Military technology has moved on since the Vietnam war. The defeat of the United States by an army employing basic artillery and machine guns supplemented by creative use of bamboo, has left an indelible impression on the western psyche. But it is in many ways a false one. Many trillions of dollars have been spent since on military technology, and the gap in resources between the USA and most potential opponents is enormous.

The effect of this technology gap is plain to see in recent conflicts. In Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya the conventional fighting was won extremely quickly. In Iraq really substantial Iraqi conventional forces, technologically rather more advanced than North Korean, were wiped out while they inflicted almost no damage. The Falklands War was also a striking instance of the difference between the most advanced and middle ranking military technology. The gap has grown since. Modern western military aircraft technology is very little vulnerable to the air defence systems that can be deployed against it.

Of course, all those conflicts illustrate that winning a conventional war phase is the beginning, not the end, of problems for the western powers and that such conflicts are extremely damaging not just to the attacked party, and to the world in general, but to the western powers that “win”. But great for shifting wealth from ordinary western people to the military and armaments industry.

North Korea has massive military resources in numerical terms. But in truth North Korea deploys almost nothing on the ground that would have been extremely startling to an informed person in 1946. If the United States chose to throw a really serious percentage of its military resources at North Korea, more than it threw at Iraq – and I specifically mean aerial forces and missiles – it could wipe out North Korea’s military capacity extremely quickly. It could even do so before North Korea could inflict damage on Seoul of cataclysmic proportions.

All this would of course involve the deaths of millions of North Koreans, mostly civilians, and hundreds of thousands of South Koreans. But it could be done.

There are two groups of people who will be irked by this analysis. The first group are those who detest the United States and therefore dearly wish it was militarily weaker than it is. But the truth is that for my entire lifetime, the United States military has had over three times as much money spent on equipping it as the Soviet/Russian and Chinese militaries combined. That is a very bad thing for the United States, but nonetheless it is true. That does have an effect.

The second group who will disagree vehemently with me are, counter-intuitively, the western arms manufacturers and military lobby.

During the cold war we were taught for years that the mighty Red Army was set to roll over Europe. I recall television programmes showing diagrams with scores of Russian tanks for every NATO tank opposing them. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in many of the former Soviet Republics and, for a period under Yeltsin, in Russia itself, western military attaches were able to get a close-up look at what had been the Soviet war machine. The overwhelming trend of a great mass of evidence was that the West had vastly over-estimated Soviet military capacity, both in terms of quantity and especially quality of its capabilities.

This was, of course, not an accident. The arms industry, the military and the security services were the institutions which were responsible for estimating Soviet military strength. The arms industry, the military and security services all had the strongest possible motive for over-estimating Soviet strength. Their own funding and thus the incomes and career opportunities of those doing the estimating, all depended on the over-estimates.

There was a very brief period at the end of the Cold War when this reality was acknowledged in Whitehall and I remember it clearly within the FCO. It was, as I say, a very brief period. The armaments, military and security industries will always massively over-estimate the “opposition” and explain that only vastly more resources fed their way can “keep us safe”.

To return to the United States’ ability to crush North Korea militarily if it really puts major resources into it, my worry is that Donald Trump is aware of this. He appears to be crazy enough to consider doing it, or at least to threaten to do it, which is almost as dangerous.
But the danger is not, as media pundits have it, that North Korea is too strong and would pulverise South Korea. That is not a real danger, unless Trump’s attack was half-hearted or token. The obvious and massive danger is that China would never accept a military attack on its ally, and Trump would be risking a nuclear conflict which ruins us all.

I do not think Trump is crazy enough to risk a military attack on North Korea. But he plainly is crazy enough to think that this kind of crude threatening posture is the way to get China to take serious action against Kim Jong On. That is a very serious misreading of China. How the United States copes over the next decade with being overtaken by China as the biggest global superpower, will define the coming century. Trump appears to be making a calamitous start.

Blairite wipeout in Scotland teaches us an important lesson about them. They have no particular beliefs other than in their own careers. Progress was always more about career progress than societal progress. When politics stops being a nice little earner, the Blairites will very easily give it up.

If they had strongly held principles and beliefs, they would continue fighting for them even if they made nothing from it and it actually cost them money, like, umm, me. But you don’t see any Blairite ex-MPs who have spent the last couple of years on wholehearted political campaigning or working for their party. They have gone where the money is – many accepting their remunerative reward from the corporations they so loyally served while in office. Many with banks and financé companies; Brian Wilson never stopped working for the nuclear industry whether in parliament or out. Some have joined the laughably called modern charities sector with its high six figure salaries. The only professional Scottish Blairite (though not MP) who has prominently remained loosely connected to politics, John McTernan, has done so as the lowest kind of journalistic prostitute, damning Labour for anyone who will pay him.

When I read that Tory lickspittle right winger Blair McDougall is to be the Labour candidate in East Renfrewshire, my first thought was “Oh great, that’ll split the Tory vote, SNP hold.” My second was “where is Jim Murphy?”. The far right Henry Jackson Society member Murphy was so dedicated to the cause, he carried his own soapbox and braved eggs. Surely he hasn’t given up? Surely he’s fighting again? But no, none of them are. As soon as the Blairites found politics stopped giving them large wodges of cash, they all lost interest in it, completely. You will search this election in vain for the dulcet tones of wee Dougie Alexander.

It was not ever thus. Gladstone and Churchill are but two examples that spring instantly to mind of politicians who lost constituency elections after they were MPs, but kept fighting and made comebacks. But whatever you can say about Gladstone and Churchill, they were not just in it for the money.

I do not think Labour face a wipeout in England of the same scale they did in Scotland. In fact, I do not think this will be a comfortable election for the Tories, as even the media cannot prevent the electorate from twigging May avoids people, avoids scrutiny, and is programmed with only three lines. But if Labour do suffer large losses in England, then Corbyn should look to Scotland for an example and take heart. Any defeated Blairites will not come back. They go away if you stop paying them. That should embolden him to carry on as leader. Politics is in an era of unprecedented volatility, and assuming May is re-elected, within two years she will be massively unpopular as the effects of Brexit hit.

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Marine LePen is an actual racist and fascist. Anybody arguing for her will be permanently banned from commenting on the blog. Fair warning.

On Radio 4 this morning Defence Secretary Michael Fallon argued not just for Trident missiles, but for first use of nuclear weapons and “pre-emptive nuclear war”. There was no misunderstanding or circumstance – he was queried very specifically on the exact point. Not only do the Tories support having weapons of mass destruction, they support using them when none have been used against us.

The whole discussion is of course a fantasy as there is no danger whatsoever of a major attack on the UK by any foreign power. Russia has no plans to attack the UK, has never had any plans to attack the UK, and anyway has an economy the size of the Spanish economy. Mind you, the Tories have also been fantasising about war with Spain recently…

There is no sensible justification for Trident. What North Korea shows is that nuclear weapons are no deterrent against other countries developing them. Only a lunatic would actually use them – Kim Jong Un, Michael Fallon, Theresa May – and you can’t deter a lunatic. And Michael Fallon’s suggestion this morning that nuclear weapons in some way deter terrorists is risible.

But just as the media are very wrong to spend the last 24 hours telling us that Jeremy Corbyn is mad because he won’t commit to destroying mankind, it would be equally wrong of me to argue that every single person who supports Trident is a blazing fascist. There are decent people who support Trident. But they would not support the Fallon/May doctrine of “pre-emptive nuclear war” and first use of nuclear weapons.

I would like to believe that the Fallon/May enthusiasm for first use and pushing that red button, along with hard Brexit and anti-immigration rhetoric, would convince some moderate Tories and ex-Labour voters that they are being hustled very quickly down a path it is wrong to go down. But I fear the media water chute has caught them up and realisation may not set in on time.

During the referendum campaign there was a suggestion from the SNP that after Independence we might give WENI (Wales England Northern Ireland) seven years grace to prepare before removing its missiles from the Clyde. I am totally opposed to this. I rather support the Ukrainian solution, whereby an international team is brought in immediately to verify the decommissioning of any nuclear weapons on Scottish territory or in Scottish waters.

If you cut the missiles in two along the middle, they might make good children’s slides.

I haven’t been able to find a video yet of my speech to the Al Jazeera Gala Dinner. I gather there is one somewhere but the sound is the Arabic interpreter. However while I try to sort that here is a picture or two.

Having shared a platform with Jeremy Corbyn several times, I have to admit I had doubts about his leadership capacity. I had none about his heart, his motives, or his intellectual capacity. My doubts were about his interpersonal skills and charisma. I had him marked down as not very sociable and even shy.

I have just watched his interview on Marr where Corbyn performed much better than I would have imagined possible. He was calm, reasonable and even wise. He came over as an attractive personality. He was, in short, excellent.

Marr did the job his masters paid him to. He started, instantly, going for the jugular on the tabloids’ favourite attack line on Jeremy Corbyn. Having stated he was going to kick off with foreign policy, did Marr then ask whether Corbyn would continue to support the Tory policy of selling weapons to the Saudis to kill children in Yemen? Would continue uncritical support of Israel and diplomatic protection of its illegal occupation?

No he went for the tabloid favourite. Would Corbyn push the button and fire nuclear missiles? It says a very great deal about our politics that it is taken by the media establishment as axiomatic that anybody who will not participate in the probable destruction of the entire human race, is the crazy person in the room. It says still more about our media, and who controls it, that this is the very first thing Marr wanted to discuss with Corbyn. Corbyn picked his way through the minefield with a tact and patience which I suspect came over well.

I look forward to Marr seeking to move his interview with Theresa May away from her preferred areas and ask her repeated questions about child poverty, social care, arms sales to terrible regimes, benefit cuts for the disabled and Tory electoral fraud. I much fear extreme disappointment awaits me.

It is extraordinary that this is the first time in nearly 40 years that the UK electorate has been offered the chance to vote for a leader not prepared to sound enthusiastic about global destruction.

It is also the first time in 40 years that a real choice in other areas has been offered the electorate in England. In just this interview things Corbyn outlined – a renationalisation of privatised areas of NHS provision, an end to selective education – are the polar opposite of the Tory Lite offer of Blairite Labour.

That is of course why Marr was so keen to skate over, interrupt and divert those areas and spend far more time and detail on highlighting Corbyn’s lack of support for aggressive militarism, with repeated questions such as “would you kill the leader of ISIS”.

I have been reading “The Candidate“, a fascinating book by Alex Nunn, detailing Corbyn’s rise to the leadership of the Labour Party and the extraordinary (if inept) efforts of the Blairite establishment to stop him. As I do not come from a Labour Party background, the Byzantine structures of the party and its relationship with organised labour are peculiar to me. But one thing comes over very clearly. The Blairites had firm control of the major areas of party machinery and in truth they still do.

The large majority of Corbyn’s MPs would love to drone kill people and have lots of nuclear buttons to push, and would happily privatise anything to any company which sponsors them. The Party also dictates Labour’s aggressive Unionist stance which is why everybody in Scotland should oppose it.

It is not just the MPs. The Boilermakers’ union are not only extreme enthusiasts for nuclear missiles, they would support mass sarin production if it employed their members. I wish Jeremy every success, but I find it impossible to say that I therefore recommend anybody to vote for John Mann or Simon Danczuk. I am not sure that success for Jeremy would be to find himself in No.10 as the hostage of Mann, Danczuk, Watson, Cooper et al.

That is the Corbyn Conundrum.

UPDATE

A number of puzzled Corbyn supporters have asked me who I am advocating they should vote for. A number of people who generally agree with me are upset I am not urging everyone to vote Labour. Well, it is your vote and you should vote for the candidate you like best. But this is my advice.

IN SCOTLAND everybody of progressive mind should vote SNP. It is the most successful anti-neoliberal option. Scotland has a very different political culture to the UK. The break-up of the UK is essential to our well-being and to shaking England out of the peculiar continuing imperialist delusions which grip it.

Westminster elections are the only First Past the Post elections in Scotland. In these elections alone, I do not think it is tactically wise of other pro-Independence parties to stand candidates against the SNP. Let’s first achieve independence, then myriad flowers will bloom.

IN WALES Plaid Cymru because it is high time you found your courage, and they have a decent radical platform. Labour or Lib Dem when its needed to stop a Tory.

IN ENGLAND Whoever has the best chance of beating the Tory. So generally Labour, very often Lib Dem, occasionally Green. With the caveat that you should not vote for Labour (or Lib Dem) candidates who are very obviously just another brand of Tory. If you are Simon Danczuk’s constituent, for example, I would vote Lib Dem there. But if people find they have to vote for a New Labour candidate as the only conceivable way of keeping out a Tory, I could understand that too. You are better placed than me to weigh individual judgements.

I hope that helps.

I am still waiting to hear May asked a question on the severely disabled or terminally ill having their benefits cut or on the increase in child poverty. I foretold accurately over a month ago that the Tories would run an election in which May does not debate and is sheltered from questioning. What I did not predict was the extent to which the media would be complicit in producing unquestioning soft sell puff pieces.

We have had Newsnight’s misty-eyed biopic. Today we have a frankly astonishing effort in the Guardian, plainly based on a Number 10 briefing, telling the entirely untrue story of how the decision to call an election came to May during an idyllic walk in Wales.

What is truly astonishing is that the Guardian feels no need to query the narrative they have been fed, or to so much as consider that other narratives may be true. Had it no effect on May’s thinking that a large number of her MPs – more than her majority – were about to be implicated in criminal prosecution over electoral fraud? Was the fact that the economy is just starting substantial deterioration a factor? Was she tempted by her huge lead in the opinion polls? No, of course not. The Guardian does not have to perish the thought as it never had such disloyal thoughts in the first place. This perfect wife and perfect Christian on the perfect walk with her perfect husband had a revelation from motives of perfect patriotism.

The truly scary thing is that the Guardian is what passes for a left wing newspaper in England. You expect such nonsense from the Mail or Telegraph. But that the BBC and Guardian are both kicking off the election with soft focus May puff pieces tells us a great deal.

Pollster YouGove is into full on propaganda mode. They present results dished up with explanatory press releases for right wing journalists to push. This one was commissioned by Murdoch.

But if you burrow down into the actual data, which no journalist ever does, sometimes there are results which are quite interesting. It is important of course to note that the sample is a self-selecting one of the kind of people who volunteer for online polls, and is then adjusted to account for a number of things including a historic tendency to underrate the Tory vote, so the Tory numbers are consciously increased.

The first warning light flashes at me in the subsamples. The headline 48-24% Tory lead over Labour includes an extraordinary 29% Tory vote in Scotland. That is quite simply impossible. If it proves to be true, I will walk the length of Holyrood Road on my knees. It is bollocks.

That aside, the brittleness of the support the media have whipped up for hard Brexit is shown in a series of questions about the EU. Now it is true – and this was headlined by YouGove and the media – that by a narrow 46-43% the poll states that people believe Britain is right to leave the European Union. (32-60% in Scotland).

But dig into that and you find that support for May’s Brexit is quite extraordinarily brittle. This is the truly striking lesson from this poll, and nobody has picked up on it.

Look at the answers to these questions. In each case I have excluded the don’t knows and recalculated from the table:

Do you think Britain will be better off or worse off after we leave the EU?
Better off: 33%
Worse off: 44%
No Diff 23%

Do you think Britain will have more or less influence in the world after we leave the EU?
More influence: 23%
Less influence: 43%
No Diff: 34%

Do you think leaving the EU will have a good or bad effect on British jobs?

Good for jobs: 29%
Bad for jobs: 41%
No Difference: 30%

Do you think leaving the EU will have a good or bad effect on British pensions?

Good for pensions: 10%
Bad for pensions: 32%
No Difference: 58%

Do you think that leaving the EU will have a good or bad effect on the NHS?

Good for the NHS: 30%
Bad for the NHS: 34%
No Difference: 36%

Do you think there will be more or less immigration into the UK after we leave the EU?

More immigration: 3%
Less immigration: 56%
No Difference: 41%

So Theresa May wishes to hustle to a quick election victory on what she views as a national consensus building around hard Brexit. But that consensus is extremely brittle.

A majority of the population believe that Brexit is bad for the economy, bad for jobs, bad for the NHS, bad for pensions and bad for British influence in the world. The population are being stampeded into a direction that they plainly believe to be against their own self-interest. This makes May extraordinarily vulnerable to pushback on the EU. That should benefit the LibDems. It also shows that the SNP is wrong to backpedal on the EU to placate the Sillars vote. The pro-EU answers to each of those questions in Scotland alone are simply overwhelming.

Brexit’s only salience is on one single issue: immigration. But this poll does something still more interesting. It provides absolute proof of what I have been observing and commenting on for the past ten years, that the anti-immigration movement is founded on pure and simple racism.

Cutting immigration is the only alleged positive a majority see from Brexit. But they do not believe that this cutting of immigration will improve jobs, the economy, pensions, or the NHS. All the canting justifications for cutting immigration are cut through, because this poll reveals that people do not expect to see any of those effects. No, Brexiteers want to cut immigration simply because they are racists and do not like foreigners.

But given that May wants to fight this election solely on Brexit, and given that the only area of traction Brexit has is immigration, we can expect to see the nastiest anti-immigration campaign ever waged by a mainstream party. We can also expect to see repeatedly what Adam Boulton did to the Lib Dems Sarah Ludford on Sky News and hour ago. As soon as the EU was mentioned, Boulton aggressively intervened by invoking dog-whistle anti-immigration racism.

That is why Conservative policy today is near identical to the BNP manifesto of 2005, which promised:

– Severe cuts in immigration
– Leaving the EU
– Bringing back grammar schools
– Increased military spending
– More “security” and “strong leadership”
– Foreign policy driven by “British national interest” not human rights
– Reduce development aid

A Tory vote is a racist vote. Full stop.

I was struck by how entirely similar Theresa May’s discourse is to that of the British National Party candidate I fought in Blackburn in 2005. That led me to turn to the BNP 2005 Manifesto, and I can see little significant difference between it and current Tory policy.

The British National Party in 2005 advocated:

– Severe cuts in immigration
– Leaving the EU
– Bringing back grammar schools
– Increased military spending
– More “security” and “strong leadership”
– Foreign policy driven by “British national interest” not human rights
– Reduce development aid

Indeed, the few differences I can find between the BNP 2005 manifesto and the current Tory platform are in areas like the NHS, where the Tories are more right wing than the BNP were.

Thankfully it was still considered by most people socially beyond the pale to support the BNP in 2005. Today the media portray anyone perceptibly to the left of those positions as mad. Society has changed markedly – and not for the better.

Unless the BBC takes firm disciplinary action against Nick Robinson for this, they cannot keep pretending that the UK any longer holds free and fair elections. For a state broadcaster to show this level of venom and bias against the opposition leader is utterly unacceptable.

It is indisputable that Robinson’s history is as a high ranking Conservative Party activist. They dominate BBC News, as a plain matter of fact. They have changed the culture of the BBC so they no longer feel any need to disguise their Tory cheerleading.

This is an Uzbek style election.

On 13 March I blogged “I can assure you the Tories are already considering how to avoid having Leaders’ Debates on television for the next general election. For Corbyn to be able to put a radical message directly to the public, and May’s deficiencies in debate to be so directly exposed, is something they will not want at all. May should be seen and not heard, is their motto.”

When I assure you of things, you should believe me. I do not use such language unless based on direct knowledge. Please revisit that entire article: I promise you it is worth reading.

In the quite extraordinary public politics of the terminal phase of the existence of the United Kingdom, the system of controlled democracy has reached its apotheosis. The media message has achieved a startling degree of unanimity. The Overton Window has become the Overton Slit.

This will be the most controlled general election ever. Never will the message have been so focussed, debate and alternatives have been so excluded. Attempts to query or challenge the Tory narrative will be ridiculed and marginalised.

Theresa May is simply not very bright, is hopeless in debate and has all the charisma of a rabid ferret. She will appear only when speaking from on high to an utterly deferential setting, as in yesterday’s general election announcement. The media’s election will consist of an unremitting barrage of propaganda continuing its xenophobic theme, based upon a few May set pieces. Expect softball interviews by Tory Kuenssberg and Nick Robinson, to give the impression of democratic challenge.

Nicola Sturgeon and yes, Jeremy Corbyn, would demolish May in debate. If any party other than the Tories was declining to take part in debate, the media would quite rightly attack them for it. Do not however expect any more than token remonstration from the broadcasters; they are far too complicit in the cottonwool packaging of May, and have too deep an investment in the Unionist project, to rock the boat. Indeed, the media will now seek to frame any debate between opposition leaders which does go ahead as a gathering of losers, a carnival of grotesques.

Any resemblance between this British general election and democracy is purely coincidental.

An SNP Scottish majority at Westminster must result in a Declaration of Independence and that must be made clear to voters. Having tried to refuse Indyref2, Theresa May has arrogantly and opportunistically called a Westminster election. It is time to take advantage of her extreme hubris and use her own momentum to make her fall flat on her face.

Independence is obtained by international recognition by other states and not by any specified internal process. As I have stated repeatedly, the large majority of states, including EU states Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia have achieved independence without a referendum as part of the process. Recognition by the UN General Assembly is what brings Independence. Nothing else.

Democratic legitimacy is important but a referendum is not the only way to gain it. Winning an election is a much more established way to gain democratic legitimacy. For Scotland’s MPs to declare Independence following a general election victory in Scotland would be to follow the path by which nations have normally gained Independence. I would prefer, after the June 8 election, a National Assembly to be called consisting of all Scotland’s national representatives – MPs, MSPs and MEPs to make the Declaration of Independence. But Scotland’s Westminster MPs could equally be convened in Edinburgh to do it.

This is a key moment for the SNP. There will never be a time of greater fluidity in the British state; now we must strike to break it up. The SNP can either play Theresa May’s game and fight a defensive election trying to save all those seats and accepting the parameters of the British state as defining the debate. Then if the SNP slips from 56 to 53 of Scotland’s 59 MPs the media will present it as a massive defeat.

Or we can seize this God-given moment and state boldly that a vote for the SNP is a vote for Independence, and campaign on that basis. A simple majority of Scottish MPs should be enough for a mandate – after all a simple majority of UK MPs is enough to give Theresa May vast powers to continue her arrogant style of rule.

We must stay ahead of the game. We must not fight on the enemy’s chosen ground. We can turn this election around and use it to gain our national freedom.

You would never guess it from the media but Lord Ashcroft’s latest major polling effort strips bare the entire lie about a Tory and Unionist bandwagon rolling in Scotland.

You would never guess it from Lord Ashcroft’s Tory agenda-driven report of the findings either. This tendentious nonsense ignores Scotland completely – indeed I do not think he even mentions the nation’s existence. No paid media journalist would ever dream of reading more than the executive summary of the report, and certainly would never comb through the data tables, which contain the actual information on which the report is just a gloss.

But the data tables break down the sample by “region”, of which Scotland is one, and thus give us a very great deal of information. The Ashcroft polls have a 10,000 sample and the Scottish sub-samples of over 900 are more than used for many standard Scotland only polls.

So here are the highlights:

It is indeed true that Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is more popular than Nicola Sturgeon – but only in England.

Contrary to constant media propaganda, Nicola Sturgeon rates over 12% higher than Ruth Davidson. Invited to rate their performance from 0 to 100, Scottish voters gave Nicola Sturgeon a mean rating of 52.91% (Table 47) and Ruth Davidson 40.52% (Table 48). Despite Davidson being proclaimed by the media as the new Jim Murphy/Jesus Christ, including constant lying claims that she is the more popular.

But Ruth Davidson is very much more popular than Nicola Sturgeon – with the English. In every region of England, Davidson is widely preferred to Sturgeon.

There is no Tory Revival in Scotland.

Asked whether they would consider voting Conservative at the next Westminster election, on a scale of likelihood from 0 to 100, 65% of Scots voters answered 0-10 “there is no chance I would vote Conservative” compared to only 10% who answered 91 to 100 “I will definitely vote Conservative”. (Table 8)

The mean Tory score in Scotland on this scale was 23.84. This was narrowly behind Labour. (Table 9) Typically Ashcroft’s poll does not even ask about the SNP. But note this methodology gives a mean result that is higher than a party’s actual percentage vote: totaling the party mean scores for England gives you more than 100%. So Tory support in Scotland is running below 23.8% and below Labour.

Again this is completely contrary to the media propaganda that has been blasted constantly across Scotland.

Tory Britain is Totally Alien to Scots.

In answer to the question “Do you think Britain is on the right track, or heading in the wrong direction” Scots stated by a resounding 67% to 33% (excluding don’t knows) that Britain is heading in the wrong direction.

This compares to a clear majority in England that Britain is heading in the right direction. (Table 15).

Again contrary to constant media propaganda, Scots are much less obsessed than the English with controlling immigration. Only 28% of Scots named controlling immigration as one of the top three political issues, significantly lower than any region of England. (Table 19) A tiny 4% of Scots think immigration is the most important issue (Table 20).

But more revealing still is the ability to discern continued Scottish support for more left wing approaches to the economy. Here Ashcroft accidentally does us a favour by his exclusion of the SNP from the question.

Asked who would “have the best approach to growing the economy and creating jobs”, and not given a chance to answer SNP, Scots favour Labour over the Tories by a conclusive 46% to 36%. This compares to an equally strong preference for the Tories across England. (Table 25). Interestingly an extraordinary 15% of Scots plumped for the Lib Dems, presumably in reaction to no SNP choice being offered.

Again this is a devastating disproof of the media narrative that Scots have swallowed Torynomics. The Scottish preference for Labour over the Tories shows up in later tables on schools, the NHS, the environment etc.

Tory Scotland is a Myth the Media are Trying to Propagandise into Reality

As we gear up for the next referendum, I am cheered that the poll clears up the difference between empirical observation of the Scottish public and the picture portrayed by the media.

The media are lying.

The Blairite leadership of Scottish Labour betrayed their party by close collaboration with the Tories in Indyref1. As a result the party is in meltdown – but there is still a strong public sympathy for what might be described as real Labour values. This mantle has been taken up by the SNP.

But because the Scottish Labour Party as an organisation is a laughing stock, and because the Tories are highly hubristic and have convinced themselves of their own propaganda about their popularity, in Indyref2 we will face an open clash between Independence and Toryism. The Tories will no longer be lightly disguised behind Gordon Brown. Hard-faced anti-devolution unionism and City of London economics will be shoved down voters’ throats.

I have no doubt at all we will win this battle and finally achieve national independence again. If Ashcroft has the honesty to look at the message hidden in the unused data of his own poll results, the Tories realise it too. Which may explain their aversion to a referendum.

Unlike the famous chemical weapons “attack” portrayed by the BBC in Saving Syria’s Children, it does appear that in the latest incident at Idlib there was real horror inflicted by chemical attack of some kind. The question is who did it and why?

I am no fan of the Assad regime, and I have no problem using the word “regime” to describe it. Dictators do hold and win elections. I have lived in severe dictatorships and seen from the inside how they do it. The human rights abuses of the Assad regime have been well documented for decades.

But Bashar al Assad is neither stupid nor unsophisticated. Aided by Putin, he outwitted Obama by quickly giving up his chemical weapons to be destroyed and accepting transparency in verification. There is no justification for the destruction of Iraq, but if Saddam Hussein had been able to swallow pride as completely as Assad, he too could have had a very good chance of averting disaster.

Assad had seen his position go from strength to strength, thanks to Putin’s astute deployment of Russia’s limited military power. Militarily the balance had swung dramatically in Assad’s favour, while Trump had said the unsayable and acknowledged that putting Syria into the hands of Wahabbist crazies was not in the United States interest.

So I cannot conceive that Assad would risk throwing all of this away for the sake of a militarily insignificant small chemical weapons attack. It would be an act of the most extreme folly. It is not impossible – hubris is a great temptation to dictators – but given how Assad has played it so far, it seems out of character and extremely improbable. What is less improbable is a local battlefield decision by pro-Assad forces. In my close observation of dictatorial regimes, a fascinating feature is that they operate an image of the perfection of the state. They are highly adverse to admitting mistakes.

What did happen I do not profess to know. There are at least eleven major identifiable state and non-state forces involved in the fighting around Idlib. In going through them all and considering opportunity and motive for each, I continually find that those whose motive would be false flag stand to benefit a great deal more than those who might have been seeking military advantage.

I am therefore for now unconvinced that this was a deliberate use of chemical weapons by Assad forces. I do not rule it out, but it would take much more concrete evidence than currently offered to prove they did something so strongly and obviously against their own interest. But western governments and media have determined to make that the narrative, so the truth is, as so often in modern geo-politics, entirely incidental to the course of future events.

After careful consideration I have decided to venture into the question of Ken Livingstone and his suspension from the Labour Party.

To my knowledge, nobody has intimated that Ken Livingstone is an anti-Semite in the sense that he is a racist who acts with prejudice towards Jewish people. I do not think it even vaguely probable that he is that. I know him only slightly, and have shared a platform with him on a couple of occasions. But from everything I can find in his history, I believe he has been a genuine campaigning anti-racist his whole life.

There is however a perfectly open movement to define anti-Semitism not as prejudice against Jewish people, but as deviation from accepted political views on the formation of the state of Israel and its current position and policies. I do not accept this attempt to argue that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. I believe that the attempt to conflate the two needs to be resisted for the sake of maintaining our own political freedom of expression.

But that does not mean Ken Livingstone acted wisely or even properly. The disaster that attended European Jews in the second world war was so huge, that it needs to be approached with great sensitivity. Livingstone claims that certain Jewish Zionists had a pre-Holocaust deal with the Nazis. To me, that is very analogous to alleging that an acknowledged rape victim had some previous relationship with her abusive rapist. It has no possible relevance other than to be some kind of “she asked for it” point.

Livingstone’s point may or may not be true but, even if it is, we do not go around throwing out random facts out of context. Just because something is true does not make it helpful to say it at any given moment.

I quite genuinely have no idea whether the point Livingstone makes is historically true, and if so how fringe or not were the elements involved in the relationship. But it is not relevant. It would be surprising if there did not, in the very early stages of Nazi power, appear to a few fringe elements to be some room to explore common interests between those who wanted Jews to leave Germany, and those who wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Everyone was trying to accommodate to the difficult fact of Nazi power. The British royal family and aristocracy, the Pope, Northcliffe and his Daily Mail, David Lloyd George, pretty well all of corporate Germany and, I even admit, a very few isolated Scottish nationalists, failed at some stages to realise or to respond correctly to the evil of Nazism and sought various ways to use Nazi Germany to forward their own interests. Some of these were very culpable. You can find attempts on that difficult spectrum from accommodation to collaboration in various forms everywhere, in almost every community.

I do not want to see the apartheid state of Israel continue in its current form, though as with apartheid South Africa I wish to see a solution to unifying Palestine that does not involve further forced movement of any population. But I do not in any sense accept a historically important link between Israel and the Nazis, except in the obvious sense that revulsion at the Holocaust created the conditions for international acceptance of the violent establishment of Israel. Picking at the oddities of history on such a sensitive subject is mischievous.

Freedom of speech has limits. There is no doubt that Holocaust denial is very closely linked de facto to Nazi apologism and to anti-Semitism. I say that with a clear acceptance than there were many other victims of the death camps too – Poles, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists, Freemasons etc. etc. But the fact there are other victims does not reduce the Jewish disaster and attempts to deny or minimise what happened to the Jewish people under the Nazis are not acceptable.

I therefore think that Livingstone was wrong to blunder into discussing Hitler’s alleged early support for Zionism, and much more wrong not to then realise this was a mistake and to apologise. I do not however believe that in any sense his motivation was personal anti-Semitism, and I do not believe that anybody believes he is genuinely somebody who dislikes Jewish people.

I am not a member of the Labour Party and it is not my fight. But it seems to me in consequence the suspension of Ken Livingstone for a further year is about the correct punishment. He was wrong-headed and distasteful, but not a racist. Nobody truly thinks he is a racist, so the light suspension was Labour’s way of reflecting this while not meeting head-on the question of the ludicrous expansion of the meaning of anti-Semitism.

As regular commenters know, holocaust denial is strictly banned on this blog and anti-Semitism has been by far the most common cause of comments being deleted. It is therefore very probable that your comments will get blocked for moderation by various keyword captures we have set up. Be patient.

There are 32,000 Gibraltarians organised into 11,400 households. Extraordinarily there are more registered companies than households, including 8,464 registered offshore companies.

The Government of Gibraltar’s own website is notably candid about its tax haven activities. It urges you to establish there so you can take advantage of:

Highly-developed business services infrastructure where it is possible to passport an EU licence in financial services such as insurance and re-insurance, EU-wide pensions, banking and funds administration, amongst others.
Distribute competitively priced VAT-free goods and services to the markets of the EU and Africa.
Conduct business in a quality low-tax jurisdiction with a profit oriented capital base at low levels of corporate tax, all in a stable currency with few restrictions in moving capital or repatriating dividends.

It is no wonder Gibraltar voted 96% pro-EU. Its entire economy rests upon the use of its anomalous status to undercut the tax regimes of genuine EU members. Remarkably for a population the size of Ramsgate, there are 17 registered banks in Gibraltar, including Credit Suisse, the money laundering giant raided by combined European police forces yet again yesterday, and RBS/Natwest’s tax avoidance entity.

Gibraltar was occupied by England (yes, England) in 1704 when it was sacked by the Hessian Prince George (wry smile Hessian – sacked) and 90% of the Spanish population fled after being subjected to mass rape.

Britnats have been all over twitter this last 24 hours shouting that Gibraltar was given to Britain “in perpetuity” by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. Thankfully the world has changed since 1713. The Treaty of Utrecht also gave Brazil to Portugal, much of Italy to the Hapsburgs and gave Britain the monopoly on the shipping of African slaves to South America. Thankfully none of those turned out to be perpetual and the British occupation of Gibraltar is equally immoral and anachronistic. That the Foreign and Commonwealth still quotes the Treaty of Utrecht is evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the British government’s position.

There is a key point here. Empires cannot cloak their continued Imperial possessions under the “right of self-determination” of Imperial client populations. Still less is there a “right of self-determination” for an entire Imperial client population to leech off tax avoidance activities by virtue of their Imperial possession status. The right of self-determination does not apply to the colonists of Gibraltar, who like the Falklanders are an introduced Imperial population – contrary to myth the large majority of Gibraltarians are not descended from the original Spanish population. Gibraltar is plainly listed by the UN as a Non Self Governing Territory. Self-determination is not applicable in international law. UN General Assembly Resolution 2353 specifically asserted that Gibraltar is a colony which impinges on the territorial integrity of Spain and thus on Spanish right to self-determination, and that a referendum of the colonial population could not change that.

Britain’s fervidly jingoistic attempts to hold on to its remaining colonies are pathetic. I have a memory as a very small child of watching Rolf Harris on TV dressed in union jacks singing “Please Don’t Alter Gibraltar” to the tune of Land of Hope and Glory. Google has just reassured me this really happened and was not a nightmare. I now realise from the timing that was a riposte to the UN General Assembly discussions. That it was Rolf Harris gives the perfect pointer to the grossly immoral British position on Gibraltar.

Ironies abound.

Irony 1
It is the Little England Brexiteers who are frothing at the mouth over the EU saying it will take heed of Spain’s position on Gibraltar – despite the fact the Gibraltarians voted 96% in favour of the EU.
They cry, how dare the EU take into account the position of the United Nations and of its member state, Spain, against what will be a non-member state? Who could have seen that coming?

Irony 2

Gibraltarians of course voted in favour of the EU in order to benefit from the opportunity to continue undermining EU tax regimes.

Irony 3

The Daddy of them all. The Britnats who crowed repeatedly at Scots, extolling alleged (and improbable) Spanish desire to veto Scottish EU membership, are shocked, shocked that Spain may veto a Brexit settlement over Gibraltar.

Anyway, to cheer up you Britnats, here is a picture of the massive audience for Theresa May’s recent Glasgow speech. Dressed as Rolf Harris. Altogether now “Please Don’t Alter Gibraltar”.