A Scottish Independence referendum could radically alter the future of not just one entire nation, but several. In these circumstances, it is remarkable that there has been no media comment on the fact that the ruling party of Scotland had to radically re-argue the case for the referendum its own government had put before the London Supreme Court.

Let me make clear that I perfectly understand that, in seeking to refer the question of the Scottish Parliament’s competence to hold a referendum to the Supreme Court, the Scottish Government’s Lord Advocate was putting forward arguments both for and against. But in putting the arguments for, she omitted the most powerful and most obvious arguments.

That is simple fact.

The SNP has now had to intervene and supplement Bain’s pathetic unionist biased drivel with a proper brief (which the Supreme Court has accepted to hear) putting the genuine, powerful and internationally accepted legal arguments which Bain omitted.

That is simple fact too.

Please read my article of 30 July in which I described Bain as “spectacularly wrong”. I wrote:

The right to self-determination emerges again in Bain’s conclusion. Here she makes her view crystal clear, that self-determination is part of the “political context” and not a legal matter, it has no legal effect.

This explains why Bain nowhere mentions self-determination as a legal argument justifying Scotland’s right to hold a referendum.

I explained:

The Independence of a country is not a matter of domestic law it is a matter of international law. The right of the Scottish Parliament to declare Independence may not be restricted by UK domestic law or by purported limitations on the powers of the Scottish Parliament. The legal position is set out very clearly here:

5.5 Consistent with this general approach, international law has not treated the legality of
the act of secession under the internal law of the predecessor State as determining the effect
of that act on the international plane. In most cases of secession, of course, the predecessor
State‟s law will not have been complied with: that is true almost as a matter of definition.

5.6 Nor is compliance with the law of the predecessor State a condition for the declaration
of independence to be recognised by third States, if other conditions for recognition are
fulfilled. The conditions do not include compliance with the internal legal requirements of
the predecessor State. Otherwise the international legality of a secession would be
predetermined by the very system of internal law called in question by the circumstances in
which the secession is occurring.

5.7 For the same reason, the constitutional authority of the seceding entity to proclaim
independence within the predecessor State is not determinative as a matter of international
law. In most if not all cases, provincial or regional authorities will lack the constitutional
authority to secede. The act of secession is not thereby excluded. Moreover, representative
institutions may legitimately act, and seek to reflect the views of their constituents, beyond
the scope of already conferred power.

That is a commendably concise and accurate description of the legal position. Of major relevance, it is the legal opinion of the Government of the United Kingdom, as submitted to the International Court of Justice in the Kosovo case. The International Court of Justice endorsed this view, so it is both established law and follows from the stated legal opinion of the British Government that the Scottish Government has the right to declare Independence without the agreement or permission of London and completely irrespective of the London Supreme Court.

The SNP brief argues, as Bain failed to argue, that:

The right to self-determination is a fundamental and inalienable right, among the most fundamental of all rights;

The SNP brief uses many of the same sources in its argument – the UN judgement, the UK submission to the International Court of Justice on Kosovo, the Supreme Court of Canada on Quebec – that I used in my article and have been using to argue the case here for the last ten years.

But this is important:

The SNP brief and Claire Mitchell KC are not using the same arguments and even the same sources that I used because they are following me, or because I am especially brilliant. The fact is that any experienced diplomat and any public international lawyer would know exactly the law, arguments and cases which apply. What Claire Mitchell has produced for the SNP is precisely what any decent lawyer or any good diplomat would produce to support the case for Scotland’s self-determination.

So why did Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain fail to produce it?

Well, there are several possibilities. Dorothy Bain could be a truly, spectacularly, ignorant, stupid and incompetent lawyer. Or, she could have been cleverly and deliberately failing the Scottish Government on whose behalf she was supposed to be acting, which would be an act of dreadful professional wrongdoing. Or she could have been asked by Sturgeon to present a case to the Supreme Court that was sure to fail.

I put those in ascending order of probability. There are no other possibilities.

Two questions inevitably arise. The first is this. The Lord Advocate is a political appointment. It is a ministerial position in Scotland. Why did Nicola Sturgeon appoint the unionist Dorothy Bain to the position? At the time of the appointment last year, it was already known that the certification of the Referendum Bill as legal would be a crucial task for the new Lord Advocate.

Why on earth not appoint a nationalist who would certify?

The answer is simple. Nicola Sturgeon is much more interested in identity politics than in Independence. Bain’s job is to see the justice system through these changes all of which are the highest priority on Sturgeon’s agenda:

1) Abolition of jury trials in sex assault cases
2) Establishment of misogyny as a hate crime and prosecution of sexist speech as a criminal offence
3) Reform of Gender Recognition Act
4) Abolition of “Not proven” verdict and conforming Scottish system to the English model
5) Continued clampdown prosecutions on “extremist” independence supporters and republicans, using breach of the peace, harassment, threatening communication, contempt etc etc.

Those are Bain’s tasks. That is the agenda for which Sturgeon selected her. Independence? Simply not on the radar.

The second question is how it happened that the SNP came to decide to put in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to try to make up for Bain’s glaring omissions. Here there are reasons to be a little hopeful. Some worms are finally turning. Senior lawyers in the SNP were outraged at Bain’s fake attempt, and there was near open revolt among some Westminster MPs. At least 20 were outraged.

It is possibly not chance that the only senior SNP figure who put out the SNP’s brief to the public was Joanna Cherry.  It is still her pinned tweet. This revolt caused angst in Casa Murell. For once Sturgeon was forced to give some ground.

The compromise agreed was that Sturgeon accepted that the SNP could submit a brief arguing from the universal right of self-determination, but Sturgeon only agreed on condition that it was made explicit the SNP was not arguing that Scotland could secede without Westminster’s permission. The SNP brief therefore contains this disclaimer:

2.3. The Intervener emphasises that it is not advocating for a direct exercise or implementation of the right to self-determination in these proceedings.

Notes the “emphasises”. This is really daft, because it contradicts the entire meaning of the Kosovo and Chagos judgments which it goes on to quote. Nicola Sturgeon’s position remains however that Scotland can only become independent with Westminster agreement.

Sturgeon’s representative on earth is her election agent, constituency minder and long term confidante Mhairi Hunter. She has recently spelt the position out very clearly indeed:

This gives an absolute and unequivocal veto to Westminster on Scottish independence. It reveals Sturgeon’s “plebiscitary election” as a total fraud.

It explains why Bain submitted her reference to the Supreme Court dismissing Scotland’s international right to self-determination as of no legal force, and why the SNP brief undermines all the sources it quotes by stating it is not making a case for the right to implement self-determination.

The British Establishment will never willingly surrender Scotland’s massive resources. Those who believe Westminster should have a veto, are against Independence, whatever lies they spout.

It really is as simple as that.

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Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Watch these three clips very carefully, focusing on the count on the retweet symbol. Do you see what is wrong?

This had been happening for hours when I realised I could record it with my phone. I was not filming continuously and it did this several more times inside the couple of minutes or so between these clips.

Earlier the “likes” had also been doing this even more obviously, but once over 10,000 the counter switches to 10.1k and as the deletions are in continual batches of under 100, it doesn’t show up.

All in all the counters reduce the likes and retweets by about 40 to 50 per cent. The reason appears to be simply to reduce the apparent popularity of a tweet contradicting the NATO fake narrative. Which of course begs the question whether twitter artificially boosts the like and retweet count of tweets supporting the NATO fake narrative.

Almost certainly the answer is yes.

Reducing the retweet count also reduces the incredible mismatch between the number of retweets and the number of people Twitter has permitted to see the tweet. Twitter measures this by “impressions”. This is the number of people into whose notifications or home page twitter has put the tweet the number of people twitter is showing it to. It is different from clicks which is measured separately as “engagements”.

Currently twitter analytics show only 2 million impressions from an admitted 13.1k retweets. That 2 million figure is astonishingly low for a tweet retweeted by 13,000 people. Hundreds of people within that 13,000 have individual follower counts of over 100,000 they believed they retweeted to. So do I.

Let me put it this way. This tweet has reached only 18 times my personal follower count, despite being retweeted by 13,000 people. Then consider that 13,000 people is probably really 25,000 people (see the videos above!)

This level of suppression is very sinister. It happens to me every single day.

————————————————-

 
 
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.

Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

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Account name
MURRAY CJ
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Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.

There has been an unprecedented rush of people canceling their subscriptions to this blog the last five days. Not one person has given any reason, and where there have been messages, they have been of this unfriendly but uninformative nature. This is a real example:

I wish to cancel my payments of £2 per month with immediate effect. Please ensure this happens. Thank you.

Of course, all the people canceling had previously provided invaluable support, and I am grateful to each of them. There is always a daily churn of cancellation and subscription. But cancellations are running at about thirty times their normal level, starting very suddenly, and I just cannot think what has caused it. There has been no obvious controversy and I have not expressed any views I had not expressed before.

The obvious concern is that some information is circulating about me and being given credence by people who have supported me, in a manner invisible to me, and I have no way of knowing if it may be untrue or unfair.

If anybody has any ideas on what is happening, I should be grateful to know.

When the so-called “Leader of the opposition” opposes protest against a new unelected head of state, out of respect for the previous unelected head of state, you know you live under totalitarianism.

Except almost all dictatorships do at least have the form of an election. Indeed, some of the worst dictators in modern history have been genuinely elected, an unfortunate fact we generally prefer to elide.

Over a week of mob hysteria in the UK helps us to understand how.

The psychological phenomenon of societal emotional spasm is fairly well studied but still not necessarily fully explained. How we get to a stage where, in 2022, newspapers are seriously promoting as miraculous clouds that “look like the Queen”, double rainbows or meteors, is a difficult question.

What is not in the doubt is the tendency of deluded mobs to turn on those who do not join in – and the capacity of the unscrupulous to exploit that power.

Attempts to intimidate people out of protesting against the monarchy appear broadly to have succeeded. We saw some hideous attacks on free speech over the last week, including people arrested for holding up placards, for peacefully expressing vocal dissent, or even for carrying eggs or blank pieces of paper.

A number of figures have stood up to come out arguing for freedom of speech – Andrew Marr, Martin Bell, John Sweeney, David Davis, Joanna Cherry, Michael Russell. These are all figures who broadly represent a liberal consensus in society that seems to have gone. As I know all but one of them, I hope they will forgive me for saying they tend to be slightly passé.

Nobody in power, in Westminster or in Scotland, has asserted the importance of freedom of speech, while opposition leader Keir Starmer has done the opposite, emphasising “respect” for authority as more important than freedom of speech, a position taken by anti-democrats everywhere.

There are two arguments used against freedom of speech at present:

1) We should honour the dead, and respect the sanctity of the mourning period.

I do not in general dismiss the value of all societal convention, and I have a certain sympathy for this approach. However, the difficulty is that the accession of a new monarch happens at the moment of death of the old monarch. The latter cannot be used to stifle all protest at the former.

The Establishment quite deliberately conflates the two in order to prevent protest. We have the extraordinary and macabre spectacle of the corpse of the late Queen being carted around the country and her coffin put on public display.

If people really cared for her, I would have thought it much more respectful to bury her, but the monarchist hysteria has to be dialed up past 11 for the longest possible period, and the excuse for suppressing dissent has to be maintained.

Young Rory, who was viciously, physically attacked for heckling sexual abuser Prince Andrew at the Edinburgh procession and then arrested, handcuffed and charged, was widely condemned by the media for disturbing a funeral. But it was not a funeral. That funeral is still not until Monday, when this farce finally ends.

The correct word for what we have witnessed so far is not a funeral but a series of bizarre obsequies. The state is demanding that all citizens be obsequious.

There is a reason that word has such negative connotations, and if the UK had educated journalists rather than state stenographers they might explore it.

So much has been entirely irrational. One moment that stuck in my mind was criticism of Liz Truss for failing to curtsy to the coffin of the Queen when it arrived at RAF Northolt. This was described as “grotesque” – as though curtsying to a corpse were not itself an image straight out of Edgar Allan Poe.

The concomitant of stretching out the period before poor Elizabeth is finally put to rest, is to use that period to maximum political advantage for the introduction of the new King, while his mother’s aura still shines.

We have the deliberate confusion of the two processes. Both the man in Oxford who merely asked “who elected him?”, and the woman in Edinburgh who held the sign saying “Fuck imperialism, abolish the monarchy”, were at the specific proclamation of the accession of King Charles III – events separate to the obsequies. Yet both were condemned for lack of respect for a dead Queen.

We also have the extraordinary spectacle of Charles, immediately after the death of his mother, abandoning his mourning and bottling his grief while shuttling furiously around Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales for entirely political events.

This did not have to happen. This is absolutely not a tradition. Nothing remotely like it has ever happened before.

There was no reason whatsoever why Charles had to visit the Scottish parliament, the Welsh senedd or the assembly in the north of Ireland, now. This could have waited until after the funeral. He could even have had a week of rest and reflection after the funeral before embarking on a tour of the nations.

There was a deliberate decision to hold these political events in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, aimed at strengthening the monarchy and union, while the corpse was still metaphorically warm, in order to maximise the political bounce for the monarchy from Elizabeth’s death.

Part of this calculation was that, if Charles’ first visit as King was after the funeral, there would be political protest at the accession in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, possibly quite substantial.

There is absolutely no modern precedent for a royal tour between the death and the funeral of the previous monarch. It is, when you think about it, disrespectful.

Edinburgh is explicable in terms of Elizabeth dying in Scotland, but Belfast and Cardiff?

Which tells us that “King Charles III” would have still taken advantage of the mourning period to make his power consolidation visit to Edinburgh, no matter where his mother had died.

There is nothing more cynical. We are whipped up to observe emotional mourning, while those who you would expect truly to be in mourning are engaged in cold, political calculation.

One of the darkly amusing things about the last few days was to witness all of the deluded monarchists on social media excusing Charles’ extraordinary tantrum in Northern Ireland about a pen, on the grounds that he must be exhausted making this tour when his mother had just died.

But the answer of course is that he did not have instantly to dash to Northern Ireland at all, leaving behind the rites for his mother. He was doing so for political gain.

It is a capricious God who supports a royal family so much he makes clouds in their image and celebrates them in rainbows and comets, yet makes pens leak on them “every stinking time.”

2) Protest May Cause a Breach of the Peace

This is a truly sinister argument. What it amounts to is this:

The mob is encouraged to beat up dissidents, so the expression of dissent is illegal.

It is quite literal fascism, the exertion of violent force by thugs in the street to quell dissent, with the state backing the thugs and criminalising the dissidents. That is precisely how all fascist regimes operate.

It is now being used shamelessly. None of the thugs who attacked Rory in Edinburgh has been charged. Rory has been charged with a breach of the peace.

If a breach of the peace is an action likely to provoke disorder, then the persons to be charged should be those who decided to put on display in positions of great honour a man who avoided a trial on sex trafficking by payment of £12 million pounds.

One sign of how emboldened the dregs of society are by this period of mob rule, is the quite extraordinary number of people on social media actively defending Prince Andrew, something that was extremely rare before the death of the Queen.

On twitter, it is interesting how many of those defending Andrew show the characteristics I identified of British government troll units. These are very low follower numbers for an account claiming to have been in existence at least ten years, and a timeline consisting entirely of retweets.

The rehabilitation of Andrew is another of the political purposes to which Elizabeth’s death is being put, to which we are not allowed to object on grounds of “decorum” and “respect”.

Now I would not personally have done what Rory did, in the presence of a coffin. But that is a question of etiquette, taste and demeanour, not of the criminal law.

Anybody who had been paying attention ought not be surprised that the Scottish prosecutorial service is happily channeling this fascism and people are coming up for trial for breach of the peace, including the young woman who did nothing but hold up a placard at the outdoor, public proclamation ceremony.

On Sunday, Police Scotland have banned Yestival, an annual Independence rally in George Square, Glasgow, on the grounds that the Queen’s funeral is on the next day, 400 miles away.

The organisers have quietly rescheduled the event, but I shall turn up anyway to bear witness to my beliefs, because I object to being told I may not express my political opinions. I don’t expect there will be more than a dozen of us and nothing in particular is organised to happen – no stage and no microphones. Unless the mere fact of my existence is held by the fascists to be a breach of the peace, I am not sure how it would be illegal. But they may find a way. This is Scotland 2022.

In the long term I am not downhearted. Propaganda works, and I have no doubt whatsoever that monarchism and even unionism will get a measurable opinion poll boost from the current shenanigans.

But it will not be true that the replacement of a popular monarch by an unpopular one will, in the medium term, strengthen the monarchy. Public and press access will be stifled to suppress awareness of Charles’ appalling high-handedness and temper and the way he treats staff

But you can’t make this man popular, and his Queen Consort will be a constant reminder of how he treated his unfortunate first wife.

As for the mob hysteria, I am of the generation that was sent to church every Sunday of my childhood. I recall the sermon every Palm Sunday pointing out that the same rapturous crowd that hailed Jesus into Jerusalem, called for his death five days later.

All the great religions contain a lot of good sense within their mysticism.

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Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:

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Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.

No doubt millions of people felt a heartfelt attachment to the Queen, which will be displayed fully in the next few days. But the anachronistic nature of monarchy is also fully on display, in the obvious absurdities and pantomime procedure, with Heralds Pursuivant and Royals buckled with the weight of their unearned medals.

Yesterday some BBC stenographer had to type with a straight face the strapline “The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Are Now the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge”, which would even fifty years ago have already been absurd enough to be a line in a Monty Python sketch. Still more absurd is the millions in feudal income that goes with that title, all real money paid by actual ordinary people as feudal dues.

The plans for the Queen’s demise were organised decades ago, and it shows. The BBC, ITV and Channels 4 and even 5 stop all entertainment in favour of pre-prepared sycophancy, as though we still lived in a world where people could not switch over and watch Gordon Ramsay on Blaze instead – and that’s ignoring Netflix, Amazon and the entire internet.

I watched a few minutes of the BBC last night, up until a “royal commentator” said that people were standing outside Buckingham Palace because the nation needed to draw together for physical comfort in its great grief. There were a couple of hundred of them. Broadcasters kept focusing on a dozen bouquets left on a pavement, in a desperate attempt to whip up people to produce more.

I do not doubt this will all work and there will indeed be big crowds and carpets of flowers. Many people felt a great deal of devotion to Elizabeth II, or rather to the extraordinarily sanitised image of her with which they were presented.

I witnessed her at very close quarters working on two state visits which I had a major part in organising, to Poland and to Ghana. She was very dutiful and serious, genuinely anxious to get everything right, and worried by it. She struck me as personally pleasant and kindly. She was not, to be frank, particularly bright and sharp. I was used to working with senior ministers both domestic and foreign and she was not at that level. But then somebody selected purely by accident of birth is unlikely to be so.

Key staff organising a state visit get by tradition a private, individual audience of thank you. They also get honours on the spot. I turned down a LVO (Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order) in Warsaw and a CVO (Commander of …) in Accra. Because of the unique circumstance, I am one of very few people, or possibly the only person, who has ever refused an honour from the Queen and then had a private audience at which she asked why! I must certainly be the only person that happened to twice.

(I had earlier in my career been asked if I would accept an OBE and said no. As with the vast majority of people who refused an honour, I very much doubt the Queen ever knew that had happened.)

Anyway, in my audiences I told the Queen I was both a republican and a Scottish nationalist. I should state in fairness that she was absolutely fine with that, replied very pleasantly and seemed vaguely amused. Instead of the honour, she gave me personal gifts each time – a letter rack made by Viscount Linley, and a silver Armada dish.

I later auctioned the letter rack to raise funds for Julian Assange.

The purpose of that lengthy trip down memory lane is to explain that I found the late Queen to be personally a pleasant and well-motivated person, doing what she believed to be right. We are all shaped by our environment; I would have turned into a much more horrible monarch than she had I been born into it, certainly a great deal more sybaritic (as the rest of her family appear to be).

So there is no personal malice behind my prognostication that the party will be over very soon for the monarchy. It is not only that the institution and pageantry seem ludicrous in the current age; so does its presentation. The BBC is behaving as though we are in the 1950’s, and apparently will do so for many days. The entire notion of a state broadcasting platform is outmoded, and I suspect a lot more people will see that.

29% of the people of the UK want to abolish the monarchy, excluding Don’t Knows; in Scotland that is 43%. In the UK as a whole 18 to 24 year olds are 62% in favour of abolition of the monarchy, excluding Don’t Knows. They will be further alienated by the outlandish current proceedings. Only the loyal will be reinforced – a large section of the population will snigger as the absurd pomposity grows. I found myself yesterday on Twitter urging people to be a bit kinder as the Queen lay dying.

Think seriously on this. 29% of the population want to abolish the monarchy. Think of all the BBC coverage of the monarchy you have seen over the last decade. What percentage do you estimate reflected or gave an airing to republican views? Less than 1%?

Now think of media coverage across all the broadcast and print media.

How often has the media reflected the republican viewpoint of a third of the population? Far, far less than a third of the time. Closer to 0% than 1%. Yes, there are bits of the media that dislike Meghan for being black or are willing to go after Andrew. But the institution of the monarchy itself?

There can be no clearer example than the monarchy of the unrelenting media propaganda by which the Establishment maintains its grip.

The corporate and state media are unanimous in slavish support of monarchy. Thailand has vicious laws protecting its monarchy. We don’t need them; we have the ownership of state and corporate media enforcing the same.

One final thought; I do not expect this will amount to much, but it is fun to speculate. King Charles III has let it be known he intends to attempt to wield more influence on government than his mother. He comes to power at the same moment as a new government under Liz Truss, which is utterly anathema to Charles’ political beliefs.

Charles is a woolly liberal environmentalist with a genuine if superficial attachment to multi-culturalism. He has let it be known he deplores deportations to Rwanda. He is now going to be fitting into his role while government in his name is carried out by crazed right-wing ideologues, who want a massive push to produce more fossil fuels. Could be worth getting in the popcorn.

————————————————-

 
 
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.

Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.

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Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.

So the UK today gets its fourth successive Tory Prime Minister, despite the fact the previous three all crashed in failure, even in their own terms.

After presiding over crippling austerity as a policy response to Gordon Brown’s massive handover of public money to the casino bankers, David Cameron’s attempt to control the lunatic right of his party by offering a Brexit referendum backfired spectacularly. Theresa May was brought down by that same right wing when she attempted to devise a Brexit deal which allowed for a sensible trading relationship with the European Union. Johnson realised that governing from the far right was the only way to handle the Conservative Party, but the lies and corruption of his government led to him being quite exploded, like Bunbury.

So now the Queen swears in the fourth Tory Prime Minister, and does it in Scotland, a nation where the Tories have been overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate throughout this period (and indeed, for seven decades). A Prime Minister elected by 80,000 people mostly in South East England, to govern 66,000,000 throughout the UK, receives office from an old woman, elected by nobody, dwelling in a castle.

Liz Truss won the Tory member electorate by promising yet anther shift still further right. The Tory party has now moved so far to the right as to be invisible to the naked eye. I should have thought it were impossible to have a more brutal Home Secretary than Priti Patel, for example, and then they pull the crazed Suella Braverman up to the office. Expect refugee deportations to the Antarctic.

During the Tory leadership campaign it was impossible to protect Liz Truss entirely from scrutiny and questioning, therefore it became blindingly obvious that she is actually pretty stupid. She cannot deliver a script at all, and when asked to think off script, a look of panic enters her eyes, a crazed smile freezes on her lips, and she says the very first thought that fights its way out of the dense matter that sits where her brain ought to be.

But now the carapace of deference and protection that surrounds a Prime Minister closes around her. The media are already changing the narrative. Journalists have not previously felt the need to hide their amusement at her intellectually challenged demeanour. Now, in the past 48 hours, I have heard correspondent after correspondent tell us that she is “hard working” and always “masters her brief”. That is plainly the approved narrative.

It is interesting how, when push comes to shove, the neoliberal political class stick together. I have actually heard two senior Labour figures reinforce this new line on finding Truss hard working. Look out for further instances.

We are now going to see immediate action on a freeze on gas prices, though the details remain obscure. Remember, that is a freeze at already through the roof prices. (That was entirely serendipitous, but “through the roof” was an apt phrase, as that is where most of the energy goes in the insulation-poor UK).

Truss’s conversion to action on energy prices is not motivated by a sudden concern for poverty or the needs of ordinary people. I learnt of it on Sunday night, before her U turn was briefed, from senior Foreign Office (FCDO) sources. Government polling has indicated a substantial fall in public support for NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, due to unsustainable energy prices at home.

This is rather comforting as it shows the public are not daft and understand cause and effect, even when the media try to hide it.

Liz Truss’s motivation for an energy price freeze is therefore to maintain public support for fueling the Ukraine War, the overwhelming neoliberal priority. After losing the proxy war in Syria, defeat again by Russia in Ukraine is the gun barrel down which NATO is currently staring. Rather than a negotiated peace, yet more weapons and more brinkmanship are the preferred way forward.

Remember the huge increase in energy prices means incredible profits for the energy companies. Their costs have not increased. The price hike is caused purely by competition from Russia being restricted by the war. This is war profiteering.

As usual, there may be some pretence at difference of detail by the controlled opposition. But do not be surprised to see all the neoliberal parties – Tory, Labour, Liberal, SNP – broadly agree in the next week over a deal on energy bills. They are doing it for their joint promotion of war – whichthough will keep the super profits of both the arms and the energy companies rolling in.

Ultimately, they will expect you to pick up the tab, either through deferred bills or increased taxes; they are merely extending the timescale of your exploitation by war profiteers.

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