Note that the government benches are almost empty. The people who bothered to be present and listen to the debate were overwhelmingly those who voted against Trident. With all Scotland’s MPs but one opposing, this is yet another reason to get a move on with Indyref2. I don’t share the criticism of the Tories for calling this debate and vote – it helpfully clarifies that the representatives of Scotland are treated with contempt, and that the Blairite majority in the Parliamentary Labour Party are in hock to arms industry interests.

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At its height in the 1980’s, Militant claimed 8,000 members. In 2013 its descendant, the Socialist Party, claimed 2,500 members and crowed that it was now bigger than the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP replied, not by claiming to have more than 2,500 members, but by saying that the Socialist Party’s claim of 2,500 was inflated. The various manifestations of the Communist Party are smaller. An umbrella group, the People’s Assembly against Austerity, incorporates more or less all of these disparate elements plus much of the organised left of the Labour Party and trades union supporters. Its mailing list, which includes many Greens and other radicals like me, is 40,000 people. That is probably an exaggeration of the membership of the formal left in the UK and it should be noted that a significant proportion of that 40,000 are long term Labour members. Momentum, the Blairites’ bete noir, has only about 10,000 members.

I have therefore watched with bemusement the claims that the 120,000 new Labour members now banned from voting, and perhaps half of the remaining 400,000 Labour electorate, are entryists from organisations of the “hard left”. Anybody who believes there are over 300,000 members of “hard left” groups in the UK is frankly bonkers.

What we are seeing is rather a spontaneous expression of a genuine popular upsurge against neo-liberalism. Angela Eagle’s car crash interview on the Andrew Marr show this morning was all delectable, but for me the best moment was when Marr asked her if she would resign as an MP if her local party in Wallasey no-confidence her, to which she replied that this could not happen because the national executive had banned all constituency labour party meetings. The attempts of the Labour NEC to play King Canute against a popular tide they cannot begin to comprehend are hilarious.

As these people have come to paid political position through groups of well-connected people pulling the right strings, they assume all politics must work like that. So they are convinced that there must be an entryist cabal who have organised everything, with powerful people pulling the strings. My bet is the Blairites will be defeated, deselected and defenestrated without ever working out it was not a plot. It is just that ordinary people find their vacuous careerism appalling.

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It is self-evidently essential to negotiate for Independent Scotland to remain in the EU, in advance of Brexit taking effect. But those negotiations will take time – budgetary contributions, relationship to the Euro, the Central Bank and Schengen, fisheries quotas, representation in the parliament and commission, Phare and research grants, structural and development funding, and those are only a few of a massive list of details to be settled before Independent Scotland takes its place in the EU. There is over a year of negotiation there.

But Scotland’s position becomes much more difficult if there is not a seamless transition. If when the rest of the UK withdraws, Scotland remains seated at the table as a successor member without its citizens losing that status, both the process and the substance are very much simpler than if Scotland leaves with Brexit and has to apply to rejoin. Indeed there is a respectable legal argument that in the first case Scotland’s continuing membership cannot be subject to single state veto, whereas a Scotland which is rejoining could.

The stark fact is this. Scotland cannot await the outcome of Brexit negotiations. These are certain to take up almost all of the available time between triggering of Article 50 and actual Brexit two years later. If Scotland waits, it will be too late for Independent Scotland to negotiate her own terms in time for continuing EU membership on rBrexit.

The only possible result of the petrified stalling of the SNP in the face of the obvious need for IndyRef2 is that they will fail in both of their objectives. Even at the earliest the Scottish Government may call for IndyRef2 on their current plans, it will be too late. Scotland will find itself still inside the UK and outside of the EU or just about to be. They will then face the prospect of selling Independence with no guarantee that we will be allowed back in.

Caution can be good. But there are times in life where inaction, though from the best of motives, may prove disastrous. I very much fear that, if we do not move to hold Indyref2 in spring 2017, the sequence of events may mean we miss the chance for Independence for a great many decades.

There should be no equivocation. The answer to Turkey’s problems is not a military coup against an elected government and a return to decades of military dictatorship. The Turkish people pouring out on the streets to resist the military are not only Erdogan supporters, and they are inspiring in their courage.

It is time for straight talking. Philip Hammond stated the plain truth when he said that Scotland could not have a different relationship with the EU than the rest of the UK. It is true as a simple technical truth, as I explained. If the UK leaves the EU, the only way for Scotland to remain a member is Independence. Frankly anybody who understands the first thing about the subject knows that and it is actually helpful for Hammond to explain it. I have no doubt that May gave Sturgeon the same message today. By proclaiming commitment to Unionism in the first sentence of her first speech in Number 10, and then immediately coming to Edinburgh, May could not have made her position clearer. Further there is no doubt that Hammond would have cleared his unequivocal statement with May before he made it.

If I can forsake honesty and straightforwardness, and try to channel Machiavelli, I can make out a case for Nicola Sturgeon to initiate a time-consuming – and expensive – process of entering extensive consultations to try to find a way that Scotland can effectively remain in both the EU and the UK, even though I have no doubt whatsoever that Sturgeon, who is not stupid, knows as well as I do that this is an impossibility. That Machiavellian argument goes like this – “We know it is impossible for Scotland to continue EU membership still within the UK if the UK leaves, but we must be seen to have explored all avenues so that unionists will be persuaded that independence is the only option left.”

But here are four arguments against that:

1) Pitching independence as a very bad option, only to be taken if no others are available, is not a good sales technique
2) Wasting European politicians’ time asking for an impossible “part of UK” arrangement will erode the initial surge of sympathetic support for Scotland’s democratic desire to remain in the EU, which sympathy has been strongly felt in Europe
3) Sturgeon has appointed an “expert panel” to advise her with a massive establishment and neo-liberal bias and a unionist majority, containing just a single radical thinker, Alan Mille.
4) We are witnessing the final implosion of the British Empire with the Westminster bubble detested and politics in a state of flux. There could be no more auspicious time to launch a new push for Independence. This is not the time for temporising.

The appointment of such an establishment “expert panel” really does worry me. You can guarantee that this panel is not going to recommend that Scotland leaves the UK in order to obtain a continuing or expedited membership of the EU. Three are former FCO colleagues of mine. They happen to all be people I like, but I don’t dislike people for their politics. You could not get a more solid establishment man than Lord John Kerr. He is on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, for Christ’s sake. David Frost as CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association actively campaigned against independence. Mariot Leslie is sound and pro-Indy but not radical.

Bluntly the composition of this panel worries me that Nicola Sturgeon is seeking not to push forward for independence and does not want an Indyref2. Why else would you appoint a representative of the steering committee of Bilderberg to your expert panel, together with fistfuls of other uber-establishment figures? For me, it says a lot about Sturgeon that she has chosen to advise her a group of people almost all of whom are used to six figure incomes and whose average income is well over £200,000 p.a.

Stuart Campbell hit the nail – as so often – on the head when he suggested that actually Hammond’s position should be a gift which Sturgeon accepts. It is extremely helpful that Westminster states Scotland can only be a member of the EU if it leaves the UK. It is true, and it is a choice the Scottish people must be offered to sort out the two incompatible referendum results. In a choice between the EU and Tory Westminster – a far clearer choice than Indyref1 – I am confident how the vote will go. For Heaven’s sake, Nicola, quit messing around with your entirely voluntary association with the Bilderberg Group and go for the referendum.

Even the mainstream media feel compelled to drop hints that Owen Smith is not what he is being promoted as. The Guardian’s words yesterday were unintentionally revealing;

the former shadow work and pensions secretary plans to pitch himself as the soft-left option

Note “to pitch himself”. For PR professional Smith, political stance is nothing to do with personal belief, it is to do with brand positioning. On Channel 4 News last night, an incredulous Michael Crick pointed out that the “soft left” Smith had previously given interviews supporting PFI and privatisation in the health service. He also strongly supported Blair’s city academies.

As chief lobbyist for Pfizer, Smith actively pushed for privatisation of NHS services. This is not something Pfizer did very openly, and you have to search the evidence carefully. Footnotes often tell you what is really happening, as in this press release in which Owen Smith says of a Pfizer funded “focus group” study:

We believe that choice is a good thing and that patients and healthcare professionals should be at the heart of developing the agenda.

You have to look at the footnotes to see what kind of choice Owen Smith is actually talking about. Note to Editors 3 includes

“The focus groups also explored areas of choice that do not yet exist in the UK – most specifically the use of direct payments and the ability to choose to go directly to a specialist without first having to see the GP.”

Well, at least it is clear – direct payments from the public to doctors replacing current NHS services. Smith was promoting straight privatisation. As Head of Policy and Government Relations for Pfizer, Owen Smith was also directly involved in Pfizer’s funding of Blairite right wing entryist group Progress. Pfizer gave Progress £53,000. Progress has actively pursued the agenda of PFI and privatisation of NHS services.

Owen Smith went to Pfizer from a Labour Party job, while Labour were in government, and there is no doubt that his hiring was an example of the corrupt relationship between New Labour and big business which is why the Blairites are so hated by the public. It is also beyond any argument that if Pfizer had any doubts about Owen Smith’s willingness to promote the Big Pharma and NHS Privatisation agenda, they would never have hired him.

Owen Smith is a strong supporter of Trident and assiduously courts the arms industry. He is a regular at defence industry events.

Perhaps most crucially of all, Owen Smith joined his fellow Red Tories in abstaining on the Tory welfare benefit cuts.

I do not doubt Owen Smith’s expertise in brand positioning. I expect that there are indeed a large number of Labour Party members who might vote for a left wing alternative to Corbyn. But I also suspect that Smith has adopted the PR man’s typical contempt for the public, who are not as stupid as he seems to think. There is no evidence whatsoever that Smith is a left winger. There is every evidence that he is another New Labour unprincipled and immoral careerist, adopting a left wing pose that he thinks will win him votes.

People will notice, Owen. They really are not that stupid.

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I hope today that people will remember Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Carne Ross, and Katherine Gun, who were all prepared to give up excellent careers to stand against the war in Iraq.

Blair is still a creature of absolute self-serving slime. His attempt yesterday to justify the invasion of Iraq as an effort to prevent a 9/11 on British soil is dishonest in every way. Blair knew full well that Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11 – that was his still friends and financiers the Saudi elite. The intelligence advice in advance of the invasion he received was unequivocal that it would increase the threat to the UK, and it directly caused the attacks of 7/7.

The broadcast media seem to think the Chilcot report is an occasion to give unlimited airtime to Blair and Alastair Campbell. Scores of supporters and instigators of the was have been interviewed. By contrast, almost no airtime has been given to those who campaigned against the war.

Cameron’s speech to parliament was such an out and out, and dishonest, apologia for the invasion that it bore no relationship to the report. Corbyn is no orator, but his genuine moral outrage was justified. The Blairites who heckled him from behind during his speech are disgusting. If any meaningful democratic choice is to be offered to people in England and Wales, the Blairites have to be removed from the Labour Party to join with their fellow Tories.

The SNP are playing a blinder on Chilcot. I do hope Salmond moves forward with impeachment, not least because it will both force the Blairites to expose themselves, and reveal the deep feelings against Blair’s actions in the military linked wing of the Tory party.

As predicted, Chilcot had to repeat the Butler Inquiry’s verdict that the intelligence was not fixed, because Chilcot was himself on the Butler Inquiry. It is a lie, the intelligence was knowingly fixed. More on that later.

I apologise these are very brief thoughts. I have not had the opportunity to pay the attention you would expect, as my mother has been taken into hospital and I had yesterday to dash down to Norwich. It will be a few days before I am able to concentrate on politics.

The death toll from the horrific recent Iraq bombings has risen over 250. If Blair had not been absolutely determined to attack Iraq on the basis of a knowing lie about WMD, they would be alive now, along with millions of other dead. ISIS would never have taken control of territory in Iraq and Syria. Al Qaeda would never have grown from an organisation of a few hundred to one of tens of thousands. We would not have a completely destabilised Middle East and a massive refugee crisis.

Do not expect a full truth and a full accounting from the Chilcot panel of establishment trusties today. Remember who they are.

Sir John Chilcot

Member of the Butler Inquiry which whitewashed the fabrication of evidence of Iraqi WMD. The fact is that, beyond doubt, the FCO and SIS knew there were no Iraqi WMD. In the early 1990’s I had headed the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, tasked with monitoring and preventing Iraqi attempts at weapons procurement. In 2002 I was on a course for newly appointed Ambassadors alongside Bill Patey, who was Head of the FCO Department dealing with Iraq. Bill is a fellow Dundee University graduate and is one of the witnesses before the Iraq Inquiry this morning. I suggested to him that the stories we were spreading about Iraqi WMD could not be true. He laughed and said “Of course not Craig, it’s bollocks”. I had too many other conversations to mention over the next few months, with FCO colleagues who knew the WMD scare to be false.

Yet Chilcot was party to a Butler Inquiry conclusion that the Iraqi WMD scare was an “Honest mistake”. That a man involved on a notorious whitewash is assuring us that this will not be one, is bullshit.

Sir Roderick Lyne

A good friend and former jogging partner of Alastair Campbell.

Last time I actually spoke to him we were both Ambassadors and on a British frigate moored on the Neva in St Petersburg. Colleagues may have many words to describe Rod Lyne, some of them complimentary, but “open-minded” is not one of them.

If the Committee were to feel that the Iraq War was a war crime, then Rod Lyne would be accusing himself. As Ambassador to Moscow he was active in trying to mitigate Russian opposition to the War. He personally outlined to the Russian foreign minister the lies on Iraqi WMD. There was never the slightest private indication that Lyne had any misgivings about the war.

From Uzbekistan we always copied Moscow in on our reporting telegrams, for obvious reasons. Lyne responded to my telegrams protesting at the CIA’s use of intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers, by requesting not to be sent such telegrams.

Sir Lawrence Freedman

Lawrence Freedman is the most appalling choice of all. The patron saint of “Justified” wars of aggression, and exponent of “Wars of Choice” and “Humanitarian Intervention”. He is 100% parti pris.

Here is part of his evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution on 18 January 2006:

The basic idea here is that our armed forces prepared for what we might call wars of necessity, that the country was under an existential threat so if you did not respond to that threat then in some very basic way our vital interests, our way of life, would be threatened, and when you are looking at certain such situations, these are great national occasions. The difficulty we are now facing with wars of choice is that these are discretionary and the government is weighing a number of factors against each other. I mentioned Sierra Leone but Rwanda passed us by, which many people would think was an occasion when it would have been worth getting involved. There was Sudan and a lot of things have been said about Darfur but not much has happened…

…Iraq was a very unusual situation where it was not an ongoing conflict. If we had waited things would not have been that much different in two or three months’ time and so, instead of responding either to aggression by somebody else, as with the Falklands, or to developing humanitarian distress, as in the Balkans, we decided that security considerations for the future demanded immediate action.”

Sir Martin Gilbert (died in course of Inquiry)

Very right wing historian whose biography of Churchill focussed on Gilbert’s relish for war and was otherwise dull. (Roy Jenkins’ Churchill biography is infinitely better). Gilbert was not only rabidly pro-Iraq War, he actually saw Blair as Churchill.

Although it can easily be argued that George W Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did – that the war on terror is not a third world war – they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill. Their societies are too divided today to deliver a calm judgment, and many of their achievements may be in the future: when Iraq has a stable democracy, with al-Qaeda neutralised, and when Israel and the Palestinian Authority are independent democracies, living side by side in constructive economic cooperation.

Baroness Prashar

A governor of the FCO institution the Ditchley Foundation – of which the Director is Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the UK Ambassador to the UN who presented the lies about Iraqi WMD and was intimately involved in the lead in to war. So very much another cosy foreign policy insider.

So, in short, the committee – all hand-picked by Gordon Brown – could not have been better picked to ensure a whitewash.

Over 50% of the British population were against the Iraq War, including for example many scores of distinguished ex-Ambassadors, many military men and many academics. Yet Brown chose nobody on the Inquiry who had been against the Iraq War, while three out of five were active and open supporters of the war.

Do not expect to see this truth reflected in any of the mainstream media coverage.

There is no requirement in international law for the appropriate jurisdiction of a tribunal – or even the tribunal itself – to be in place before a crime is committed, in order for it to try that crime. The most obvious evidence of this is the Nuremburg Tribunal, which did not even exist when the crimes which it tried were committed. But in fact international law has a long tradition of arbitration or judgement by bodies which were set up after the event, but judging by the law applicable at the time of the event. It is the crime itself which must be a crime at the time it is committed. The jurisdiction of the body which tries the criminal can be created after the crime itself.

Total nonsense has been written widely that it would be retroactive law, and thus unacceptable, for Tony Blair to be tried at the Hague for the crime of waging aggressive war. But the crime itself was very plainly already in existence when Blair committed it.

Indeed, Blair apologists claim that the Statute of Rome of 1998, which set up the International Criminal Court, means that Blair cannot face trial because it specifically exempts aggressive war from the jurisdiction of the court. But in fact that is the opposite of the truth. The Statute of Rome unequivocally confirms the existence of the crime of waging aggressive war. It states that the tribunal “shall not exercise jurisdiction over the crime of aggression”. That is in itself sufficient evidence that the international community reconfirmed the existence of the crime of aggression in 1998, shortly before Blair committed it in 2003.

It just means that at present the crime has to be prosecuted somewhere else. The FCO’s Legal Advisers, a department of extremely able professional international lawyers, unanimously believed the invasion of Iraq was an act of aggressive war, as plainly told to Chilcot by their then Head Sir Michael Wood.

If the Hague tribunal obtains, as expected, power to cover this crime, there is no reason in principle why it should not investigate such crimes which were committed before it had that jurisdiction. Except that we can be sure that the British government will ensure there is a clause in the agreement forbidding that. Then there is the fact that Blair is not a black African and has never been bombed by NATO. Nobody who fails to meet those criteria will ever be tried at the Hague.

Blair is a war criminal. He can be tried by n international tribunal, or he can, more satisfactory still, be tried in the UK. The attempts of his defenders to claim it is impossible technically to try him gives some sign how desperate they have become. Aggressive war was a crime at the time he committed it.

Tomorrow the Chilcot whitewash will be liberally splashed around. I do strongly recommend that you buy and read Peter Oborne’s Not the Chilcot Report to get the real picture.

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A quick Google news search for “Theresa May and “Abu Qatada” reveals over 2,000 mainstream media articles in the last three days combining both. This is hardly surprising, as in her speech announcing her candidacy for Tory leader (and thus PM) May dwelt on her deportation of Abu Qatada as evidence she was qualified for the job. The May supporting Tory MP who was put up for Sky to interview immediately afterwards managed to say “Abu Qatada” three times in a two minute interview.

Abu Qatada should indeed be a powerful symbol – but not the symbol he has become, a hate figure. He should rather be a symbol of the hate-filled and intolerant place Britain has become, and the dreadful injustice meted out to individuals both by the state and the media.

Abu Qatada spent, over a thirteen year period, a total of nine years in jail in England despite never being charged with any crime. It is not just that he was not convicted. He was never charged. Nine years, think about it. In all that time, neither he nor his lawyers were ever permitted to see the accusations or evidence against him.

Britain has draconian anti-terrorism laws that would make a dictatorship blush. It is an offence to “glorify” terrorism. It is specifically “terrorism” for me to write, here and now, that Nelson Mandela was justified in supporting the bombing campaign that got him arrested. I just knowingly committed “glorifying terrorism” under British law. It is specifically “terrorism” to deface the property in the UK of a foreign state with a political motive. If I spray “Gay Pride” on the Saudi embassy, that is terrorism. We also have secret courts, where “terrorists” can be convicted without ever seeing the “intelligence-based” evidence against them. We have convicted young idiots for discussing terror fantasies online. We have convicted a wife who “must have known” what her husband was doing (at least that one was overturned on appeal).

Yet even with the bar so low it is resting on the ground, from his first arrest in 2001 to his deportation in 2013, through innumerable arrests, police interviews, wiretaps, computer seizures and searches, no evidence against Abu Qatada was ever found which would stand up in court. It is worth noting that if almost any of the vast number of accusations the tabloids made against him had been true, for example if he had actually said in sermons the things he was stated to have said in the UK press, he could have been charged and convicted. But investigation by the police and security services found every single one of these claims to be false.

It is true that Theresa May did succeed in deporting him. To Jordan, where he faced charges of association with terrorist groups. In two trials, one before a military tribunal, Abu Qatada was found not guilty of association with terrorism and all other charges. It should be very plainly understood that the Jordanian monarchy is no friend at all to Palestinian salafist clerics like Abu Qatada, and he had good reason to fear being deported there. But even they found that the evidence Abu Qatada is a terrorist does not exist.

Now I have never met him, though I have met his lawyers and doctor. Abu Qatada holds views with which I do not agree; I dislike the bigoted in any religion. But his main crime appears to have been to be a Palestinian cleric with a perfect comic opera appearance for the right wing media to make up quotes and hate stories around.

This picture is taken from a hilarious Daily Telegraph article in which that author complains that Abu Qatada had “fooled us again” – by the dastardly expedient of not actually committing any crimes.

So if you are proud of a world in which people against whom there is not one shred of court-worthy evidence, who have never been charged, can be detained for nine years and then deported, vote for Theresa May as PM. I expect the Tories will, happily.

Abu Qatada should indeed be a symbol. He should be a symbol of the deepest national disgrace of unjustified imprisonment and of the foul place the United Kingdom has become under successive far right Labour and Tory governments. And I say far right with deliberation. In what other kind of country could the story of Abu Qatada happen?

Al Jazeera’s Listening Post programme on the EU referendum media coverage was just broadcast. They only used about 5% of what they recorded of me, split into four soundbites to fit their format.

I think the much more interesting points I made were not used at all. So just for the record, I also made these points:

a) I did not accept the argument that the BBC was biased in the referendum campaign towards Brexit. Indeed especially in the last few days, I thought it was biased towards Remain.
b) However the BBC had been guilty of helping promote Brexit by giving Farage massive and disproportionate publicity for many years, from when UKIP was a negligible electoral force. They were always willing to give right wings views publicity but not left wing views.
c) The right wing print media were indeed a major problem distorting democracy. However the solution to this should be to break up media ownership, not impose government control of content.
d) Project Fear had not succeeded in the Scottish referendum. It had seen a 35 point unionist lead cut to a 10 point lead, making it one of the most disastrous campaigns in history. The question of why Project Fear “succeeded” in Scotland but not the EU referendum was therefore a false one.
e) Media coverage focused on the despised political class rather than the facts.

I do not blame Al Jazeera at all or accuse them of doing anything unethical – they were looking for soundbites for their broadcast. But I do think the above points which they did not broadcast, were a great deal more interesting than their programme!

Yesterday I received a begging letter from Katharine Viner of the Guardian

Perhaps they will be able to induce individuals to give £10 a month, £120 will buy Polly Toynbee one lunch at the Ivy. But apart from the ethics of asking ordinary people to fund some of the most overpaid people in the country, there are questions about the claims which Viner makes. She talks of Guardian journalism as “well-sourced”, “calm”, “intelligent”, “in-depth”, “thoughtful” and “well-resourced.”

Now I put each of those in inverted commas, to indicate they are words which Ms Viner actually used in the full email. (The image is an extract).

Now let us look at some of the Guardian’s actual output. Today Gaby Hinshliff, in a highly slanted comment on yesterday’s incident involving Ruth Smeeth, writes in the Guardian that

a Corbynite activist stood up and accused her of being part of a “media conspiracy” against her own party

Note Ms Hinshliff’s use of inverted commas there, indicating that “media conspiracy” was the actual phrase used. Except it wasn’t. Wadsworth never used the phrase, or indeed either of the words “media” and “conspiracy” separately. What he actually said is widely available, as is video footage of him saying it. I published it yesterday, along with what I hope was a very rational consideration of what the incident did and did not signify .

Strangely enough, the only place the words “media conspiracy” occur – actually in inverted commas – is in Ruth Smeeth’s own press release.

So, at best, Gaby Hinshliff is merely an extremely lazy journalist who took Ruth Smeeth’s false account of what was said and wrote about it with no effort at all to check it and see if it was true, or if there was another side of the story. A ten second google search would have corrected her. Extreme laziness and the lowest of journalistic standards is the very best explanation of Hinshliff’s behaviour. At worst, Hinshliff is knowingly and deliberately repeating and amplifying a deliberate lie.

What is beyond any possible dispute is that Hinshliff has demonstrated that Viner’s claim that the Guardian produces responsible, properly researched and ethical journalism is another plain lie.

The difficulty is that the Guardian has columnists who are so blinded by their own prejudices and hatreds as to be incapable of rational analysis. On precisely the same subject, somebody suggested to Nick Cohen he look at my article on the Ruth Smeeth case to see another side of the story. Cohen’s reply seems to me a fair summation of the intellectual standards and ethos which now prevail at the Guardian:

The rejoinder to him seems perfectly fair, but received no response. I like to think of myself as delightfully eccentric, rather than a “fruitcake”. But the notion you can completely ignore or dismiss an argument by an insulting ad hominem again reflects the very opposite to the standards Viner claims that the Guardian espouses.

I do hope none of you gave them any money.

I remain strongly opposed to Brexit. However, I feel obliged to state, purely as a matter of intellectual honesty, that if the UK leaves the EU, even if it has no special trade deal and is merely subject to WTO terms, the fall in value of sterling already due to Brexit would give its goods a comparative advantage over the pre-referendum position even when the EU tariffs are applied. I say that in response to some of the apocalyptic comment around matter of fact remarks by the EU trade commissioner.

It is unfortunate that political debate in the UK has descended to such a debased intellectual level. If you support a position, you are not ever to admit there are any counter arguments on any aspects of that position which might have the remotest intellectual validity. Thus, in the EU referendum campaign, Leavers painted the EU as a dastardly organisation bent on evil and controlling everybody’s lives, and Remainers portrayed it as an earthly paradise to which the alternative was eternal damnation and plagues of affliction. One of the arguments the Blairites use against Corbyn is that he had the temerity to employ nuance and intellectual honesty in discussing the EU. Intellectual honesty is certainly not something Tony Blair ever employed.

Politics has become a branch of PR. It is just about selling. The party, candidate or policy you are selling must be portrayed as the absolute epitome of excellence, with no flaws whatsoever. Political discourse has therefore become juvenile. It is about expensively dressed, well groomed salesmen with perfect teeth. Thought is positively frowned upon.