Here is the lesson I draw from the 9,455 votes cast for Count Binface at Clacton on Thursday. The country is still in flux. So if I were Andrew Burnham, I would call a General Election in October. In doing so, I would expect to lose quite a large chunk of Labour’s current majority. But so what if he wins enough to stay in office?
Big majorities only encourage backbench revolts and make it harder to stay in control. He will be able to campaign – and, if he wins, govern – on a manifesto different from Sir Keir Starmer’s weird, vague document.
Instead of being first among equals on Labour’s front bench, he will be the unchallenged boss. He saw what happened to Gordon Brown when he hesitated too long to do the same thing. I suspect he learned from it.
It certainly looks as if Burnham can rely on the divided ‘Right’ to continue to make fools of themselves. Nigel Farage, for instance, is firmly set on being the nation’s most active and plaintive victim. It is almost as if he has had a character transplant.
The latest example of this was his refusal to turn up at the Clacton result. Was he scared of being upstaged by Binface? Oh, honestly.
Not that long ago, Mr Farage was not much more respectable than Binface is now. How long will it be before he starts complaining about his ‘mental health’?
Nigel Farage is firmly set on being the nation’s most active and plaintive victim. It is almost as if he has had a character transplant, writes Peter Hitchens
The latest example of this was his refusal to turn up at the Clacton result. Was he scared of being upstaged by Binface? Oh, honestly
As for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, what possessed her to offer a ‘second chance’ to a former Nazi who had racially harassed a prominent Jewish Labour politician?
The man is even called Bonehead-Pain, or something of the sort. If she was so determined to do this thing, her aides should have locked her in an outhouse, with a flask of water and some sausage rolls, to stop her. But do you really need an adviser to tell you to stay away from a man who has done time for Nazi harassment?
If she can give a second chance to this character, how long before she gives a ‘second chance’ to unrecognised economic genius Liz Truss, perhaps as Shadow Chancellor? It’s a question of judgment, you see. People will remember it.
I’m reasonably sure Mr Boneyard has seen the error of his ways (even more so than before, probably).
People just don’t like Nazis, however ex they may be.
There are plenty of jobs in modern Britain well suited to reformed Nazis, and many of them would allow him to wear a uniform and perhaps even a peaked cap. But politics isn’t one of them.
Secrecy in Letby trial casts a shadow over our justice
We may at last be entering the final months of the Lucy Letby quarrel. It is nearly three years since I asked here if she might in fact be not guilty. At the time this meant I met quite a lot of rage and scorn. I don’t find that so much now. But our court system hates to admit it might be wrong. I suspect that is precisely because it is so often wrong these days.
The Letby trial was a mess, partly because so much of it was secret. No fewer than nine Crown witnesses were allowed to hide their names from you and me, pretty much forever. The names of the babies allegedly killed or harmed by Ms Letby were also made secret.
If this had been the trial of a traitor for handing nuclear secrets to the Kremlin, then there might have been a case for such rules. Members of the security services, for instance, are made useless if we all know who they are.
But I can see no such case here. In the USA, it would be illegal to grant any such thing. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution grants a defendant the right ‘to be confronted with the witnesses against him’. How can that work, if the public does not know who these witnesses are? The witness walks out of court and back into his life, and only he knows he has testified, though his words may have been reported to millions that night on TV.
What if a witness has secrets from the court, which might weaken his evidence, but which are known to others? How will those others realise this, and be able to contact the court, if they do not know who the witness is?
The radical barrister, Geoffrey Robertson KC, denounced the legislation allowing this as a ‘perjurers’ charter’. Yet it is now law. So is Michael Howard’s abolition of the right to silence. So is the ancient rule about being tried twice for the same offence (these changes, too, would be impossible in the USA),
Foolishly trusting our own rulers, we have again and again granted the state more power over us. Often this has been done on the thin pretext of ‘terrorism’, which we have all been persuaded to think is a constant deadly threat.
Every time this happens, the chorus of the complacent have chanted merrily: ‘If you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear.’ But it isn’t true, as dozens of innocent people, now locked away for years, in squalor and fear, know all too well.
Only a tiny number of these injustices will ever be put right. The rest will continue to shame us for years to come.
These thoughts are prompted by news that one of the witnesses against Ms Letby, known only as ‘Dr A’ , has died. I know nothing of him. I offer my condolences to his family. But I suspect his evidence against her, largely speculation, did her considerable damage – because they had once been on friendly terms.
Would he have given such evidence if he had been compelled to do so under his own name? I do not know, and nor do you. And that is the problem.
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