"Why Are You Standing Against A Left Candidate?"

Neither Jayda Fransen nor any of her named supporters against me has issued any sort of denial. Nor has any of those who have been named against me in support of Laura Pidcock: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and Shachtmanites, anarchists and the dissident Irish Republican opponents of the peace process. Like Fransen and Friends, those latter all know that they have been listed. Like Fransen and Friends, none of them has demurred. They have fielded or endorsed many a candidate against each other. They have fielded or endorsed many a candidate against the Labour Left. Frank Dobson was few people's idea of a right-wing Labourite even in the pre-Blair days, never mind in 2000, when Ken Livingstone beat him for Mayor of London. On the last three occasions that George Galloway has stood for Parliament, then he has done so against left-wing Labour candidates.

The Labour machine here has been worked up about the possibility of my intervention for a decade. Ask them, and they will tell you. Had my health not failed in 2010, then, with the support that I have now, I might just about have been the First Past the Post; even without that support, then I would have taken enough votes to have given the seat to the Lib Dems. Had I been able to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign in the time between the calling of last year's General Election and that event itself, then I would at the very least have taken enough votes to have seen Laura Pidcock elected with fewer that half of those cast, thereby bringing this seat well and truly into play for the Conservatives next time. Not inconceivably, I could have given this seat to the Conservatives this time.

Ms Pidcock and her entourage do not appreciate any of this, but that is because this time last year, they had never set eyes on North West Durham. She does, however, have necessarily recent form as an electoral asset to the Conservative Party. And a key figure in that entourage is Ben Sellers, her avowedly Trotskyist "Political Advisor" whose political advice has cost 472 of Durham County Council's Teaching Assistants 23 per cent of their pay. Of course, I would have been elected to Durham County Council last year if Labour had not cheated. But by selecting the candidates that they did in this ward (a seriously ill old man, and a young mother with no political background), then they factored in at least one by-election between now and 2021. See you at that.

I am 40 now. It is 15 years since the Labour Party ruined my life, although it must be said that it has also ruined Neil Fleming's life in the meantime. He, too, is 40, but if anything he stands less chance of entering Parliament than I do. Lanchester, where he once chaired the Parish Council, is now presented to the world as the political base of Laura Pidcock. Either the Conservative Party as such, or, not to put too fine a point on it, the Lib Dem candidate personally, could have afforded to have challenged her election on the grounds that she had given a false address on the paperwork. I have no idea why they did not do so. I certainly would have done.

The vengeful delight would still be real in delivering this seat to "the Tories", shrieked as if the mere shrieking of it closed any debate. But at my age, I am well and truly in it to win it. I know perfectly well that this is my last chance. All that I need is £10,000, and preferably also the people to deliver the leaflets bought with those monies. Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and especially the strong local networks of Independents, this is your opportunity. Therefore, this is your responsibility. And stalwarts of the local Labour Party, with whom do you have more in common? Do you have more in common with Laura Pidcock and with her arrogant, exotic entourage, whom you had never met this time last year, but with whom you are most certainly acquainted today? Or do you have more in common with Alex Watson and with me?