apartheid South Africa, now demand that their university be a safe space from the very existence of Aboriginal history.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump demonstrates his complete and utter unfamiliarity with the pro-life movement, which has always advocated action against (overwhelmingly male) abortionists rather than against women, and then in a much wider context with which it is clear that Trump has made absolutely no effort to acquaint himself.

A Very Fluid Time For International Relations

Tara McCormack writes:

Barack Obama went to Cuba last week. This was the first visit by a US president to Cuba in nearly a century.

For the first half of the 20th century, the US kept Cuba under overt control.

Then, in 1953, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara led a guerrilla movement that overthrew the US-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Establishing a socialist regime in 1959, Cuba was taken into the communist fold and remained reliant on Soviet Russia for the duration of the Cold War.

During the 1960s, Cuba became the epicentre of the Cold War – from Eisenhower’s infamous Bay of Pigs invasion, and his attempt to overthrow the revolution, to the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world held its breath.

Cuba remained under a US blockade and trade embargo after the end of the Cold War. So the recent improvement of relations between the two countries is of great historic importance.

Following two years of secret talks, it was announced last year that diplomatic relations would be re-established.

Two meetings at regional conferences followed, and, last week, US president Barack Obama visited the Cuban president, Raul Castro.

The trip was full of spectacularly awkward moments, from the peculiar handshake between Castro and Obama to Castro’s criticisms of US healthcare. 

Nonetheless, both were clearly pleased to be taking part in the meeting. 

So what has the establishment of diplomatic relations changed? 

The financial and trade embargo on Cuba remains – this can only be lifted by Congress, which is currently controlled by a Republican Party hostile to the idea. 

GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, whose father left Cuba before the revolution, denounces the move outright. 

Cuba remains a tightly controlled authoritarian system marked by human-rights abuses and state oppression. 

However, it has been undergoing slow internal change, with small-scale private businesses opening, and limited (though highly censored) internet becoming available.

While the embargo remains, Obama’s moves are largely symbolic.

However, the recent visit, and the determination of the Obama administration to begin normalising relations with Cuba, is to be lauded – particularly as it has been done in the face of much hostility from the US political establishment.

The US embargo of Cuba is a historical anachronism – a fit of pique to punish a colony that was determined to assert its own sovereignty, and an ongoing injustice to the people of Cuba.

So, for this visit, Obama is to be congratulated.

As the US gears up to elect its next president, it is worth reflecting on Obama’s foreign policy legacy. 

At times, he has made some pragmatic and reasoned decisions – such as the Iran nuclear deal and the partnership with Russia in Syria. 

But his presidency has also been marked by some of the worst excesses of post-Cold War liberal interventionism: the funding of jihadists in Syria; the Libyan intervention; the drone war in Iraq, Syria and Pakistan; and the intervention in Ukraine. 

Obama’s varied record shows that we live in a very fluid time for international relations, meaning that it is often difficult to predict how states will act. 

There is much talk about the ‘new Cold War’ between Russia and the US, yet what is lacking is the overall political imperative of communism vs capitalism. 

Thus, in one region – Syria – the US and Russia co-operate, while, in others, they come into conflict.

What Should Be Publicly Available Data

Charles Arthur writes:

Like an embarrassed child trying to hide a broken lamp behind a curtain, Sajid Javid last Thursday, hours before the Easter break, sneaked out the news that the government wants to privatise the Land Registry. 

Perhaps he hoped nobody would notice. In vain. 

The growing number of people who rely on open government data to run businesses and understand what is happening to the country weren’t fooled at all. 

Selling the Land Registry is foolish dogma that risks creating a private monopoly over what should be publicly available data. 

It would mean squandering long-term income for short-term gain; putting vital information beyond reach of the Freedom of Information Act; and creating a future where we can’t find out how our country is owned without stumping up fees of unknown size.

The idea was floated to, and blocked by, Vince Cable in the previous administration. It’s still a bad idea. 

Just ask John Manthorpe, the former chief land registrar, who on the We own it website says: “The Registry’s independence from commercial or specialised interests is essential to the trust and reliance placed on its activities”. 

The Tories’ reason for the proposed sell-off is in the second sentence of the foreword of the consultation: “Reducing the national debt.” 

It then breezily suggests that the Land Registry doesn’t have to be publicly owned “as long as the right protections are put in place, including keeping the statutory register under government ownership”. 

Instead, it could “continue to evolve into a high performing, innovative business, delivering for customers and the wider market in a 21st century, digital economy”. 

It’s the usual buzzword bingo. 

Yet the Land Registry isn’t a burden on the taxpayer; it generates a profit, because everyone who buys or sells property is obliged to update it, and pay a fee. 

More importantly, it creates a record. 

“Enforcing land ownership is not just some random thing the state does, it’s the core thing the state does,” Francis Irving, a programmer and activist for open data who co-founded the prize-winning data startup ScraperWiki, told me. 

“In a digital age especially, registry of land and boundaries is a key part of property ownership enforcement.” 

Making land data available to everyone for free was a key change in South Africa after apartheid: it was recognised as important to make every citizen equal. 

So why do the Tories want to put price and secrecy barriers in the way of people who want to know about the country’s ownership? 

Just over 10 years ago, Michael Cross and I started the Free Our Data campaign in the Guardian’s Technology section, arguing that the fees being charged for access to non-personal government-held data – such as Ordnance Survey map data, Environment Agency flood, river and reservoir data, company filings, even tide times – were blocking the creation of a new economic sector: digital companies which could create value by putting different datasets together. 

ScraperWiki is the sort of company that relies on such access.

The proposal wasn’t initially greeted with open arms.

But following Gordon Brown’s arrival in 2009, the ball began rolling: Tom Watson, then Cabinet Office minister, was an enthusiastic proponent of free data inside the government, and we then discovered that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, held the same view, which he put to Brown at a dinner.

Brown agreed.

It turns out that running a campaign gets easier when the inventor of the world wide web and the prime minister support the idea behind it.

The big breakthrough was in April 2010, when Ordnance Survey released a huge amount of data for free commercial reuse – an idea that would have been laughable four years earlier, when small web developers were fending off lawsuits over map screenshots.

Other departments followed.

Once the Environment Agency, which had resisted calls to make its data freely available because it was an “executive agency”, at arm’s length from the government, caved in, I thought the fight would be over.

It took the 2014 floods to start getting river level data for free.

However the campaign’s work won’t really be done until the government stops having stupid ideas about privatising the data which should be publicly held.

We’ve already suffered from Michael Fallon’s decision to sell off the income-generating Postcode Address File (PAF) database with Royal Mail – which means the government had to set aside £5m (but will need more) in the budget to create a “national address register”, with exactly the same information.

PAF is now an expensive private monopoly which many businesses have no alternative but to rely on.

By contrast, you can download the “price paid” data from the Land Registry going back to January 1995 for free, and use it for business.

That’s open data – albeit with a caveat: the address data is owned by Royal Mail, so there’s a fee payable if you try to attach addresses to the price data.

Another missed chance by the Tories, through Fallon’s selloff.

Sell the Registry off, and prices could rise; as a monopoly with inside knowledge it could crowd rivals out of the information market and refuse to license data.

The worst part? The Tories know this already. In 2014 they tried the same consultation.

The first question was whether people thought a “more delivery-focused organisation at arm’s length from government” would do a better job for customers. Answer: 91% said no.

So who wanted privatisation? As the campaigner Owen Boswarva has pointed out, not small businesses, legal representatives or councils.

It was big companies such as the outsourcing firm Capita, IBM, and private equity group Silver Lake Europe.

Are we really sure they have our best interests at heart? It’s certainly not clear the Tories do.

Iron Cross

We certainly are.

Recall Parliament. And then consider why it is on holiday so much, that there need to be such frequent calls for it to be recalled.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton ought to organise a joint bid to buy Tata's plants in Britain.

After all, it is highly likely that, this time next year one of them is going to have control of Trident. Why not of what was once our own steel industry, too?

In fact, if they want Trident, then they can pay for it. Between their respective networks of corporations and foundations, they probably could.

And if they couldn't, then they couldn't have it.

The EU would never let it happen, but the sight of a Conservative Government's so much as discussing the renationalisation of steel is simply magnificent.

That an Indian company owns our remaining domestic steelworks, while most of the steel used here is supplied by the very Chinese State, throws into sharp relief the consequences of privatisation for great tracts of our national life, several of them made out of steel.

Once this debate starts, then, with any luck, it should not stop until it was well and truly over.

French, Dutch and German state railway companies may overcharge us in order to keep their fares low at home.

China may be building our nuclear power stations for the French State. The "Royal" in "Royal Mail" may now refer to the Emir of Kuwait.

But never mind. At least we still have the earth-shatteringly important Falkland Islands.

If America wanted them for a base, then we would just kick their population onto the next boat to wherever, just as we did to that of Diego Garcia. Certainly under this Government, as under the last one.

But these days, it goes beyond even that.

If the Chinese, or the Saudis, or more or less anyone else at all, simply wanted to buy the Falkland Islands, then this Government would let that potential buyer have them, at least if enough money would up in the right accounts.

Look what and where else has been allowed to have been bought up by more or less anyone at all. For a start, London.

Steel Ourselves

Of course there is something that could be done to Save Our Steel. But not within the EU's state aid rules.

This was all predicted 40 years ago. It was being repeated less than a year ago by the people who have apparently since taken control of the Labour Party.

Vote Leave. Then Labour can get on with being Labour.

Goodbye, Galloway?

You wish, Nick Cohen. You wish. How long have you been saying this? And he was not invited to the debates that you ridicule him for not having attended. But, of course, you already knew that.

George Galloway’s mainstream social democratic programme deserves Londoners’ first preference votes. With Labour likely to do very well for the London Assembly’s constituencies, list votes need to be cast for Respect.

London Mayoral candidates’ nominators must include 10 registered electors in the City. Since Galloway has managed that, we may greatly look forward to next year’s elections to the Court of Common Council.

With the SNP expected to win most of the constituency seats at Holyrood, all opponents of any one or more of George Osborne’s failed austerity programme, of neoconservative wars, of Trident, and of the Saudi regime, ought to give their list votes to Labour.

The Labour lead in Wales is welcome. And we may hope to see a strong Labour showing in the English local elections. Especially now that the Liberal Democrats have collapsed.

"Brooklynite"

It means "Jew".

The anti-Labour papers called Ed Miliband all sorts of things that meant "Jew".

Hillary Clinton is doing the same to Bernie Sanders.

None of this has much, if anything, to do with anyone's view of the State of Israel.

Tenancy Agreement

I am not a landlord, although I wouldn't mind getting into it in, perhaps, 10 or so years' time.

What is so horribly wrong with buy-to-let? Many a stalwart Labour Councillor has a tenant or two, and sometimes quite a few.

There just needs to be proper regulation, properly enforced. Like anything else.

This Time

This time last year, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would have been campaigning for a vote to Leave.

If Tony Benn were still alive, then he would be vigorous in that cause, and it would not matter in the least that he would be 91 next month.

And if Tony Benn were still alive, then Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would also be active campaigners to Leave, no matter what offices they held.

Dependencies No More?

When the United Kingdom exercises its right of self-determination by declaring its independence of the British Overseas Territories, including the several tax havens in the Caribbean, then what will become of the tax havens in the English Channel and in the Irish Sea?

The Crown Dependencies ought each to be required to hold a referendum with two options on the ballot paper.

One option would be incorporation into the United Kingdom, with the existing legislatures remaining in place as devolved bodies, with the Royal Titles Act amended to include "Duke of Normandy" or "Lord of Man", and so on.

The other option would be independence. There would be no Third Way. One would hope for the first option to be preferred.

That would constitute and effect the retention of the High Court of Tynwald, of the States of Jersey, of the States of Guernsey, and subject to that last of the States of Alderney and of the Chief Pleas of Sark.

But all fully subject to the Parliament of the United Kingdom in which those bodies' electors were in turn represented.

Thus would be set the pattern for the assertion of that sovereignty over the Corporation of the City of London.

The successful reform of the Chief Pleas of Sark, which until 2008 was Europe's last feudal state, ought to make very easy indeed the successful reform of Europe's last Medieval republican oligarchy.

By, especially, the abolition of the requirement of admission to membership of a public school drinking club in order to seek election to one's local authority, and by the abolition of votes for businesses, indeed of more votes for businesses than for people.

At least 30 of the 7,375 inhabitants of the City of London have managed to put Sadiq Khan, Siân Berry and George Galloway onto the ballot paper for Mayor of London.

Not many wards that size could nominate all three of a Labour, a Green and a Respect candidate for the Council. It is evident, then, that the City is a considerably more than averagely left-wing place.

We may therefore look forward to an end to the situation in which 99 out of 100 members of the Court of Common Council are the Tory Independents whom one tends to associate with very rural areas, but who have ruled the City since time immemorial.

All that this will take will be an end to the literal and metaphorical Freemasonry.

Islands in The Stream of History

The bloody Falkland Islands again. What a nuisance they are. And for what?

Read any of their overentitled inhabitants on Twitter, and see if you can suppress the urge to wish good luck to anyone in Argentina who was daft enough to want them.

Then Google the Chagos Islands. How utterly different the rules are for white people. As Margaret Thatcher pretty much said, in fact. "They are of British stock," and all that.

The prospect of Falkland Islanders sleeping on the benches in Gatwick Airport for weeks after they had been dumped there, as did in fact happen to some of the Chagossians, is almost too delicious for words.

The "kith and kin" populations that Britain has at some point just upped and left behind, almost (if almost) always after having very recently fought wars in order to hold onto them, are collectively larger than the No vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

Those populations are much larger than the Unionist vote in Northern Ireland, and enormously larger than the population of the Falkland Islands, which pretends for British television that it is all-white when it no longer is.

It is common for a colonial possession to be far larger and more populous than its colonial possessor. Such is now the relationship between the United Kingdom and the Falkland Islands. They are the colonial power, and we are the colony.

The question is how long we are prepared to put up with that, before we exercise our right of self-determination and assert our independence from somewhere that has never been part of the United Kingdom, any more than The Gambia has ever been part of the United Kingdom.

Great swaths of the earth fought for Britain in the two World Wars, and a huge proportion of the global population is anything up to nine generations removed from these Islands.

What the Falkland Islanders currently have is not self-determination. It is other-determination. The rest of us have to expend our blood, potentially, and our treasure, very much more than potentially, merely because they say so.

Thus, we have the most expensive empire in history.

The cost of defending one of the British Overseas Territories, the only one that needs it and the tenth most populous of the 11 that have permanent populations, is greater than would be the cost of declaring them all independent, including the restored Chagossians, each with a permanent annual grant of one billion pounds. 

Why not do that? There would be no need to ask them. Like teenagers, they would get to be consulted when they started putting money in the pot.

St Helena, where I was born and from which the whole of my mother's family originates, would have had its airport, and a great deal more besides, a very long time ago under that arrangement.

Although, having spent most of my life in County Durham, I quite understand that well over £200 million, for the benefit of quite so few people, sat ill alongside the communities that had gone to the wall for the want of far less pubic investment.

Further south, if a billion a year did not include enough to provide for the defence of 4,700 square miles, then the 2,932 inhabitants of those square miles would not deserve to be defended.

This would also free us of the national shames that are the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.

The first two have currencies pegged to the US dollar, which itself circulates freely in Bermuda. The US dollar is the only legal tender in the second two.

St Helena is neither a tax haven, nor does it cost anything to defend. Yet nor have its people enjoyed full British citizenship continuously. Although they do hold it again now; Blair did at least reverse that aspect of Thatcherism.

We left India a mere two years, to the day, after VJ Day. That had nothing to do with whether or not the people there wanted us.

It was because we could no longer afford both an empire abroad, and the progressive measures for which our people were crying out at home.

We left people behind in India, and almost everywhere else that we left for the same reason. That never bothered us for one second.

There is no question of forcing places or their inhabitants into Spain or Argentina. But there is absolutely no obligation on Britain to keep them merely because they wish to be kept. That obligation simply does not exist.

If Gibraltar did not want to be part of Spain, or the Falkland Islands did not want to be part of Argentina, then it would be Gibraltar's responsibility to keep itself out of Spain, or the Falkland Islands' responsibility to keep themselves out of Argentina.

No one in the United Kingdom had a vote in the referendum in Gibraltar in 2002, or in the referendum in the Falkland Islands in 2013.

Yet that latter, at least, was deemed to keep the taxpayers of the United Kingdom under an enormous obligation, up to and including the loss of life if necessary. On the votes of 1,513 people.

But even the 1,517 people who voted are not the only people with rights, although they alone enjoy their rights without the concomitant responsibilities.

Instead, declare all of the British Overseas Territories independent, including the restored Chagossians, each with a permanent annual grant of one billion pounds.

Or, rather, declare the United Kingdom independent of them.

Exercise our right to self-determination.

Eendraght Maeckt Maght

Hillary Clinton: "Mind your tone."

Bernie Sanders: "Tone your mind."

And Sanders is going to "campaign like a Brooklynite"? Oh, I do hope so.

I Demand To Be Prevented

If this Government does not regard me as a dangerous extremist, then I shall sue.

As and when necessary, the details of a Fighting Fund will appear on this site.

Watch this space.

Our Dog In This Fight

The one that is successfully fighting the one that has attacked us.

We are not doing so.

Our disgraceful Prime Minister held a vote in order to split the Official Opposition, and a third of its MPs shamefully played along.

But nothing has come of that. Nothing was ever intended to come of it.

Meanwhile, Palmyra has been liberated.

By the people whom that same Prime Minister had previously wanted to bomb.

Backed by the power against which we are told that we have to retain Trident.

And backed by an organisation that Jeremy Corbyn is castigated for ever having met.

Even though David Cameron was that organisation's honoured guest later than Corbyn became the Leader of the Labour Party.

Not in a London committee room. In the Beqaa Valley that Hezbollah controls.

The rest of the time, though, Cameron is the obedient servant of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is the global centre of Islamist terrorism.

The Islamist terrorism from which Palmyra has been liberated.

Let us say loudly and proudly that Palymra has been liberated by our side in this war.

In Hock To Hillary

The Guardian's Pulitzer Prize for Edward Snowden made it a household name in liberal America.

It now vies with the New York Times for the second spot among the most read news and current affairs websites in the English language, and even that spot depends on counting the Sidebar of Shame as any part of journalism.

Hillary Clinton's socially liberal economic and international hawkishness does broadly reflect the present position of The Guardian, which would not run the Snowden story now.

But its sycophancy towards her is about something more, and yet less, than that. The Guardian Media Group is in serious financial trouble, since there is very little money in online content.

From Wall Street to the Gulf, and regardless of the outcome of this or any other election, staying on the right side of the Clintons offers access to pots, and pots, and pots of the lovely stuff.

Why Wansbeck?

A trade union is perfectly free to do whatever it likes with its money, unless it breaks the law.

A trade union with only 10 members, all of them living in the old mining corner of Northumberland, must be nothing if not accountable internally.

But quite apart from either of those points, why are the Murdoch media going after Ian Lavery, anyway?

Murdoch cannot possibly expect any other party to win the Wansbeck seat in the event of a by-election.

Rather, he wants a very right-wing Labour MP there.

What are always his achingly posh London hacks additionally want an MP who is less frightfully working-class, and who has not lived his entire life in the North East, which they have never visited, and which they think is near Manchester.

¡No pasarán!

Silent On Palmyra

Robert Fisk writes:

The biggest military defeat that Isis has suffered in more than two years. The recapture of Palmyra, the Roman city of the Empress Zenobia.

And we are silent. Yes, folks, the bad guys won, didn't they? Otherwise, we would all be celebrating, wouldn't we?

Less than a week after the lost souls of the 'Islamic Caliphate' destroyed the lives of more than 30 innocent human beings in Brussels, we should - should we not? - have been clapping our hands at the most crushing military reverse in the history of Isis. But no.

As the black masters of execution fled Palmyra this weekend, Messers Obama and Cameron were as silent as the grave to which Isis have dispatched so many of their victims. 

He who lowered our national flag in honour of the head-chopping king of Arabia (I'm talking about Dave, of course) said not a word.

As my long-dead colleague on the Sunday Express, John Gordon, used to say, makes you sit up a bit, doesn't it?

Here are the Syrian army, backed, of course, by Vladimir Putin's Russkies, chucking the clowns of Isis out of town, and we daren't utter a single word to say well done.

When Palmyra fell last year, we predicted the fall of Bashar al-Assad. We ignored, were silent on, the Syrian army's big question: why, if the Americans hated Isis so much, didn't they bomb the suicide convoys that broke through the Syrian army's front lines?

Why didn't they attack Isis? “If the Americans wanted to destroy Isis, why didn't they bomb them when they saw them?” a Syrian army general asked me, after his soldiers' defeat.

His son had been killed defending Homs. His men had been captured and head-chopped in the Roman ruins. 

The Syrian official in charge of the Roman ruins (of which we cared so much, remember?) was himself beheaded. Isis even put his spectacles back on top of his decapitated head, for fun.

And we were silent then. Putin noticed this, and talked about it, and accurately predicted the retaking of Palmyra.

His aircraft attacked Isis - as US planes did not - in advance of the Syrian army's conquest.

I could not help but smile when I read that the US command claimed two air strikes against Isis around Palmyra in the days leading up to its recapture by the regime.

That really did tell you all you needed to know about the American "war on terror". They wanted to destroy Isis, but not that much. 

So in the end, it was the Syrian army and its Hizballah chums from Lebanon and the Iranians and the Russians who drove the Isis murderers out of Palmyra, and who may - heavens preserve us from such a success - even storm the Isis Syrian 'capital' of Raqqa. 

I have written many times that the Syrian army will decide the future of Syria.

If they grab back Raqqa - and Deir el-Zour, where the Nusrah front destroyed the church of the Armenian genocide and threw the bones of the long-dead 1915 Christian victims into the streets - I promise you we will be silent again.

Aren't we supposed to be destroying Isis? Forget it. That's Putin's job. And Assad's. Pray for peace, folks. That's what it's about, isn't it? And Geneva. Where is that, exactly?

Humat ad-Diyar

Palmyra has been liberated. 

It has been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army. While that Army is itself predominantly Sunni, it is loyal to President Assad.

Therefore, it is strongly supported by the Christian and other minorities. Perhaps they could do with it in Pakistan?

Nowhere to be seen, however, were David Cameron's "70,000 moderates". Funny, that.

Christus Surrexit, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Surrexit in vere, alleluia, alleluia!

On Side

Neil Clark welcomes the punishment of Radovan Karadzic, and calls for that of several other people.

From Turkey to Belgium, from Iraq to Pakistan, is anyone, anywhere really standing up to the Islamic State?

Yes, and those who are doing so have liberated Palmyra.

The Withdrawal Method

I believe Katie Hopkins when she says that one third of 14 and 15-year-olds are sexually active. That was the case in her day and mine, so I have no doubt that it is the case today, too.

But it is not an argument for lowering the age of consent, any more than the existence of drink driving is an argument for the abolition of the drink driving laws.

Of course Adam Johnson's victim will have had more or less the body of a woman. That is precisely why we have an age of consent, to give people's minds the time of catch up with their bodies.

Hopkins, an avowed Brexiteer, also argues, as do many people who post comments below the line on articles relating to this issue, that there are lower ages of consent in several other EU member-states.

In fact, the situation is more complicated than that. There is probably nowhere that Johnson would have been off the hook, and certainly not the France and Germany that are usually cited.

But that is beside the point.

If sex between adults and 15-year-olds is indeed, under certain circumstances, less seriously criminal in some other EU jurisdictions, and if that is being held up as a reason to make it so here, then it is impossible to imagine a stronger argument for withdrawal from the EU.

Ceded In Advance

Both in 2005 and 2015, incumbent Prime Ministers went into, and won, General Elections on the understanding that they would be standing down at some point during the subsequent Parliaments.

There is no comparison with the overthrow of Margaret Thatcher against her will, or with the sudden resignation of Harold Wilson because, as we now know, his health had started to fail.

Twice in very recent years, then, we have seen the choice of Prime Minister ceded in advance from the electorate, or even the Queen, to the internal structures of the governing party.

Both main parties have now done this. The practice calls for further examination and evaluation.

Boris Johnson Is Unfit For Public Office

Any party that could seriously consider being led by Boris Johnson is itself profoundly unserious.

We are famous the world over for our humour. That is because we are fundamentally a serious country. There are joke countries, and they are not remotely funny to live in.

But Britain is not a joke country, and it does not want a joke Prime Minister.

Johnson is unfit for public office.

He has admitted that he always knew the case for the Iraq War was a load of rubbish, but that he voted for it anyway.

No doubt this admission is true of many then-MPs, some of whom are still there. They, too, were and are unfit for office.

The Conservative rebellion was proportionately as well as absolutely far smaller than the Labour one, although it included the now-retired MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Sir John Randall, who had resigned as a Whip in order to vote against the war, and whose shoes Johnson is therefore unworthy to fill.

But the Conservative Party was the Official Opposition, making its failure to oppose an even greater dereliction of duty.

The same was true of the Labour Party, as such, over Libya, although of course one of its MPs who voted against that intervention is now its Leader.

Has this country ever gone to war without the support of the Official Opposition? I cannot think of a case.

The Conservatives could have kept us out of Iraq, as Labour could have kept us out of Libya.

That said, Labour MPs, as individuals, who voted for war while knowing that it was all lies, as most of the general public had no difficulty in recognising, were and are no better than any other MPs who did so.

It is one thing to have been hoodwinked, although MPs ought not to be.

But this was, and is, something else.

How Low He Can Go

Proving that even a stopped clock, and all that, Nick Cohen writes:

It is easy to see how Boris Johnson could be prime minister by the autumn. “Leave” wins, and David Cameron resigns.

We already know that a majority of the 140,000 or so Conservative party members, who will decide the government of a country of 64 million, back him.

Give them the chance, and they will put him in Downing Street.

If countries get the politicians they deserve, the possibility of a Johnson premiership suggests that the British are now a nation of charlatans.

No one who has studied him thinks he is telling the truth when he says he believes that it is in our best interests to leave the European Union.

The reason why he must deceive reveals Johnson’s low character as clearly as his casual mendacity. As he may be ruling over you soon, you had better understand how low he can go.

Throughout his life, Johnson has succeeded in British institutions that value the glib. The older he has got, the more institutions have dumbed down to accommodate him.

People who describe the Eton that Johnson attended as Britain’s “top” school, don’t quite understand it. 

Because it insists that Etonians must persuade their fellow pupils to elect them to school societies, rather than allow them to advance by merit, it is “top” at teaching the art of ingratiation above all else.

As Jonathan Aitken cheerfully admitted, Eton produced so many politicians because: “You have to learn to oil. And at Eton you do learn.” 

Johnson certainly did. He went on to Oxford, where in 1986 he became president of the Oxford Union.

In a taste of what was to come, after losing as a Tory, he won on his second attempt by pretending he opposed the policies he had previously endorsed. #

He was as big a success as Brussels correspondent of the Telegraph, where he exhibited the vices of the worst columnists by confirming rather than challenging his readers’ prejudices.

In that time and in that place, pandering to Telegraph readers meant producing alleged stories about insane EU bureaucrats, none of which colleagues on rival papers could confirm. 

He was a big hit on the BBC’s Have I got News for You, which again valued the fast and flippant above the considered and true.

His two terms as mayor of London may seem a break from his past. But elected representatives have too few powers to hold mayors to account. 

In London, Johnson distinguished himself by his reluctance to answer questions from members of the London assembly, and confining where possible his interviews to his claque of courtier journalists.

Only two institutions have seen through him: the Times, which sacked Johnson for making up quotes; and parliament, where he vanished without trace because he had no arguments to prosecute and no cause to champion beyond the cause of his own self-advancement.

There lay his problem.

To become prime minister he had to persuade enough Tory MPs to overcome their indifference and nominate him as one of the two candidates for leader. 

The EU gave him the chance to do it. 

Cameron once told my colleagues that he learned much about politics from The Godfather. Almost at its end Michael Corleone’s consigliere Tom Hagan is shocked that the loyal capo “Sal” Tessio has betrayed them. 

Corleone almost admires him. “It’s the smart move,” he says. When his treason fails and Corleone’s gunmen come for him, Tessio tells Hagan: “Tell Mike it was only business, I always liked him.” 

Business is all Johnson’s attack on Cameron and support for Brexit is. 

It’s the smart move that will persuade previously unimpressed rightwing MPs to nominate him whether Cameron goes this summer or in 2019.

Any man with a functioning sense of shame would have worried about his long record of supporting the EU. 

As late as February, Johnson was saying that leaving would embroil “the government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country”. 

And so it would. Elsewhere he acknowledged that we would not get free trade without accepting EU regulation and immigration. 

Any man of honour would have been mortified by the pathetic figure Johnson cut at the Treasury select committee last week. 

Bombastic and evasive, he gave a shifty smirk every time MPs caught him out. “A good liar needs a good memory,” we used to say. 

Johnson’s appearance at the committee showed he didn’t even have the conman’s basic ability to memorise a cover story. 

Originally he had said that he wanted two referendums – one on whether to leave on principle and then another on the terms. He dropped that asinine idea after a few days. 

Then he said Britain should have the same trade relationship with the EU as Canada does. 

Last week, after thinking about it for five minutes – maybe longer – he said that he didn’t want “to imitate the Canadian deal” either. 

Andrew Tyrie, the committee chair, accused him of “exaggerating to the point of misrepresentation”. 

It was not the case, as Johnson maintained, that the EU had banned the British from recycling teabags or children under eight from blowing up balloons. 

Nor had it regulated on the size of coffins. Nor were EU regulations costing Britain £600m a day. 

I fear his evisceration of Johnson won’t matter.

Men like him thrive because they know that hardly anyone cares about the detail enough to go to the Treasury select committee website and watch its members expose him.

Johnson understands that in the 21st century a pat joke and a cheap stunt can take you a long way, maybe all the way to Downing Street. 

Lies take time to unpick, and by the time your accusers have finished unpicking them, the bored audience has clicked on to another screen. 

I am not one for blaming the media, but I cannot think of a politician who has been treated with such woozy indulgence by my supposedly hardbitten colleagues. 

They have bought his persona as a lovable card, and ignored the emptiness beneath. Britain may pay the price.

Johnson’s career has seen him embrace the worst of every profession he has entered: the worst of journalistic mendacity, the worst of celebrity entitlement, and the worst of political ambition without political purpose.

It isn’t over yet.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our next prime minister.

Ian Lavery: The Real Story

He writes:

It is highly unusual for me to respond to the scurrilous allegations which have been levelled at me in the past few weeks in this fashion, but I felt the need to set the record straight. 

 In recent weeks I have been subjected to what is clearly a politically motivated attack designed to cast doubt on my character and undermine my position.

All of this is centred around my previous employment with the National Union of Mineworkers, which ended prior to my election to Parliament.

For the record, I am immensely proud to have spent almost twenty years as a full time official of the NUM at all levels, including as National President from 2002-2010.

I am also incredibly proud to have worked on behalf of people in the industry and the communities in bringing in tens of millions of pounds of compensation for Common Law and Industrial Disease claims.

The area that I now represent in Parliament was heavily dependent on coalmining and many of the communities in the constituency would not be there were it not for the discovery of coal.

My own history in mining gained me an insight into the power that the industry brought to the communities - but also the negative impact many years of weak safety and health in the mines had on peoples’ lives.

At a time when the Conservative Government was picking apart the very fabric of my communities, the National Union of Mineworkers provided much needed opposition, as well as support to the men and women whose lives had been touched by coal.

While the number of working miners declined, the number of those in need exponentially increased.

And while the official AR21 forms that have formed the basis of these unwarranted attacks in the press showed a small number of working miners and NUM members, they fail completely to tell the true story.

The communities built around coal had their main source of employment removed, yet tens of thousands of former miners remained, many scarred by their former occupation and in desperate need of support.

That support came in the form of the NUM (Northumberland Area).

All contributions made to the union were entirely voluntary and were given by those who wanted to ensure that future claimants were afforded the same level of representation they themselves had received.

That £1.6 million was received is both testament to the generosity and comradeship of those in the community, but also to the work of the union which brought tens of thousands of successful claims.

The National Union of Mineworkers refused to abandon those who it had represented for decades simply because their source of employment had been lost.

We fought for compensation for both current and past mineworkers for the serious damage that working underground had done to their health - not to forget the pivotal role the NUM played in bringing equal pay claims for women canteen workers in the industry.

Our approach, which covered Pneumoconiosis, Vibration White Finger, CB&E and Occupational Deafness among others, saw the NUM (Northumberland Area) held up as an exemplar across the coalfields. 

We represented tens of thousands of former miners and succeeded in bringing in tens of millions of pounds in compensation and reduced earnings allowances. 

That has been a lifeline for these former miners and their families.

The recent attacks in the media have failed to represent the work that I am proud as a full time official to have played a part in. 

The biggest criticism would appear to be the fact the NUM employed its officials on excellent wages, terms and conditions.

This is something the union fought for all of its existence and something that we can rightly be proud of. 

My wages, terms and conditions were set according to union agreements and I was privileged to be well paid for a job I loved. 

Another target has been a redundancy payment I received that was part of my contract of employment.

Following allegations that this should have been declared, I met with the Parliamentary Commissioner at the earliest opportunity to provide clarity on the matter and will continue to cooperate fully.

Sections of the press and sadly some within my own party have sought for political ends to use innuendo and half-truths to attack me and my proud record as a trade unionist.

They have also made false allegations about a £250,000 mortgage between the union and myself, which I totally refute and am taking legal counsel on.

I have worked all of my adult life defending and representing miners and working people.

The coordinated attack which began by suggesting that I was using the compensation of sick miners to enrich myself have struck me like a bullet through the heart. 

These shameful accusations are being made by some of the very outlets that, throughout the period the industry was being destroyed, formed the press arm of an attack on the communities in which we live, and should be viewed with the contempt they deserve.

Seek Consent, Katie

Assuming that Adam Johnson is released after three years, then the terms of his licence ought to include having to live with his great defender, Katie Hopkins.

Only a footballer would now be prosecuted for the "digital penetration" of a 15-year-old girl, just as only a Catholic priest would now be prosecuted for anything up to and including the full buggery of a 15-year-old boy.

A woman who bore a 15-year-old boy's very child would be unlikely to be arrested.

There is probably no reference in any guidelines to the "digital penetration" of a 15-year-old girl by a woman, the attitude to lesbian child abuse being, I expect, the attitude of Queen Victoria to lesbianism in general.

The solution to this is not to lower the age of consent to 14, as Hopkins at least implicitly advocates. It is to prosecute more.

Hopkins did stand as an Independent in the South West at the 2009 European Elections.

Alas, there is not the time for her to become a registered elector in County Durham or Darlington, in order to seek election as the Durham Police and Crime Commissioner.

But I challenge her to contest every by-election in this Parliament, and then also the 2020 General Election.

I challenge her to do so as a campaigner to lower the age of consent to 14, and to annul all convictions that would have been impossible if that change to the law had been in place.

What is she afraid of?

Moreover, those who might take the same view while purporting to be left-wing deserve to be confronted with the reality of their champion, and thus of themselves.

Land Larceny

Sneaked out at close of business on Maundy Thursday was the deranged scheme to privatise the Land Registry.

In 2013, the most recent year for which the full figures are available, the Land Registry returned £100 million to the Exchequer.

In any case, if I were this governing party and perhaps especially this Government, then I should avoid any mention of the question of land ownership like all the Plagues of Egypt.

It would arise inescapably in the event of withdrawal from the EU, though.

As soon as any one of this country's many controlling foreign and anti-democratic influences were banished or otherwise overthrown, then the dominoes would start to fall with some rapidity.

The sense of "the Norman yoke", which was successfully invoked in order to bring about universal suffrage in the nineteenth century, has never gone away.

Nor has that of being "trespassers in the land of our birth", which was successfully invoked in order to pass the People's Budget, and to limit the powers of the House of Lords, as recently as 1911.

Trump Cards

Like the Electoral College itself, neither the Republican Party's nor the Democratic Party's nomination process was ever designed to reflect the popular will.

It may. But if so, then that is purely by coincidence.

What if Donald Trump were not nominated on the first round of voting at the Republican Convention, and someone who had never entered a primary were then drafted instead?

Or what if Trump were nominated, but that alternative's intervention landed the election itself in the House of Representatives?

In neither of those cases would the system have malfunctioned. In either of those cases, the system would have functioned, exactly as it was supposed to function.

Trump's reaction, and that of his supporters, would be the test of whether he and they were anything more than very big babies.

Have We Forgotten All This?

The Times has taken down its paywall for this, by an old stalwart of Thatcher’s staff who is now in a civil partnership with a Cameron speechwriter. The Stop Boris campaign is well and truly on.

“Charm can make us forget the dishonesty and recklessness that would be ruthlessly exposed if he became leader,” writes Matthew Parris: 

Parody is now extinct. Boris Johnson has killed the distinction between reality and satire.

Remember the Tory who as a wannabe MP called Labour’s repeal of Section 28 “appalling”, who joked about “tank-topped bum-boys”, who sneakily rowed back from homophobia by asking “what’s not to like?” about gays who leave the field of available women clear for straight men? 

He is now urging gay men to vote Leave because, he says, some Eastern European countries have legislation that represses them. “It was us,” he burbles on a new Out & Proud video, “the British people, that created [an] environment of happiness and contentment for LGBT people.” 

It may well have been us. It ruddy well wasn’t him. But now, even into gay saunas creeps the smell of his damp tweed.

Look, this is a joke but this is not a joke. Somebody has to call a halt to the gathering pretence that if only you’re sufficiently comical in politics you can laugh everything off. 

Somebody has to remind us that it’s not enough for those who seek to govern us simply to be: they have to do. 

Incompetence is not funny. Policy vacuum is not funny. Administrative sloth is not funny. Breaking promises is not funny. A careless disregard for the truth is not funny.

Advising old mates planning to beat somebody up is not funny. Abortions and gagging orders are not funny. Creeping ambition in a jester’s cap is not funny.

Vacuity posing as merriment, cynicism posing as savviness, a wink and smile covering for betrayal . . . these things are not funny.

So I present you with a mystery. How did we get here, with Boris Johnson? Steadily, almost imperceptibly, an absurd idea has crept upon us. 

Had it been ventured nine years ago when the Tories desperately sought a candidate for the London mayoralty, it would have met a hollow laugh. 

Since then nothing that’s happened adds to its plausibility. Much has occurred to rob it of any plausibility it ever had. 

Yet still the idea has grown: shrewdly, assiduously, flamboyantly puffed by its only conceivable beneficiary. Where else in politics can such self-validating, self-inflating nonsense be found?

It isn’t — believe me, it really isn’t — that Britain could ever want Boris Johnson as prime minister. Travel north of Watford and you’ll abandon that thought.

It is that the Conservative party could have the effrontery even to ask us to.

I feel uncomfortable writing this: writing about a fellow columnist, my former Spectator editor, an essentially liberal-minded fellow Tory, a wonderful entertainer, and a man who has never been anything but friendly towards me.

Scores of media colleagues would say something similar of Boris, would feel the same discomfort, the same sneaking affection, the same restraining instinct to keep quiet . . . which perhaps explains the silence.

I feel uncomfortable too about touching upon sexual impropriety, of which I’ve certainly had my own share, and which (if sexual indiscretion alone disqualified a person from political office) would disqualify some of the best.

And I hesitate to condemn a man for political ambition. But there’s a pattern to Boris’s life, and it isn’t the lust for office, or for applause, or for susceptible women, that mark out this pattern in red warning ink.

It’s the casual dishonesty, the cruelty, the betrayal; and, beneath the betrayal, the emptiness of real ambition: the ambition to do anything useful with office once it is attained.

I will not name two of the women he impregnated, one of whom had an abortion and a miscarriage (she had believed he would marry her); the other bearing his child; and the Court of Appeal judge, refusing a “gagging order” in 2013 to conceal her existence, remarking that the public had a right to know about what he called Johnson’s “reckless” behaviour.

Nor is there space to elaborate on his lies about the first case to Michael Howard, then his party leader, for which Howard sacked him.

Nor on his sacking many years earlier from this newspaper for making up quotes. Nor the broken promise to his proprietors not to run for parliament while editing The Spectator.

Have we forgotten all this? 

In parliament Boris has never shone. He was lacklustre as a junior spokesman (the highest Commons post he reached).

His eight years as mayor are characterised by success as a celebrity figurehead and almost no mayoral achievements at all.

But if you want to see for yourself a blustering, bantering hole in the air, watch online his encounter on Wednesday this week with Andrew Tyrie, MP, chairman of the Treasury select committee.

Watch him refusing to admit that his Telegraph claims, that the EU has banned the recycling of teabags and the inflation of balloons by children, were simply false.

Watch a portrait-in-miniature of Johnson the politician: under-prepared, jolly, sly, dishonest and unapologetic but (and this is the worrying part) horrifyingly vulnerable.

If Leave win the coming referendum, as I begin to think they may, a leadership bid by Boris will be imminent. If Remain win, the bid will be delayed but still formidable.

Though I am an admirer of George Osborne, another likely bidder, I accept that he is in serious trouble from which he should not be confident of emerging.

Theresa May has been underrated but she struggles, like Mr Osborne, with the W-thing: warmth. 

David Cameron’s consummate recent performances only sharpen one’s worry about the succession. The Tory party is running out of future prime ministers. 

So Conservatives stand, as it were, looking across apparently open country towards Mount Boris.

He beckons, and they do not see the great canyon between them and the prize: an abyss into which any electoral adventure would tumble. 

The abyss is Mr Johnson’s public and private record.

We don’t seem to see it, yet it stares at us from yellowing newspaper print, from an insuppressible internet, from the public record, from judicial statements, from colleagues’ judgments, from everything we know or ought to know but have been persuaded, such is his charm, to brush aside and forget.

It is all there, waiting. When the media turn nasty, as it will, his powers of laughing everything off will falter. 

If Mr Johnson had the sense of nemesis I suspect he has, he should stop now.

And if we Conservatives have the instinct for survival that I fear we lack, then before the NoGoBoJo banner tightens around our party’s neck we on the centre-right should end our affair with this dangerous charmer.

Nowt So Queer

Charlie Hunnam was 19 when he appeared in Queer as Folk, but his character was very expressly 15.

Aidan Gillen was 31, and it was never suggested that his character was in anything other than the same age range.

The whole thing centred on their extremely explicit and wildly enthusiastic sex life, which was depicted very graphically indeed.

All the way back in 1999.

Queer as Folk was, and has remained, lavishly acclaimed. Its stars have gone on to considerable success in the United States.

Its creator has become one of the biggest players in British television. Even I cannot deny being an admirer of some of his more recent work.

The positive portrayal of sex between men and teenage boys has been a staple of British television drama ever since.

But imagine, if you will, a drama series that centred on the very graphic depiction indeed of the extremely explicit and wildly enthusiastic sex life between a 15-year-old girl and man in very late youth or very early middle age.

For example, a 28-year-old footballer.

Veritate, Scientia, Labore?

I know for a fact that Nicky Morgan spoke at Loughborough Grammar School, in her constituency, and congratulated it on having remained a state grammar school.

It is in fact a private school.

I long for the day when my friend Pat Glass MP is the Secretary of State for Education. All the best politicians started out on Lanchester Parish Council.

Cruz To It This Time

The Pulitzer Prize was denied to the National Enquirer on a technicality for John Edwards.

How about another try, for Ted Cruz?

Burma Rail Way

So, Aung San Suu Kyi turns out not to be very nice at all. Who knew?

Well, regular readers of this site, for a start.

And people who paid attention to my old mate from university, Jonah Fisher, who has reported on that part of the world for a good many years.

I love the BBC really. Sometimes, everyone should pay a lot more attention to it.

If It Ain't Broke

I cannot see the point of a fixed date for Easter.

It is supposed to be an interruption.

Who Fears To Speak?

This weekend is not the real centenary at all.

The Easter Rising of 1916 began on 24th April (Easter Monday), since Easter, this year about as early as it can possibly be, was that year about as late as it could possibly have been. 

Watch out for the people who really will be marking 100 years since the Easter Rising, rather than 99 years and 11 months.

Do Nothing More Than Obey The Law

Diane Abbott writes:

The Committee on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) reconvened for the first time in almost two years on Wednesday in response to the chorus of international condemnation against Britain for supplying Saudi Arabia with arms that are being used to target civilians, an international humanitarian crime.

CAEC heard evidence from Saferworld, Amnesty, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Oxfam, who have published documentary evidence on individual cases of the Royal Saudi Air Force bombing Yemini  hospitals, ports, warehouses, factories, schools, markets and homes.

Their message was clear, unanimous and withering: the UK is breaking its own laws and fuelling a humanitarian catastrophe by selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

British law is also clear: it is illegal to sell arms to a state that is at a “clear risk” of committing international humanitarian crimes.

But over the past year alone, Britain has sold around £6bn worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, whose campaign in Yemen is targeting civilians – 191 such attacks have collectively been reported by the UN, HRW and Amnesty.

Saudi Arabia’s intervention has precipitated the world’s worst humanitarian and development crisis: 82% of Yemen’s population of 24 million people need aid, 60% need food and 10% have fled their homes.

Last week Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported that it had received scores of dead and wounded from a Saudi strike on a busy market.

MSF has seen three of its facilities targeted in as many months. Weddings have been hit. So too have homes for the blind.

A water bottling factory was struck with cruise missiles, killing dozens of workers, whose bodies melted into the machinery.

The list goes on.

In his evidence to the CAEC (itself made up of the committees from the departments of international development, business, defence and foreign affairs) David Mepham, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, implied the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, had lied in his defence of Britain’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia when he said last month that Britain has found “no evidence of breaches of international humanitarian law”.

Mepham said he had personally handed him HRW’s documentary evidence, complete with GPS coordinates of Saudi air strikes on schools, hospitals and markets.

He added that the government “has had that evidence for months, and therefore it is extraordinary the line can come back that they do not have the evidence, when that evidence has been shared with them for a considerable period of time.”

Another witness, Amnesty International’s arms expert Oliver Sprague, questioned the honesty or the competence of the government, which when questioned over allegations of Saudi international humanitarian crimes in Yemen said: “The use of UK supplied weaponry in the conflict in Yemen is an operational matter for the Royal Saudi Air Force.”

“That’s fundamentally incorrect,” Sprague said. “The entire purpose of our export control regime is to link responsibility of the exporter to the eventual use of their weapons … If they say this is not a matter for us, it is impossible to authorise that weapon lawfully.”

The only refutation of the testimony from the rights groups was from CAEC member Daniel Kawczynski, who dismissed their field research because he knew that no violations of international humanitarian law had occurred – the head of the Royal Saudi Air Force had told him so.

On the fundamental issue being examined by the CAEC of Britain’s complicity in Saudi war crimes, this is an open-and-shut case.

The government knows what it is doing but it dresses it up in the language of “supporting the legitimate government in Yemen”, when Yemen has not had a proper election in 10 years.

It also flatly rejects the contention that billions of pounds of illegal arms sales to Saudi Arabia play a role in inflaming the human disaster in Yemen.

The government views the humanitarian and human rights disaster as a secondary consideration to the money private British arms companies make off the war.

That the government affords Department for International Development (DFID) no role in the decision-making process on to which countries the UK sells arms is telling.

To fund the reconstruction of the civilian infrastructure in Yemen, largely destroyed by the Saudis with our weapons, the United Nations has asked international donors such as DFID for £1.8bn, which approximates to the profits the UK arms industry has made off Saudi’s intervention in Yemen.

We must escape the cycle of selling arms to dubious regimes to sow destruction and then using the taxes on those arms sales to finance an aid budget to clean up the mess.

To stop this cycle the government needs to do nothing more than obey the law.