on air 24 7. This is today's news talk TNT. Welcome back to today's news talk with me Basil Valentine sitting in for Patrick. I'm joined on the line now by a high co co who stood for the Workers Party in Putney in London. Welcome to the program. High co now a lot of us myself included are reasonably suspicious about the timing of the general election with Rishi soon act deciding not only to fall on his own sword, but force over 200 conservative MPs to fall on their swords as well, much to their consternation. The snap election is bound to lose it. I mean, I don't know why he didn't wait till the autumn. So I'm rather dubious about whether or not it was done in order to prevent parties like your own Workers Party from having more time to organize through the summer and therefore mount a more effective challenge to the two party system than in the end you were able to do with such a short campaign, which really played into Labor's hands. And as soon as the wall to wall news coverage began, basically it was a prolonged coronation for secure starmer. What do you think? I mean, that's certainly true. The whole emphasis of British politics for, well, for several years now has been to anoint care starmer as the Conservative Party implodes to facilitate that even more. Nigel Farage was elevated to a major figure in British politics, suddenly jumping into the fray and splitting the Tory vote and allowing care starmer to come to power with a very large majority, even though he had less votes than Jeremy Corbyn scored in both of the previous supposedly disastrous election results for the Labor Party. So there is also the possibility in the calculations of the establishment, particularly reflected in the way that Rishi Sunak reacted when George Galloway was elected in February. He made a very coherent and ominous speech about the threat to British society by the election of George Galloway. And then the next time he was in front of Downing Street, he was calling the election in the pouring rain, looked at disaster and prepared the way for their defeat. So it is possible that a major calculation was to try to prevent the Workers' Party from getting any significant base in the election. And it succeeded. The other element to it was, as George has said, there were no opinion polls citing any support for the Workers' Party. And they were not mentioned in election statement, even in, for example, official press statements, in most locations, the Workers' Party was not even mentioned, even though that is illegal under electoral law in Britain. For example, for a newspaper to publish the candidates in an area and not include all the candidates is illegal under electoral law in Britain, but nevertheless, that happened. And so everything was done. If you wanted to conspire to stop the Workers' Party from getting any votes, they certainly succeeded in doing that, even if it wasn't conspiratorial. Yeah, no, it was extremely disappointing, to be honest, the whole standard of the debates from start to finish, the way that foreign policy was completely ignored. I mean, we're possibly on the brink of World War III in Eastern Europe, certainly the most costly conflagration in Europe since the Second World War. And meanwhile, a genocide off the charts in terms of the scale of the deaths and human suffering in Gaza. And yet there was no mention really of either of them in any of those choreographed TV debates involving the so-called party leaders for which Georgia, of course, was completely excluded in spite of that. And in spite of the fact that the Workers' Party weren't able to feel anything like as many candidates as I know you'd hoped. I mean, I remember speaking to Chris Williamson before the election was called. And in the wake of Georgia's victory in Rochdale, thousands and thousands of people were joining the Workers' Party. They were in the process of setting up proper local organizations up and down the country. And all that was completely hijacked by the requirement to suddenly get out on the doorstep and start campaigning. So conspiracy or cock up, who knows, but certainly it was the most bizarre timing of a general election. In living memory, we don't do elections in July. People are on holiday. That's partly what contributed to the abysmally low turnout, which from my point of view, really causing the question of the entire legitimacy of the mandate. One in six adults in Britain barely won in six actually voted Labour. And yet we now have an elected dictatorship for the next five years. But to come back to George and his loss in Rochdale, which I was surprised to see, I must admit, I thought he'd probably hang on. But it seems it may not have been the free and fair election that we're all used to in the UK. He's lodged a criminal complaint, I believe, with greater Manchester police alleging a whole manner of malpractice is including from the totally unsuitably named Hope Not Hate should be the other way round, who smeared him from very early on in the campaign, accused him of being in the employ of the Iranian government, which is totally untrue, and also spent far more than they are allowed to in the process of defaming him. But various other aspects of malpractice with respect to the election in Rochdale, which means that it should be rerun. What can you tell us about that from the inside of the party, Haiku? And do you think greater Manchester police will be even handed in the way they deal with it? It's a key question. I only act, to be honest with you, I only know as much about the Rochdale situation as you do. I know, however, that, for example, in Blackburn, where Craig Murray stood, that there is a question mark now over the possibility of a raise by the Labour Party, funnily enough, in that case, about the independent who won, being there, intimidation and threats made to people and manipulation of the votes. In my own constituency in Putney, two days ago I received an email from the returning officer informing us that 6,500 votes have gone missing, and they turned up, supposedly later on, or the figures were entered incorrectly, and so the vote was completely different in terms of the numbers of people voting, was completely different from what we were told on the night of the election. So I've written to them, for example, in my own constituency, I wrote this afternoon, and I said, "Well, you haven't explained how it is that you can lose 6,500 votes, and that you can turn up with the result. All you've said is there was an error, but you haven't said how that error came about." So then you begin to wonder, "Well, did that error happen elsewhere as well?" Then the other aspect to it is, which is important in the election, certainly for a party that is relatively new, or for an independent candidate, is that you get the right as a candidate to send out a one message, one letter to the entire electorate in your constituency, so either to every household, or to every named voter. So that, I put all my effort into that, which was quite detailed, briefly explaining, in about 1,500 words exactly what the background to this is, and taking on the question of Gaza, taking on the question of Ukraine, and taking on the question of COVID. None of those three things, which are the three decisive issues of our time, and of the last five years, none of those issues were being discussed in the mainstream media. Although I note that this report has suddenly made the front pages. This report by Baroness Halick about COVID suddenly makes the front page, and all of a sudden the Gaza, war, and Ukraine are back in the front headlines. So apparently these are non-issues in the election. But nevertheless, when we sent this letter out, it goes out to the constituents. It went out to them in the last week of the campaign, and yet between 20 and 30% in many places, of electors, vote by, post or vote, and so they've already voted before they get correspondence from the people who are standing in the election. And that corresponds by the way, it's a correspondence that you pay for the leaflets, so you pay 1,500 pounds for the leaflet, and then the raw mail distributed for free. So it's the only real concession to allow an independent candidate or a candidate for a party that's not so well known to get their message out to the public. The alternative to that was to call meetings, now we did call meetings, and the electoral officer in Wandsworth turned them and said, "Well, I've never heard some, I'm trying to call so many meetings." So we held 10 hosting events, which we organized, and we got most of the candidates to come along. But the incumbent candidate, the Labour Party candidate, attended only three hostings, got scared and never attended anymore. And it's my opinion that this is one of the fundamental elements of democracy, that the people in a constituency should be able to see in real life what people are saying. And we broadcast, and we got the internet, so we broadcast all of these live on YouTube to allow the population to see. Unfortunately, there was a lethargy within the population, and it's also accounts for what happened, which is really this whole thing about the anointing. We are going to anoint karstammer. So everyone was pretty much, you know, they were certainly far less enthusiastic about that than they were about Wimbledon or football, or probably will be about the Olympics, and therefore, the things that really affect your lives are demotees, you have to do with the 90s. Yeah. Yeah. Five years till the next election, but as George said in his interview on Not the Andrew Marshall, there'll be probably five by-elections per year between now and then. And while some of them won't be in necessarily fertile territory for the Workers Party of Britain, some of them will. Where does the party go from here? George has been talking about a grand coalition, including Stop the War and other anti-war groups, other left groups, and he'd like to see it led by Jeremy Corbyn as the British version of Jean-Luc Melanchon, the sort of eminent Greece of a new left alliance model along the popular front in France that did so well in their recent elections. How does that strike you? Because there were some sharp divisions on the left over issues like gender, for example, where the Labour Party has woke as hell if you're part of the expression, and yet the Workers Party, which is theoretically to the left of the Labour Party, takes a more traditional view. Yes. I mean, I don't know whether it will be possible to unify these different forces. I certainly, I informed, for example, George before the election that I would really only stand if I was able to give my views on Covid. Now, I know he had a different view on Covid, and most of the party members also had a different, or most of the party candidates also had a different view. But I thought it's important to have somebody who says what they really thought about what happened during the whole Covid experience and rejects the lies or what I believe to have been lies that were spread to justify installing semi-totalitarian dictatorship over society for a period of years. And therefore, I think there needs to be this open discussion. That's also why we in Patney called these debates in the tradition of the Patney debates, which you can find still on patneydebates.uk, dot uk, not dot co, dot uk. And there you'll see we held, we got multiple videos of the debates that took place. We took on the issues of the green issues, the issues of gender ideology were discussed and the issues of Ukraine, Gaza, and Covid were discussed. And we had very good discussions with people. The problem is, is that people are afraid of discussing issues. And that, that I fear is the main hindrance to any development on the left of any unity, because I've tried to discuss with Jeremy Corbyn and his entourage at the momentum meetings at the fringe of the Labour Party conference and been beaten up by them, physically ejected and beaten up by them. I've tried to raise issues with Jeremy Corbyn directly, gone to his house, discussed with him, debate, tried to raise debate with him. And he'll say, Oh yes, I'm going to listen, but then actually nothing comes of it. I tried to open discussions with John McDonald and John McDonald would block it. And this is the problem on the left is that most of the left has used, kind of points out on those issues, has become intolerant. And therefore, it's actually the good thing about the general election was it did allow us to have a debate on those issues, even though the limitations were, you know, very big to getting our message out. Michael, I want to continue this conversation next week, if it's all possible, and perhaps we can try and work out how being in favour of human freedom is somehow far right. You know, as it has been characterised by elements of the left, particularly with respect to the COVID for Argo. So let's have a deep dive into that next week, if you're willing to come back. Okay, sure. Great. Thank you very much. Indeed. Hi, co-coup. I'm Basil Valentine. I do hope you've enjoyed the programme today. T-N-T.
