My Parliamentary Candidacy Has Been Resumed

As of today, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham has been resumed. Not that it ever really stopped. It now incorporates a challenge to either or both of my accusers to stand against me. I have already had the moral victory over them, since they have failed in their attempt to force me to commit suicide. In this age of Keir Starmer, David Evans and Assaf Kaplan, then one of them could have the Labour nomination for the asking.

Although unless you are Holy Weeking the old-fashioned way, or even if you are, then raise a glass tonight to the deceased credibility of my oldest and bitterest enemy, who once thought that he was going to be Prime Minister, but who now stands exposed as a delicate flower on the fainting couch, his preciousness matched only by his petulance. It is impossible to see how anyone will ever take him seriously again. I have been ahead of that game by 20 years, since I never, ever have taken him seriously.

Not that either Precious or my other accuser is my reason for returning to the electoral fray. The margin of victory at North West Durham was 1,144. With three years’ notice, then I could take more votes than that. More than the margin of victory between the Conservatives and Labour, or vice versa. Of course I could. The Brexit Party no longer exists, and Watts Stelling is very unlikely to give it a fourth go, in his seventies. The de facto Conservative majority is therefore about five thousand. It might still be worth a punt, though.

A punt to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. To build on Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under the direction of a more democratic State, and to develop a fully independent and a peaceable British foreign policy.

To exercise the leading role in the pursuit of economic equality of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class, and the leading role in the pursuit of international peace of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth, insisting that the working class in Great Britain was indivisible. (The Northern Independence Party is an intentional joke. A whippet as its emblem? Really?)

To celebrate the fact that Britain was ethnically diverse down to every ward, that Britain was home to people from every inhabited territory, that Britain had a large and growing population of mixed ethnic heritage, and that Britain was therefore the world centre of the liberation struggle of the Global South, accepting no definition of anti-Semitism beyond, “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” To use that celebration against the central role of the City of London, and of its network of tax havens under British sovereignty, in the oppression of the Global South.

To insist on an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

And to reverse deindustrialisation at home, while bringing an end to the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars abroad, as two of the many policy implications of the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, implications that also included action on men’s health and on fathers’ rights. (There is no “rape culture” in schools that have barely been open in a year. Teenagers have bad sex, and they often regret it.)

This list is not exhaustive.

As to today, it turns out that there is no defence to a charge of harassment. If someone is prepared to testify that she perceives herself to have been harassed, then the magistrate is obliged to convict. How very carceral and statist feminism has become, demanding endless new criminal offences of which it was impossible to be acquitted and which carried draconian sentences. The liberation movement that exists to have men locked up on the mere say-so of women. Or, in this case, of a woman and of an old woman. But the law as written does not specify sex, and two can play that game.

My guilty pleas today are the law, because acquittal of the charges on the sheet was by definition impossible. But they are nothing more than that. My guilt is actively disbelieved by the people on whose respect depends the ability of one my accusers to do her job, but that job was how she knew about the existence of a criminal offence of which mere accusation was conviction.

Although just how common are acquittals these days? Someone needs to look into that. Proponents of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill are among those who need to consider that the only function of the courts in this country is for the State to convict and sentence the people whom the State had charged. Your chance of being found not guilty is effectively nil, and there are charges acquittal of which is impossible because the law has been written that way.

Add to that this morning’s revelation, at least to me, that a suspended sentence could be activated by conviction, even in the form of a guilty plea, of an offence that had occurred before that sentence had been imposed, or even before the trial that had occasioned that sentence. Specifically, it can be so activated by a guilty plea to a charge of which acquittal was impossible. As of today, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham has been resumed.

Back In The Game

When I turn up at Peterlee Magistrates’ Court tomorrow morning, then the moral victory will be mine, since my accusers will have failed in their attempt to force me to commit suicide. Moreover, if my trial went ahead, then, regardless of the outcome, my parliamentary candidacy at North West Durham would be resumed there and then, incorporating a challenge to either or both of my accusers to stand against me. In this age of Keir Starmer, David Evans and Assaf Kaplan, then one of them could have the Labour nomination for the asking.

Not that my accusers are my reason to consider returning to the electoral fray. The margin of victory at North West Durham was 1,144. With three years’ notice, then I could take more votes than that. More than the margin of victory between the Conservatives and Labour, or vice versa. Of course I could. The Brexit Party no longer exists, and Watts Stelling is very unlikely to give it a fourth go, in his seventies. The de facto Conservative majority is therefore about five thousand. It might still be worth a punt, though.

A punt to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. To build on Brexit as a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under the direction of a more democratic State, and to develop a fully independent and a peaceable British foreign policy.

To exercise the leading role in the pursuit of economic equality of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class, and the leading role in the pursuit of international peace of those who suffered most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth, insisting that the working class in Great Britain was indivisible. 

To celebrate the fact that Britain was ethnically diverse down to every ward, that Britain was home to people from every inhabited territory, that Britain had a large and growing population of mixed ethnic heritage, and that Britain was therefore the world centre of the liberation struggle of the Global South, accepting no definition of anti-Semitism beyond, “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” To use that celebration against the central role of the City of London, and of its network of tax havens under British sovereignty, in the oppression of the Global South.

To insist on an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

And to reverse deindustrialisation at home, while bringing an end to the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars abroad, as two of the many policy implications of the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex, implications that also included action on men’s health and on fathers’ rights. 

This list is not exhaustive.

As to tomorrow, the use of my existing convictions as character evidence against me is a circular argument, since the allegations made against me by one of my accusers were used as character evidence against me at that trial. After my having been convicted on the basis of those allegations, it is now proposed to try those allegations on the basis of that conviction. Round, and round, and round it goes. Her further allegation against me was made only after I had pointed out that logical fallacy. It was nothing but an attempt at back-covering, and I was never charged in relation to it, seriously damaging her credibility.

At my previous trial, she withdrew under cross-examination her central allegation against me, something for which I have never been arrested, and which has never even been mentioned to me by anyone else, before or since. Yet that shocking and deeply distressing allegation was what provoked an obvious mental health crisis on my part, as professional analysis of the material has now confirmed. Again, then, she has little or no credibility.

Nothing to link me to any anonymous letter relating to her has ever been produced, and again my previous conviction cannot be used to suggest a pattern of such behaviour, since that conviction was obtained on the basis of the allegation that I had sent that letter. In any case, that would itself be a specific criminal offence, and again I have never so much as been arrested for it. 

It is in fact she who is Scottish, whereas I have never lived in Scotland, nor have I been there in some years. She would have been far better placed to have had it sent than I would have been, and that in the runup to a trial at which it was to be presented as evidence of similar behaviour. What has been found to link me to that letter? My fingerprints? My DNA? My handwriting? There is absolutely nothing. It is irrelevant that the stamp was bought in Durham, since there is a Post Office here in Lanchester, and of course that is the one that I use. 

My second accuser has set his allegation in the context of numerous other lurid allegations against me. But none of those is on the charge sheet. Since several of them are of very serious criminal activity, all of which I entirely deny, then I submit that they should be disregarded, since they would have to be tried at Crown Court, which they never have been. Indeed, I have never been arrested for any of those, either.

This action is an abuse of process by a longstanding political opponent who has spent over a decade aspiring to the Labour nomination for the parliamentary seat of North West Durham, which I contested as an Independent in 2019. That nomination is now available. Nothing would better curry favour with the people who ran the Labour Party in the North East in general, and in County Durham in particular, than to land me with another criminal conviction. They truly hate me, and so does he.

At the root of the specific blog post in this case, which was deleted after less than 12 hours (mostly overnight) and which certainly never appeared on any “local news site” or whatever he suggests, is a recent leaked report into the staff of the Labour Party, which revealed that he, who was the party's London Regional Director at the time, employed the infamous Angry Black Woman trope against Diane Abbott. He has been racially abusing me for nearly 20 years, and now his true character stands exposed. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to put that on record in open court. The impending Forde Report into racism in the Labour Party is universally expected to name him, which goes to the heart of his character and credibility.

Furthermore, he is now Head of Media Relations UK for HSBC, bankers to the Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. If he wanted to talk about character, then I would be more than happy to call people who would testify to the character of the man who made his living laundering the reputation of the bank that laundered money from such sources. In fact, I would be more than happy to do so even if he were not prepared to talk about my character. I would be delighted to talk about his. For example, there was the time when his brother-in-law tried to murder me. He was running the office of a Cabinet Minister at the time, so I was too frightened to report it to the Police, as he had known that I would be.

Head of Media Relations UK for the biggest bank in the world, former London Regional Director of the Labour Party, former Head of Press and Media for the Labour Party, former Chief of Staff to the Government Chief Whip: the idea that he could be harassed by little old me is even more laughable than the suggestion that I could harass a former Police Officer who was now a Safeguarding Officer. They both deserve to be laughed out. And each of their accounts has more holes in it than Swiss cheese.

The Lanchester Manifesto

1. We reaffirm the Lanchester Declaration. The currency-issuing power of the State is such that the entire benefits system should be replaced with a Universal Basic Income no lower than anyone already received in benefits, undergirding the Jobs Guarantee, and paid through the Treasury, thereby making possible the abolition of the Department for Work and Pensions. It is time to implement Theresa May’s original Prime Ministerial agenda of workers’ and consumers’ representation in corporate governance, shareholders’ control over executive pay, restrictions on pay differentials within companies, an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme including greatly increased housebuilding, action against tax avoidance including a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, a cap on energy prices, a ban or significant restrictions on foreign takeovers, a ban on unpaid internships, and an inquiry into Orgreave.
2. We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end. We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents. We need rent controls, action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, repeal of the Vagrancy Act, and the outlawing of practices such as “poor doors”.
3. Including high speed rail, but not restricted to it, the renationalised rail service should be the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, free at the point of use, and extending to every village. Returned to public ownership, there should be a National Grid for water, with water and energy free at the point of use, within an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and around this country’s vast reserves of coal and lithium. The State should ensure both the manufacture in this country of the vehicles that could be run on that domestically produced electricity, and the universal availability of charging points. Legislation should annul all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of the three Miners’ Strikes since 1970, as well as Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, and Wapping, while also securing justice for the victims of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme scandal.
4. Enactment of the NHS Reinstatement Bill should be accompanied by the abolition throughout the United Kingdom of prescription charges, of eye and dental charges, and of hospital car parking charges, as well as by the creation of the National Care Service. The Fifth of July, the anniversary of the creation of the National Health Service, should be the United Kingdom’s National Day, with Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day also public holidays throughout the United Kingdom. Apprentices and trainees should enjoy the same benefits as their peers in further and higher education, and vice versa. Higher education should be fully funded all the way to doctoral level, with lifelong access. The training and other standards for the private sector to match should be set by national and municipal public ownership. Parents are the first educators of their children. The Relationship and Sex Education curriculum should conform to the Science curriculum. Independent schools provide views such as ours with a platform denied by state schools. 
5. We should require the approval of the House of Commons for changes to interest rates, introduce a Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, extend the Freedom of Information Act to the City of London, and conform its municipal franchise to that of local government in general. All tax havens under British jurisdiction should be closed, non-domiciled tax status should be abolished, the Big Four accounting firms should be broken up, auditors should be banned by Statute from selling extras, and they should have unlimited liability. Crown immunity should be abolished. Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Partnerships should be required to have at least one member who was a natural person resident in the United Kingdom. The State should buy a stake in every FTSE 500 company, large enough to secure Board-level representation, for the exercise of which both the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be accountable to the House of Commons. After any investment in public services, the dividends would be distributed equally to everyone by the Treasury. Public bodies and public contractors should be required to buy British wherever possible, and to buy local wherever possible. Employment rights should begin with employment, and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. There should be a four-day working week by 2100. Our people should be active in the trade unions appropriate to their jobs where applicable, or otherwise in Unite Community. The unions are crucial to the necessary mutualisation of the gig economy. Every part of this country should be on the Belt and Road, and we should encourage the building of one or more Bering Strait crossings, as part of a wider and deeper realignment with the BRICS and other emerging economies on the understanding that “development is the new word for peace”. The principles of the Antarctic Treaty should be extended to Outer Space. 
6. We should end this country’s poisonous relationship with the Gulf monarchies. Instead of NATO, we need bilateral nonaggression treaties with all other European countries including Russia, with the United States, and with Canada. We need nonaggression treaties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and preferably with each of their members bilaterally. There should be no foreign military bases on British soil, but justice for Harry Dunn, and self-determination for the Chagossian people. We stand with Julian Assange. Instead of Trident, an extra £70 billion should be given to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. Military force should be used only ever in self-defence and with the approval of the House of Commons. BAE Systems should be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification.
7. There should be a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, a Coroner’s Inquest into the Manchester Arena attack, a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an action to challenge the legality of the bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against those who had waged war on Iraq in 2003. The present British funding of the White Helmets and of the “Free Syrian Police” should be diverted to our own emergency services. The Integrity Initiative, the Institute for Statecraft, and the 77th Brigade, should all be disbanded. The Statute Law should specify that aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country’s own, with the money thus saved remaining within the International Development budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target intact, but with a ban on the funding of offences against the sanctity of life.
8. Parliament should legislate that the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration was intentional killing. Funds should be diverted to palliative care, to the hospice movement, and to research on adult and cord blood stem cells. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops, and ban gambling with credit cards. There should be no further deregulation of Sunday trading. We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. Peter Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools. 
9. Families need fathers. All aspects of public policy should take account of the urgent social and cultural need for highly paid, highly skilled, high status employment as the economic basis of paternal authority, and thus of the paternal responsibility. We need a legal presumption of equal parenting, the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit were being paid to mothers, the restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father, the repeal of the ludicrous provision for two persons of the same sex to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, paternity leave available up to a set maximum at any time until the child was 18 or left school, and a foreign policy that did not entail tearing fathers away from their children in wars. We need to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, give any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, give existing married couples the right to re-register their marriages as being so bound, and remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples. The whole concept of gender self-identification should be banished. 
10. We need to make it a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would remove any conceivable excuse for prostituting oneself. We need a criminal offence of sexual activity with any person under the age of 18 who was more than two years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence equal to twice the difference in age, abolition of different rules for “positions of trust”, and a ban on abortion or contraception for those under 18 at least without parental knowledge and consent. We need the replacement of the existing categories of sexual assault with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, such that the sentences could be doubled. There should be no anonymity either for adult defendants or for adult complainants. We need to rule out the legal possibility of being a specifically sexual assailant below the age of consent, and specify that intoxication was a bar to sexual consent only insofar as it would have been a bar to driving. We need to end the blocking of progress into paid or voluntary work even though one had been acquitted. C5 notices should be outlawed. 
11. We need to reverse the erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, reverse the existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolish conviction by majority verdict, extend throughout the United Kingdom the Scots Law requirement for corroborating evidence, require that the prosecution present its case within 12 weeks of charge, and require judges to instruct juries to convict only and specifically beyond reasonable doubt. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would give everyone the “stake in society” to be a juror. We need to abolish the Crown Prosecution Service, restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolish the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, exclude the possibility of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, restore the protection against double jeopardy, and end the secrecy of the family courts, the right to cross-examine in which ought not to be removed by mere accusation. There should be nothing like identity cards or control orders, including to vote, where photo identification requirements would heavily favour our opponents over our people. We need the abolition of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, and of stipendiary magistrates sitting alone. We need to repeal the Civil Contingencies Act, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, the Official Secrets Acts, one-sided extradition arrangements, and the provision for “no win, no fee” litigation. We need to restore and extend Legal Aid, and return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and with police stations at the heart of their communities. MI5 should be disbanded in favour of highly specialised Police Officers. There should be “investment in youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing: key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system.” 
12. We should transfer each Royal Prerogative to seven, eight or nine of nine Co-Presidents, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top nine elected; in practice, at least one of those would protect traditional values, unlike any institution in living memory. Candidates for the House of Commons should have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there should be no nationality requirement for voting, thereby giving Americans and Israelis equality with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, while strengthening Christian witness. If the number of Commons constituencies were to be reduced to 600, then the whole country should elect an additional 50 MPs, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected. Two sets of 50 Senators should be elected from among self-nominees, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected at the end. In one case, electors and candidates would have to be British citizens resident in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. There would be a minimum age of 21 to vote, and of 30 to stand. In the other case, electors would have to be resident in the United Kingdom, but there would be no nationality requirement. It is already possible to stand for Parliament from anywhere in the world, so there would be neither a nationality requirement nor a residency requirement to be a candidate. There would be a minimum age of 16 to vote, but, recalling posthumous sons who inherited peerages at birth, there would be no minimum age to stand. In either case, there would be no deposit, and any casual vacancy would be filled by the next highest scoring candidate who was willing and able. In each Commons constituency, there should be precisely one candidate, of any party or none, who subscribed to the Lanchester Declaration and to this Lanchester Manifesto.

Crowdfunding My Parliamentary Candidacy

Please give generously: 

My broad political philosophy is set out here, and some more specific policies are set out here. I seek to defend family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. 

I was born in 1977. At various times since 1999, I have served as a Parish Councillor, as a primary school governor, as a comprehensive school governor, as a governor of a college of the University of Durham, and as a governor of one of the largest NHS Foundation Trusts in the country. I have a long record of working with people of all political parties and none. 

I stood for Parliament as an Independent at very short notice in 2019, and I could have more success with the far more notice that was now available. If I had raised £30,000 by the end of March 2021, then I would spend £20,000 of it before the beginning of the official campaign in late 2024, and the remaining £10,000 during that campaign. 

I am in it to win it. If I had failed to raise £30,000, then any money raised would be given to charity. Of course, any money above the target would also be spent on the campaign. I will contest the seat where the most people had offered to sign my nomination papers during the course of this fundraiser.

The Lanchester Manifesto; Signatories Welcome

If you would like to sign this, then please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com by 5pm on Saturday, 10th October:

1. We reaffirm the Lanchester Declaration. The currency-issuing power of the State is such that the entire benefits system should be replaced with a Universal Basic Income no lower than anyone already received in benefits, undergirding the Jobs Guarantee, and paid through the Treasury, thereby making possible the abolition of the Department for Work and Pensions. It is time to implement Theresa May’s original Prime Ministerial agenda of workers’ and consumers’ representation in corporate governance, shareholders’ control over executive pay, restrictions on pay differentials within companies, an investment-based Industrial Strategy and infrastructure programme including greatly increased housebuilding, action against tax avoidance including a ban on public contracts for tax-avoiding companies, a cap on energy prices, a ban or significant restrictions on foreign takeovers, a ban on unpaid internships, and an inquiry into Orgreave.
2. We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end. We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents. We need rent controls, action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty, repeal of the Vagrancy Act, and the outlawing of practices such as “poor doors”.
3. Including high speed rail, but not restricted to it, the renationalised rail service should be the backbone of a rebuilt network of public transport, free at the point of use, and extending to every village. Returned to public ownership, there should be a National Grid for water, with water and energy free at the point of use, within an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and around this country’s vast reserves of coal and lithium. The State should ensure both the manufacture in this country of the vehicles that could be run on that domestically produced electricity, and the universal availability of charging points. Legislation should annul all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of the three Miners’ Strikes since 1970, as well as Clay Cross, Shrewsbury, and Wapping, while also securing justice for the victims of the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme scandal.
4. Enactment of the NHS Reinstatement Bill should be accompanied by the abolition throughout the United Kingdom of prescription charges, of eye and dental charges, and of hospital car parking charges, as well as by the creation of the National Care Service. The Fifth of July, the anniversary of the creation of the National Health Service, should be the United Kingdom’s National Day, with Saint George’s Day, Saint Andrew’s Day, Saint David’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day also public holidays throughout the United Kingdom. Apprentices and trainees should enjoy the same benefits as their peers in further and higher education, and vice versa. Higher education should be fully funded all the way to doctoral level, with lifelong access. The training and other standards for the private sector to match should be set by national and municipal public ownership. Parents are the first educators of their children. The Relationship and Sex Education curriculum should conform to the Science curriculum. Independent schools provide views such as ours with a platform denied by state schools. 
5. We should require the approval of the House of Commons for changes to interest rates, introduce a Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, extend the Freedom of Information Act to the City of London, and conform its municipal franchise to that of local government in general. All tax havens under British jurisdiction should be closed, non-domiciled tax status should be abolished, the Big Four accounting firms should be broken up, auditors should be banned by Statute from selling extras, and they should have unlimited liability. Crown immunity should be abolished. Limited Partnerships and Limited Liability Partnerships should be required to have at least one member who was a natural person resident in the United Kingdom. The State should buy a stake in every FTSE 500 company, large enough to secure Board-level representation, for the exercise of which both the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be accountable to the House of Commons. After any investment in public services, the dividends would be distributed equally to everyone by the Treasury. Public bodies and public contractors should be required to buy British wherever possible, and to buy local wherever possible. Employment rights should begin with employment, and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. There should be a four-day working week by 2100. Our people should be active in the trade unions appropriate to their jobs where applicable, or otherwise in Unite Community. The unions are crucial to the necessary mutualisation of the gig economy. Every part of this country should be on the Belt and Road, and we should encourage the building of one or more Bering Strait crossings, as part of a wider and deeper realignment with the BRICS and other emerging economies on the understanding that “development is the new word for peace”. The principles of the Antarctic Treaty should be extended to Outer Space. 
6. We should end this country’s poisonous relationship with the Gulf monarchies. Instead of NATO, we need bilateral nonaggression treaties with all other European countries including Russia, with the United States, and with Canada. We need nonaggression treaties with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and with the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, and preferably with each of their members bilaterally. There should be no foreign military bases on British soil, but justice for Harry Dunn, and self-determination for the Chagossian people. We stand with Julian Assange. Instead of Trident, an extra £70 billion should be given to each of the Royal Navy, the British Army, and the Royal Air Force. Military force should be used only ever in self-defence and with the approval of the House of Commons. BAE Systems should be renationalised as the monopoly supplier to our own Armed Forces, with a ban on all sale of arms abroad, and with a comprehensive programme of diversification.
7. There should be a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly, a Coroner’s Inquest into the Manchester Arena attack, a Coroner’s Inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, an action to challenge the legality of the bombing of Syria after the confirmation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that no nerve agent had been used at Douma, an action before the International Criminal Court against those who had brought slavery back to Libya, and an action before the High Court of Justiciary of Scotland inviting it to exercise its declaratory power against those who had waged war on Iraq in 2003. The present British funding of the White Helmets and of the “Free Syrian Police” should be diverted to our own emergency services. The Integrity Initiative, the Institute for Statecraft, and the 77th Brigade, should all be disbanded. The Statute Law should specify that aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country’s own, with the money thus saved remaining within the International Development budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target intact, but with a ban on the funding of offences against the sanctity of life.
8. Parliament should legislate that the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration was intentional killing. Funds should be diverted to palliative care, to the hospice movement, and to research on adult and cord blood stem cells. We need to ban Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, empower local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, insist on the use of that power, end gambling on television, end the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops, and ban gambling with credit cards. There should be no further deregulation of Sunday trading. We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of three months for a second offence, six months for a third offence, one year for a fourth offence, and so on. We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. Peter Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools. 
9. Families need fathers. All aspects of public policy should take account of the urgent social and cultural need for highly paid, highly skilled, high status employment as the economic basis of paternal authority, and thus of the paternal responsibility. We need a legal presumption of equal parenting, the restoration of the tax allowance for fathers for so long as Child Benefit were being paid to mothers, the restoration of the requirement that providers of fertility treatment take account of the child’s need for a father, the repeal of the ludicrous provision for two persons of the same sex to be listed as a child’s parents on a birth certificate, paternity leave available up to a set maximum at any time until the child was 18 or left school, and a foreign policy that did not entail tearing fathers away from their children in wars. We need to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, give any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, give existing married couples the right to re-register their marriages as being so bound, and remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples. The whole concept of gender self-identification should be banished. 
10. We need to make it a criminal offence for anyone aged 21 or over to buy or sell sex, with equal sentencing on both sides. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would remove any conceivable excuse for prostituting oneself. We need a criminal offence of sexual activity with any person under the age of 18 who was more than two years younger than oneself, with a maximum sentence equal to twice the difference in age, abolition of different rules for “positions of trust”, and a ban on abortion or contraception for those under 18 at least without parental knowledge and consent. We need the replacement of the existing categories of sexual assault with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, such that the sentences could be doubled. There should be no anonymity either for adult defendants or for adult complainants. We need to rule out the legal possibility of being a specifically sexual assailant below the age of consent, and specify that intoxication was a bar to sexual consent only insofar as it would have been a bar to driving. We need to end the blocking of progress into paid or voluntary work even though one had been acquitted. C5 notices should be outlawed. 
11. We need to reverse the erosion of trial by jury and of the right to silence, reverse the existing reversals of the burden of proof, abolish conviction by majority verdict, extend throughout the United Kingdom the Scots Law requirement for corroborating evidence, require that the prosecution present its case within 12 weeks of charge, and require judges to instruct juries to convict only and specifically beyond reasonable doubt. The Universal Basic Income, the Jobs Guarantee, and the dividends from the public stakes in the FTSE 500 companies, would give everyone the “stake in society” to be a juror. We need to abolish the Crown Prosecution Service, restore the pre-1968 committal powers of the magistracy, abolish the admission of anonymous evidence other than from undercover Police Officers, exclude the possibility of conviction on anonymous evidence alone, restore the protection against double jeopardy, and end the secrecy of the family courts, the right to cross-examine in which ought not to be removed by mere accusation. There should be nothing like identity cards or control orders, including to vote, where photo identification requirements would heavily favour our opponents over our people. We need the abolition of Police confiscation of assets without a conviction, and of stipendiary magistrates sitting alone. We need to repeal the Civil Contingencies Act, the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act, the Official Secrets Acts, one-sided extradition arrangements, and the provision for “no win, no fee” litigation. We need to restore and extend Legal Aid, and return to preventative policing based on foot patrols, with Police Forces at least no larger than at present, and with police stations at the heart of their communities. MI5 should be disbanded in favour of highly specialised Police Officers. There should be “investment in youth services, mental health and social care, education, jobs and housing: key services to support the most vulnerable before they come into contact with the criminal justice system.” 
12. We should transfer each Royal Prerogative to seven, eight or nine of nine Co-Presidents, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top nine elected; in practice, at least one of those would protect traditional values, unlike any institution in living memory. Candidates for the House of Commons should have to be British citizens in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens in Northern Ireland, but there should be no nationality requirement for voting, thereby giving Americans and Israelis equality with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, while strengthening Christian witness. If the number of Commons constituencies were to be reduced to 600, then the whole country should elect an additional 50 MPs, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected. Two sets of 50 Senators should be elected from among self-nominees, with each of us voting for one candidate, and with the top 50 elected at the end. In one case, electors and candidates would have to be British citizens resident in Great Britain, or British or Irish citizens resident in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. There would be a minimum age of 21 to vote, and of 30 to stand. In the other case, electors would have to be resident in the United Kingdom, but there would be no nationality requirement. It is already possible to stand for Parliament from anywhere in the world, so there would be neither a nationality requirement nor a residency requirement to be a candidate. There would be a minimum age of 16 to vote, but, recalling posthumous sons who inherited peerages at birth, there would be no minimum age to stand. In either case, there would be no deposit, and any casual vacancy would be filled by the next highest scoring candidate who was willing and able. In each Commons constituency, there should be precisely one candidate, of any party or none, who subscribed to the Lanchester Declaration and to this Lanchester Manifesto.

A New Weekly Magazine

I am setting up a weekly magazine of news and comment. It has a name, but I am not publishing that on here, as, since he is nothing if not time rich, Oliver Kamm would have a field day. 

With only the same online presence as Private Eye, which seems to do all right commercially, it will feature, on its odd-numbered pages, a weekly column by each of around 20 regular contributors, plus around five guest articles, giving a voice to the old Red Wall areas. Those areas tend to have relatively low levels of Internet use, meaning that this magazine ought to sell well here. Among others, we have already secured what would be the only Haredi columnist in the national media.

Kamm has had me kicked of Twitter, as is apparently within his power, so I am having to come on here to ask for 14 of those weekly columnists to be Nigel Farage, George Galloway, and a supporter of each of theirs from each of the Red Wall areas of of North Wales, the West Midlands, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East, and the North West. 

In principle, we already have someone from the pro-Galloway camp in all but one of those areas, although we do not yet have the man himself, and several of the others will not quite say yes until he does. We know who we want from the pro-Farage camp in the West Midlands, but beyond that we are entirely open to offers. Please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. 

The even-numbered pages will feature popular news stories relating to sport, television, music, and so on, plus advertising. Public relations stuff, if you like, but that would get the readers, especially if we made offers of exclusivity to the biggest clubs, programmes, acts, and so forth. Details are available to Mr Farage and to Mr Galloway. For the right to publish whatever they liked within the law, the word limit, and the English language, and provided that it were exclusive content, then we expect to charge a fixed sum per page per annum; again, details of that sum are available to Mr Farage and to Mr Galloway. 

We expect each regular columnist to be paid a fixed sum per annum, and each guest columnist to be paid a fixed fee per time. Newsprint is far cheaper than it used to be, so 15,000 copies could be produced for well under £2000, and probably for less than £1500. Obviously, we would wish to aim a lot higher than that. But that does give a guide to the figures. We expect a retail price of one pound. As the magazine became commercially successful, then the pay would increase accordingly. 

A think tank that I am to direct is to own half of this project, although of course it will be editorially independent. An additional investor is therefore sought. Again, please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

The Lanchester Declaration

1. The Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that had begun with the Budget of December 1976. The Prime Minister’s two closest advisers are Dominic Cummings and Munira Mirza, while Claire Fox has been raised to the peerage. If they can make it, then so can we. “A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling; it is also necessary for rebelling,” since, “a fixed and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of revolution.” God has revealed all that the Holy Roman Church professes Him to have revealed. Each and every individual human life is absolutely sacred from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. That principle is the foundation of all morality. We struggle against evils that include direct abortion, indirect abortion at least except where any other course of action would result in the loss of both lives, euthanasia, assisted suicide, destructive experimentation on embryonic human beings, human cloning, human-animal hybridity, “saviour siblings”, capital punishment, and unjust war, if any war be just, but certainly including total war, preemptive war, the international trade in arms, and the manufacture, possession or use of nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological weapons. Their victims are disproportionately working-class people and people of colour. Therefore, we struggle against evils that include poverty, racism, sexual promiscuity, pornography, eugenics, marginalisation of people with disabilities, lack of due respect for old age, refusal to celebrate the infinite beauty of every human being as the image and likeness of God, refusal to respect the dignity of parents as the first educators of their children, classification of human beings solely or primarily as economic units, and policies likely to give rise to armed conflict. Their victims are disproportionately working-class people and people of colour.
2. Since there cannot be a politically chosen “free” market in general, but not in drugs or prostitution, so there must not be a “free” market in general. In order to uphold the sanctity of life, it is necessary to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class, which has always been at least two fifths Tory. In the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and the youth. Unity must therefore be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales. We are not “For the Many, Not the Few”. We are “For Everyone”. We reject class conflict in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”. Ours is a broad social movement towards institutional hegemony, a celebration of the national-popular, and an organic and self-organising working-class culture that includes worker-intellectuals, free of “the enormous condescension of posterity”. The working class and the youth could not fulfil their leading role if they were in a state of stupefaction.
3. Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt. We have never not been “cancelled”, and we need no lectures on “cancel culture” from those who have always silenced us but who now bellow that they themselves are being silenced.
4. Brexit is a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence, if at all. With an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation, the leading role in building One Nation belongs to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that are either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them. Since there cannot be the unrestricted movement of goods, services and capital but not of people, so there must not be the unrestricted movement of goods, services or capital.
5. The issuing of currency is an act of the State, which is literally the creator of all money. A sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself. All wars are fought on this understanding, but the principle applies universally. The State also has the fiscal and monetary means to control inflation, means that therefore need to be under democratic political control in both cases. That is what both fiscal policy and monetary policy are for: to encourage certain politically chosen forms of behaviour, and to discourage others. They are not where the State’s money comes from. Nothing is “unaffordable”, every recession is discretionary on the part of the Government, and there is no such thing as “taxpayers’ money”. Armed with this understanding, and shielded by a strict statutory division between investment banking and retail banking, large amounts of central government credit, at low interest rates and over a long term, must be used for public works. Those would then pay for themselves many times over, ably assisted by pro-business tariffs and subsidies, by a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation, by collective bargaining and trade union representation, by cooperative and mutual ownership, and by reconceived models of public ownership. British elite interests, among others, subverted such an economic order in the American Republic. We do not speak for the declining British elite. We speak from and to the rising British people.
6. Any approach to climate change must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, encourage economic development around the world, uphold the right of the working class and of people of colour to have children, hold down and as far as practicable reduce the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. We regret the defeat of the miners in 1985. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. We celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System. God has given Man dominion over the beasts, thus over the land, and thus over everything on and under the land. God has given Man dominion over the fish, thus over the waters, and thus over everything in and under the waters. God has given Man dominion over the birds, thus over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes, and the sky goes up a very long way. That dominion is entrusted so that we might “be fruitful and multiply”. Entrusted as it is to the whole human race, its purpose is, “To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man.”
7. If a scientific fact as basic and as obvious as biological sex can be denied, then so can any other scientific fact, to the ruin of human progress. It is contrary both to whole history of human experience, and to the plain facts of biological science, to suggest either that sexual orientation is fixed, or that “gender” is “fluid”. “Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone.” No one is “born in the wrong body”. Women-only spaces must be defended, including in sport. The “gender reassignment” of children and adolescents must be resisted. We fight for a legal presumption of equal parenting, and for due process of law, including the presumption of innocence. We seek to rescue such issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, from those whose policies have caused the problems in the first place. We resist the increasing criminalisation of male youth as such. And we harness the righteous rage against deindustrialisation, and against the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars, on the part of the young men who have discovered for themselves the traditional Great Books and the various schools of heterodox economics. Those Books and those schools have always been fundamental to the radical change of which those young men are now the vanguard, just as similarly formed young men were the vanguard of the American Revolution.
8. It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. The Oxford English Dictionary sufficiently defines anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”. The IHRA Definition is a denial of BAME, migrant and refugee, and therefore working-class, experience redolent of the Windrush scandal and of the fire at Grenfell Tower. In curtailing criticism of a foreign state, the IHRA Definition is incompatible with national sovereignty. The denial of the ancient indigenous Christian presence in the Holy Land, where it created modern Palestinian identity, contributes significantly to the worldwide persecution of Christians. The Palestinian Christians’ ancestors predated the Israelite Conquest, they founded Jerusalem, and they became Christian when or before the Roman Empire did. One’s attitude to the Palestinian struggle is the litmus test of one’s attitude to the specific phenomenon of white violence against people of colour throughout the world, including in Britain.
9. Britain has links to every inhabited territory. It would be incompatible both with national sovereignty and with equal citizenship to privilege some foreign states over others. “What kind of internationalism says that we must give priority to an Indian over a Frenchman, an Australian over a German, a Malaysian over an Italian?” Global Britain must have “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none,” since, “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.” British elite interests, among others, subverted such an approach on the part of the American Republic. We do not speak for the declining British elite. We speak from and to the rising British people. Christian witness in Britain today depends on communities with roots in Africa and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. The mixed-race population, and the BAME presence in every locality, give every family a stake in the liberation struggles of the Global South. The Red Wall belongs to the global network of internal colonies, and of potentially revolutionary villages that surround the cities both literally and geopolitically.
10. We seek direct representation on public bodies, in the media and in academia, alongside our own media and our own educational programmes. Of all parties and none, we encourage our people to seek election. If Dominic Cummings and the Revolutionary Communist Party can make it, then so can we.

David Lindsay, Lanchester, County Durham

Mark McNally, Consett, County Durham

Please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

George Galloway Should Stand For Durham County Council

This has been sent to various local and national newspapers:

Dear Sir, 

Roger Liddle is an active member both of the House of Lords and of Cumbria County Council, so George Galloway could certainly be an active member both of Durham County Council and of the Scottish Parliament. In 2017, it took 749 votes to win a Chester-le-Street West Central seat on that Council, and 854 for the Leader of the Council to top the poll. Turnout was 1,870. Galloway would get that just by being on the ballot paper.

The defeat of that Leader would be heard from the souks to the favelas, from the Dalit colonies to the Rohingya camps, and from Kashmir, to Crimea, to the scattered outposts of Diego Garcia. Armed with an impeccably local running mate in order to stop the target from slipping through, Galloway is just the man to do this. We would need only to get him registered to vote in County Durham, and preferably in Chester-le-Street, in time to be a candidate on 6th May 2021.

Eric Joyce once described Galloway as having stepped beyond what was “reasonable and acceptable for Labour MPs”. Any Labour electoral opponent of Galloway’s, including the present Leader of Durham County Council, has therefore been endorsed by Joyce.

Yours faithfully,

David Lindsay, Lanchester, County Durham; davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

Lee Walls, Chester-le-Street, County Durham

Nathan Allonby, Consett, County Durham

Norman Bolton, Consett, County Durham

Michael Parker, Crook, County Durham

Become a Founder Member of The Centre

Signatories to the following are sought by Friday 15th May: 

The Budget of March 2020 has ended the era that began with the Budget of December 1976. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It upholds family and community values by seeking to secure economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.

In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class. In the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and to the youth. Unity must be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales.

Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity.

Equality and diversity must mean economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law and the presumption of innocence.

We stand for One Nation, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. Brexit is a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States, with no use of military force except in self-defence.

In building One Nation, the leading role belongs to the people and places whose votes have decided the outcomes of the 2016 referendum, of the 2017 General Election, and of the 2019 General Election, namely the rural working class, and the industrial and former industrial communities that are either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them. 

Binary and immutable biological sex is a scientific fact. Women’s spaces must be defended. Such issues as men’s health, fathers’ rights, and boys’ educational underachievement, must be rescued from those whose economic and other policies, including their warmongering foreign policies, have caused the problems in the first place.

BAME Britain is now young, increasingly mixed-race, often in its second or subsequent generation to have been born in Britain, connected to every inhabited territory on the planet, found in every town, and well on the way to being found in every village. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anti-Semitism as “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews”. That definition is sufficient.

We take the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development. That is fully compatible with the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.

We insist that any approach to climate change must protect and extend secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions. It must encourage economic development around the world. It must maintain the right of the working classes and of people of colour to have children. It must hold down, and as far as practicable reduce, the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest. And it must refuse to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

The Centre will eventually hold three conferences per year, and it will publish the papers from those conferences. One conference will be held outside London, one in London, and one outside Britain. Initially, these will form a three-year cycle, with the first conference to be held in the North West Durham parliamentary constituency.

Please contact the Director of The Centre, David Lindsay, on davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

For those interested, the crowdfunding page is here, or please feel free to contact me for other ways of contributing.

The 2020 Vision

Politically, the last four and a half years have belonged to those who have suffered the most, under all three parties, since the Callaghan Government’s turn to monetarism in 1977. They made Jeremy Corbyn the Leader of the Labour Party, they decided the EU referendum for Leave, they reelected Corbyn, they deprived Theresa May of her overall majority, they delivered the scale of the Brexit Party’s victory at the 2019 European Elections, and they have given an overall majority to Boris Johnson because Corbyn had abandoned his 2017 commitment to Brexit. Had he not done so, then Labour would now be the largest party in a hung Parliament.

It is clear that the workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, are now the key swing voters. Yet the metropolitan liberal elite, and its allies in the right-wing Labour machine that controls several trade unions and almost the whole of Labour local government, are well into the coronation of Keir Starmer. But here along the old Red Wall, we have not exchanged one one-party state for another. The Conservatives must face the competition in which they profess to believe. Therefore, ours is the 2020 Vision of a new political party, a new think tank, a new weekly newspaper, a new monthly cultural review, a new quarterly academic journal, and much else besides. Each of those projects is distinct, and anyone interested in any one or more of them should feel free to contact me on davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

A New Political Party: The People’s Voice 

The People’s Voice will soon be registered as a new political party. Initially on the Brexit Party’s model of a Leader and supporters, the constitution of The People’s Voice will require a transition to internal democracy by a specific date, or else the party will be dissolved. I am already its Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. In 2024, parliamentary candidates for The People’s Voice will have lived throughout the previous 10 years in the constituencies that they wished to represent or in immediately adjacent constituencies, and they will have annual incomes not higher than £25,000. Such candidates will also be required to sign the following statements.

First: “I am committed to upholding family and community values by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. Economic inequality is incompatible with democracy, since it gives the rich far greater political power than the poor, whose votes are thus effectively negated. I would vote to bring down any Government that had used military force other than in self-defence. In the struggle for the universal good that is economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class. In the struggle for the universal good that is international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and to the youth. Those struggles are fundamental and integral to each other, and the anti-racist and anti-imperialist struggle, which is indivisible in itself, is fundamental and integral to each and both of them. I am not “For the Many, Not the Few”. I am “For Everyone”. I reject class conflict in favour of “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon”.”

Secondly: “I welcome the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union as providing a double opportunity, both to reorganise the British economy under State direction, and to begin to develop a fully independent British foreign policy, including in relation to the United States. I welcome the Conservative Party’s moves in those directions. I speak for people who would be more than happy to bypass the Liberal Establishment and the right-wing Labour machine so as to work with Conservatives and others in order to secure direct representation on public bodies, in the media, and elsewhere. I refuse to recognise racists, Fascists or opportunists as the authentic voices of the accepted need to control immigration. I unreservedly support the Chagossian cause. I stand with Julian Assange.” 

Thirdly: “I regret the defeat of the miners in 1985. We need an approach to climate change which protected and extended secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encouraged economic development around the world, which upheld the right of the working classes and of non-white people to have children, which held down and as far as practicable reduced the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refused to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. We must celebrate the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past. That expansion and development must now include space exploration, fuelled by, and fuelling, fusion power. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System.”

Fourthly: “Sex is a biological fact, and is immutable. There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone. No one is “born in the wrong body”. I reject the ludicrous theory of gender self-identification, and I will fight to my last breath to defend women-only spaces, as well as against the “gender reassignment” of children and adolescents, and as well as against the silencing of free speech on these issues. One such issue is basic fair play in women’s and girls’ sport. It is contrary both to whole history of human experience, and to the plain facts of biological science, to suggest either that sexual orientation is fixed, or that “gender” is “fluid”. If a scientific fact as basic and as obvious as biological sex can be denied, then so can any other scientific fact, to the ruin of human progress.”

Fifthly: “I support a legal presumption of equal parenting, and I support due process of law, including the presumption of innocence. I seek to rescue such issues as male suicide, men’s health, and fathers’ rights, from those whose economic and other policies have caused the problems in the first place. I oppose the increasing criminalisation of male youth as such. I identify strongly with the rage against deindustrialisation, with the rage against the harvesting of young men in endless and pointless wars, and with a growing number of young men’s closely connected discovery for themselves of the traditional Great Books and of the various schools of heterodox economics. Those Books and those schools have always been fundamental to the radical change of which those young men are now the vanguard. I stand with Julian Assange.”

And sixthly: “It is wrong to tell Israelis to “go home” when the State of Israel was founded in the year that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury. There are now fourth generation Israelis. The definition of anti-Semitism in the Oxford English Dictionary is perfectly sufficient: “Hostility to or prejudice against Jews.” The Liberal Establishment has imported the New York practice of branding as “anti-Semitic” any uppity black or other criticism of its hegemony and hypocrisy, be that its hypocrisy towards integration at home or towards white settler colonialism abroad. Anyone may convert to Judaism, so that Jews are no more a “race” than Christians or Muslims are. Therefore, anti-Semitism is a form of religious bigotry, and not, in itself, a form of racism. That Hitler thought otherwise is not an argument. The IHRA Definition is a denial of Black And Minority Ethnic, refugee and migrant experience, such as leads to the Windrush scandal and to the fire at Grenfell Tower. As a denial of the ancient indigenous Christian presence in the Christian Holy Land, it contributes significantly to the worldwide persecution of Christians. Since BAME and migrant communities tend to be working-class, there is also a clear connection to the injustices at Shrewsbury, Orgreave, Hillsborough, and, again, Grenfell Tower. The expulsion of 700,000 people from Palestine on ethnic grounds in 1948 was as much a racist endeavour as any of the several other mass expulsions of the same period, notably those from the new states of India and Pakistan, and those of ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe. Israel was founded by anti-British terrorists of exceptional viciousness, and Israel armed Argentina during the Falklands War as an act of anti-British revenge. Every critique of the divisive and anti-democratic role of “community leaders” is applicable to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, to the Jewish Leadership Council, to the Community Security Trust, to the Campaign Against Antisemitism, to the Chief Rabbinate, and to the Senior Rabbinate. I aspire to a single state throughout the former British Mandate of Palestine, a state in which human and civil rights would be constitutionally protected while everyone had precisely one vote.”

A New Think Tank: The Centre

The Centre is to be our new think tank, “To develop, formulate and articulate the broadly based opposition and alternative to the violent, extremist and anti-democratic ideologies of neoliberal economic policy, identitarian social policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and anti-industrial Malthusianism, strongly asserting that that opposition and that alternative constituted the real centre ground of British and wider politics.” The eventual intention is to hold three conferences per year, one initially at Durham, one in London, and one at an international location.

A New Newspaper: The Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard will feature, on its odd-numbered pages, a weekly column by each of around 20 regular contributors, plus around five guest articles. The even-numbered pages will feature popular news stories relating to sport, television, music, and so on, plus advertising. We intend to make offers to the biggest clubs, programmes, acts, and so forth, for the right to publish whatever they liked within the law, the word limit, and the English language, and provided that it were exclusive content. Newsprint is far cheaper than it used to be, so 15,000 copies could be produced for well under £2000, and probably for less than £1500. Obviously, we would wish to aim a lot higher than that. We expect a retail price of one pound. There is also the possibility of a new fortnightly satirical magazine, to be published in the weeks that Private Eye was not. 

A New Monthly Cultural Review: The Wall

The areas that choose the Government deserve to have our cultures known to each other, to the country, and to the world. With a network of contributors across Wales, the Midlands, the North, and beyond, The Wall will make a leading contribution to that long-overdue process.

A New Academic Journal: The Great British Quarterly

The Great British Quarterly’s peer-reviewed articles will give a voice to the rural working class, and to the industrial and former industrial communities that were either outside the metropolitan areas or peripheral to them. A voice to those who cherished free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law. A voice to those who sought a fully independent British foreign policy, with a critical and sceptical approach to intelligence and security agencies. A voice to those who found that the definition of anti-Semitism in the Oxford English Dictionary was perfectly sufficient. A voice to those who acknowledged the scientific fact of binary and immutable biological sex. And a voice to those who celebrated the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.

Five Years in Which To Organise

Congratulations to Richard Holden, who was acquitted in minutes of an obviously false charge that should never have come to court. As I would have been in April, had the prosecution not caused the discharge of the jury by causing its comically incredible star witness to disappear overnight in Minnesota halfway through his testimony by videolink. And as I would be in March, if they proceeded with the fourth attempt at a trial.

So I look forward to working with Richard over the next 59 months. And then to spending the sixtieth month unseating him. While you have to play the game until the final whistle, of course I always knew that I was going to come bottom of the poll, and as soon as Watts Stelling entered the fray then I knew that I was going to lose my deposit. But the next General Election is not going to be a snap one, nor is it going to be only two and a half years after this one. See, instead, here:

The result of the 2019 General Election has given us five years in which to organise for the next one. The Brexit Party will no longer exist in 2024, when Watts Stelling will also be unlikely to contest a fourth General Election. Therefore, I remain the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. One of my Campaign Patrons is Councillor Alex Watson OBE, who led Derwentside District Council for many years, who chaired the North East Regional Assembly, and who chaired the English Regional Network. My other Campaign Patron is Davey Ayre, who is a legendary local trade unionist. In 2019, I was proposed as a parliamentary candidate by Alderman Clive Robson BEM, who is a former Deputy Leader of Durham County Council.

I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I was an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. In April 2017, I was elected unopposed as one of Derwentside’s public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

Richard Holden talks about a more inclusive politics than Laura Pidcock’s, but I intend to identify a number of projects on which to campaign in each of the former District Wards, equal to the former number of District Councillors, and as the MP I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people.

Since I believe in family values, with parents as the first educators of their children, I also believe in economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends. Therefore, I support Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, publicly owned utilities, the abolition of NHS charges, the extension throughout the United Kingdom of the Scottish model of free personal care, and, as a disabled person, hugely expanded public transport, free at the point of use.

I am pro-business, being in favour of a strict Glass-Steagall division between investment banking and retail banking, with democratic political control over monetary policy, and with large amounts of central government credit, at low interest rates and over a long term, to build great national projects that would then pay for themselves many times over. I support pro-business tariffs and subsidies, and a pro-business National Bank to promote the growth of productive enterprises rather than speculation. Public bodies and their contractors must be compelled to buy local goods and services. We need very low, or if possible zero, business rates on independent shops. And we need a windfall tax on the supermarkets, to fund agriculture and small business. This would all be possible outside the EU Single Market and Customs Union, and beyond Boris Johnson’s “level playing field”.

I support rural working-class representation, fathers’ rights, mass classical education, lifelong learning for its own sake, and the same benefits for apprentices and trainees as for students. As a mixed-race person, I support immigration controls. I support Julian Assange, the British coal and steel industries, nuclear power, the Belt and Road Initiative, putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq, and putting David Cameron and Nick Clegg on trial for Libya.

I oppose Trident, NATO, Saudi Arabia, all of the currently illegal drugs, all aspects of the sex industry (I was the first journalist to try and expose the links between Harriet Harman and the Paedophile Information Exchange), gender self-identification, and any approach to climate change that endangered industrial and scientific progress. The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? Even the resources of the Solar System must not be beyond our reach as a species. The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism silences Black And Minority Ethnic, refugee and migrant voices, and that way lies Windrush and Grenfell Tower. It also betrays the ancient indigenous Christians of the Holy Land, and that way lies the ongoing worldwide persecution of Christians.

I can be contacted on davidaslindsay@hotmail.com.

Please give generously. Very many thanks.

Prevent This

I’ve got the key to the door, never been 42 before. But among the birthday cards today was also the following:

Dear Mr. Lindsay,

As the holder of a politically protected position within Durham County Council that makes it impossible for me to identify myself, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that the Council has finally referred you under the Prevent Strategy. Your extremist views on Brexit, economics, NATO, Trident, antisemitism, Julian Assange, abortion rights, transgender rights, the right to die, so-called “fathers’ rights”, Russia, China, Syria, Iran, Yemen, sexual offences, drugs, immigration, climate change, and a wide range of other issues have no place in our County. You are a professional misogynist, transphobe, antisemite, religious fundamentalist, ally of dictators and climate change denier who bases himself on the Left for recruitment purposes as a well-known radicaliser of young men and teenage boys. Some of us have been fighting for this referral for a very long time. The relevant authorities will be in touch. David Lindsay MP? David Lindsay in HMP, more like.

Now, I have had all sorts of funny stuff over the last two and a half years. But this one might be worth keeping an eye on. Bring it on, say I. My election literature is already going to say “Banned From Twitter”.

Another hung Parliament is coming, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. After nearly 30 years of suggestion, speculation, and even a sort of preparation, I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham. The crowdfunding page is here, and buy the book here. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

It Pays To Advertise?

Bang on its 400-word limit, this was sent to The Northern Echo’s Consett and Stanley Advertiser, which is not shy of publishing contentious letters for the benefit of every household, free through the door. But as we await the full fanzine treatment for Trigger as soon as the General Election is called (and for Kevan Jones, but he is not my concern), this has not been printed:

I am the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for North West Durham. My Campaign Patrons are Councillor Alex Watson OBE, who led Derwentside District Council for many years, and Davey Ayre, a legendary local trade unionist. I was born in 1977, and I have lived in North West Durham since 1982. I was an elected member of Lanchester Parish Council from 1999 to 2013, a governor of Lanchester Endowed Parochial Primary School from 1999 to 2007, and a governor of Saint Bede’s from 2000 to 2008. I am one of Derwentside’s elected public governors of County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust. I was elected unopposed. I first appeared on television in defence of Shotley Bridge Hospital in 1997.

There is going to be another hung Parliament. The price of my support for any Government would be the necessary support for a number of projects in each of the former District Wards equal to the former number of District Councillors, together with justice for the 472 Teaching Assistants whose pay Durham County Council had cut by 23 per cent, together with not less than the level of hospital provision in Consett in July 2019, and together with the implementation of the plan for the rail service that had been advanced by The Northern Echo in June 2018.

The Conservative candidate won 34.5 per cent in 2017. Labour holds fewer than half of the County Council seats in North West Durham. The Liberal Democrats cut the Labour majority in half in 2010. An Independent kept his deposit both in 2005 and in 2010. Therefore, I would appoint an Independent, a Labourite, a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat in each of the County Wards, ideally including at least one person in each of the former District Wards, to work with me and with local people. I would also appoint a Political Advisor from within each of the Independent, Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat blocs.

There is nothing left-wing about Laura Pidcock. She is not a supporter of Brexit, Modern Monetary Theory, the Universal Basic Income, Julian Assange, Chris Williamson, the County Durham Teaching Assistants, the revival of the British coal and steel industries, or putting Tony Blair on trial for Iraq. Nor is she an opponent of Trident, NATO, Britain’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, gender self-identification, or the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism. I am all of those things. I can be contacted on davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

Oh, well. The crowdfunding page is here, and buy the book here.