Crowdfunding My Parliamentary Candidacy

Here:

I am a freelance journalist and a political activist based in Lanchester, County Durham. I am not a member of any political party. For five main reasons, I intend to contest this parliamentary seat of North West Durham at the next General Election.

First, I understand the political pluralism of this constituency, and the needs of the local communities. I would seek to work with a Labour, a Conservative, a Liberal Democrat and an Independent representative in each of the County Wards, ideally including someone in each of the former District Wards, to communicate the concerns of local people to me, and then to work with them and with me in order to address those concerns. My Campaign Patron is Councillor Alex Watson OBE of Consett North, who previously served for many years as the Executive Leader of Derwentside District Council.

Secondly, in the hung Parliament that is by far the most likely outcome of the next General Election, 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 whom Durham County Council has deprived of 23 per cent of their incomes.

Thirdly, drawing on a very wide range of political traditions, my Westminster office would be a national and international centre for the formulation, articulation and implementation of the alternative to the neoliberal economic policy that had already given us the Carillion crisis, and to the neoconservative foreign policy that had already given us the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. This would include the active pursuit of justice against those responsible.

Fourthly, a recent poster campaign in parts of this constituency has announced that Jayda Fransen of Britain First would contest this seat against me because I was mixed-race, and that she would do so with the support of all of this country’s neo-Fascist and neo-Nazi parties, of the Loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland, of several racist and Holocaust-denying publications and publishing houses, and of neo-Fascist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist leaders from Continental Europe and the United States.

And fifthly, a recent poster campaign in this constituency’s principal town of Consett has endorsed the sitting MP, specifically against me by name, on behalf of every Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist, Shachtmanite and anarchist organisation in Great Britain and Ireland, and on behalf of every dissident Irish Republican organisation opposed to the peace process.

A serious parliamentary campaign, which would be the only kind worth fighting, would cost £10,000. But we need only to be the First Past the Post. Anyone interested, please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.