Lost Deposit, But No Lost Hope

Well, if I don't have £500 going spare, then that's that. Nominations close on Thursday. Weren't we supposed to have fixed-term Parliaments these days? I have always said that it was the money and nothing else. If I could afford to stand for Parliament, then I would.

If I didn't, then it certainly would not be for want of support on the ground. Whereas all that Laura Pidcock has is so much money that she can buy a second house in a fortnight, and buy a parliamentary seat in month. That's the upper middle classes for you. Second generation County Councillors (until they lose their seats), and second generation charity workers, of the kind funded entirely by the State or the unions, as what passes for the day job.

Obviously, that combination does not pay too shabbily. And it provides a network of the similar to sign one's Nomination Papers. No one else will sign hers. I might go through the list on here when it appears. Despite never having had a proper job in their lives, they cannot begin to contain their glee at the very concept of people who cannot simply stump up £500, and indeed buy a house, whenever a General Election is called.

Welcome to the Labour Party in the North East. Literally laughing at everyone who is not stinking rich on the back of nothing very much at all. I once tried to work out the combined wealth of the Cabinet on Durham County Council, but I stopped when it started to make my head spin. And for what? What have they ever done? In their lives?

If you elect Laura Pidcock, then you will get what you deserve.

A 29-year-old princess who has no ties to the area, unlike the very local Armstrongs and Pat Glass, but who managed to persuade a committee in London that Cramlington was the same place as Consett or Crook, and that having any kind of Northern accent was proof of being working-class. A Marxist and a radical feminist with, among other things, an inherited hatred of the Catholic Church, and a total inability to be so much as civil towards the Independents, Liberal Democrats and "TORIES!!!" who are hardly thin on the ground in an area such as North West Durham.

A person with every intention of remaining in office for 35 years, having benefited from a centrally imposed all-women shortlist of, it would appear, one name. A Northumberland County Councillor until last week, when she lost to the Conservative Party the seat that she had been given at the almost impossible age of 25 because, as if it needed to be said, she came from the right family.

A person who walked out of the Teaching Assistants' Solidarity Rally when a speaker from this constituency called for all Labour Councillors to lose their seats, and set out how that could be achieved. Had that strategy not been stifled by Labour snakes in the grass, then it would by now have resolved the entire dispute entirely in the terms required by the TAs, who, in my absence, would presumably vote and campaign for their stalwart supporter, Owen Temple.

I hope that Owen will forgive me for saying that he would be unlikely to wish to serve more than one term. In May 2022, I would still be only 44. Again I say that Ms Pidcock would have been welcome to have done 10 years on what would have been politically my very ecumenical staff, since she is the usual age for MPs' staffers rather than for MPs. What does she think makes her so special? As to the ecumenism of her staffing arrangements, only if you count different factions of the Far Left within and beyond the Labour Party, and possibly not even then. The non-Labour majority of Councillors in the constituency might as well keep their emails and phone calls to themselves. The Labour minority need not expect awfully much, either.

The local Labour machine has now proven that it cannot beat me in a fair fight, although it must be said that it has now made that point and that it therefore has no reason to pursue it any further. Especially since Theresa May has almost certainly made it impossible for me to contest this General Election, either. But I am not going away. In the meantime, one of my Campaign Patrons is a parliamentary candidate at Manchester Gorton, and I shall probably vote for whoever the other Campaign Patron recommends here on his and my patch of North West Durham.