Friday 20 October 2023

Reasons to be cheerful

I get the feeling that several things are starting to take a turn for the better. The seven years since 2016 have been pretty bad, let’s face it what with Brexit, Trump, Johnson, Covid, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and now the Middle East about to kick off again. Despite all of that, on three fronts, there is good news for us liberal, pro-EU remainers. First of all, the two stunning by-election wins. No doubt you've seen the news already. The BBC are describing not just victories but 'crushing' wins for Labour.

Huge swings in both Tamworth and Mid-Bedfordshire - both over 20% - show the polls are broadly correct and the Tories are headed for well-deserved oblivion at the next election. There is no doubt about that.

David Campbell Bannerman did a Momentum supporter’s impression in reverse. The losses didn’t come because the party had shifted too far to the right, but it hadn’t gone far enough! He’s as deranged on this as he is on Brexit.

The BBB’s political editor described it as “one of the Tory party’s worst by-election nights ever.” These were two seats with huge majorities that you would normally expect to hold, but they couldn’t. It is also good news for Starmer who has some internal critics for reasons I don’t understand at all.

Trump

Anyway, next is Trump. I’ve been following events in New York, Washington, and Georgia where the former POTUS is either on trial or facing the imminent start of one.

In Washington yesterday, it came out that in financial statements issued by the Trump Organisation over a five-year period, they had used the name of a respected assessor to give a veneer of truth to inflated valuations of real estate used to raise millions of dollars in loans. The assessor, Doug Larson of Cashman & Wakefield, gave evidence that he had never valued the buildings Trump claimed he had. 

They never even hired him to do the valuations.

This is another straightforward and easily provable fraud to add to the ones the judge has already said Trump is guilty of.

More devastating news came in Georgia when Trump’s lawyer, Sydney Powell (a woman by the way) agreed to give evidence against him after admitting many of the claims she made about voter fraud and the ‘stolen’ 2020 election were not true. She also admitted to tampering with voting machines and illegally appropriating data from them and various other electoral crimes.

Listen to this:

She has joined the dozens of others who have flipped against Trump to save their own skins. He's finished. It's just a matter of time now, although he won't go down easily. The MAGA supporters are as crazy and as unpredictable as can be.

However, a lot will have seen what happened to the 6 January rioters who have been hung out to dry by Trump, and sentenced to long stretches behind bars.

RICO by the way is the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US law that provides for stiffer penalties for crimes committed by a 'criminal organization.' There is a Federal version and Georgia also has its own RICO Act.

Johnson/Sunak

Justice is catching up with Boris Johnson. At more or less the same time, the COVID inquiry was hearing evidence from Professor John Edmunds about the disgraced former PM's foot-dragging in 2020. Professor Edmunds was absolutely clear, Johnson wasn't following any scientific evidence or plan and was constantly behind the curve despite knowing in advance (from Italy) what was likely to happen:

This is just the latest damning evidence against Johnson who is going to be called before the inquiry later this month. And it wasn’t just him. 

Sunak also comes in for criticism over his ‘Eat out to help out’ campaign which was launched with no scientific backing at all. Professor Edmunds said Sunak spent public money encouraging people to take a needless epidemiological risk.

He said it was one thing to take your foot off the brake (to ease lockdown restrictions) but quite another to put your foot on the accelerator, which is what Sunak did, and with no scientific advice either. It was close to criminal in my opinion. The Daily Mail was partly responsible because they were losing money when workers stayed at home and didn't buy print copies.

And in some WhatsApp exchanges, the government’s now top scientific adviser Prof Angela McLean describes him as the "Dr Death chancellor."  I bet there will be some awkward moments ahead when those two meet, eh?

So, with apologies to Ian Drury, there really are reasons to be cheerful this morning.

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