Decisive Action

Although I am not a member of any political party, I share Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends. On that basis, I would welcome him as Prime Minister, I welcome the fact that he has already given this country the economic and foreign policy debate that it had lacked entirely for 20 years until his emergence, and I welcome his successful intervention to end the scheme for the social and ethnic cleansing of the London Borough of Haringey.

But if Mr Corbyn was capable of such welcome and decisive action against a Labour council in Haringey, then why has there been none against a Labour council in Durham, which has deprived 472 of its Teaching Assistants of 23 per cent of their pay? At the 2016 Durham Miners’ Gala, Mr Corbyn used his speech to express support for the Teaching Assistants. By 2017, however, the Leader of the Council was seated with him on the platform, despite the previous support of the Durham Miners’ Association for the Teaching Assistants’ cause.

I will contest this seat of North West Durham against Mr Corbyn’s uncritical supporter, Laura Pidcock, who has appointed as her Political Advisor the man whose political advice had already led the Teaching Assistants to humiliation. Justice for the 472 will be a non-negotiable condition of my support for any Government in the hung Parliament that is the most likely outcome of the next General Election.