From my Substack diary for Tuesday, 30th. June 2026

A pleasant June morning and my mind is all over the place! One minute I find myself wondering if my sleep patterns are unusual or ordinary, the next I am thinking about my new sitting room after I removed the hi-fi yesterday and have I done the right thing, and then I am thinking, should I get into town today or leave it to tomorrow or Thursday?

Anyway, trivial personal matters aside, I feel somewhat buoyed by the potential of Andy Burnham to shake things up a little for the better, but at the same time dismayed by all the hateful people out there whose glass is usually half empty. And this I fail to understand: there are a lot of English nationalists amongst them who can’t stop running their country down – the Broken Britain Brigade. They keep saying they want their country back but seem not to know from where. I want my country back too, from the likes of them!

Since I’m thinking about Andy Burnham I must say that I have a glimmer of hope that politics can be more civilised and less confrontational. It’s a feint hope but a hope nonetheless. I am reminded of my own life as a member of the Labour Party and how I counted conservatives, liberals and greens among my good friends. I still do. I don’t shout at them or humiliate them – my core values of kindness and common decency prevent that. I have also known since I was in my 30’s that no single person can agree on everything with another single person, whether that is the partner you sleep with or the friends down the pub or the people in the political party with which you are affiliated.

There were – and are – many Labour policies that I disagree with, but on balance I generally agree with more Labour policies than those of other parties. If the issue is nuclear energy I would vote Green. If the issue is devolution or subsidiarity I would vote LibDem. And so on. But that does not stop me from being ‘Labour’. So why do we expect our politicians to be different? Labour is pro-nuclear, but what is wrong with a minority of Labour MP’s being anti-nuclear? In our divisive society this is held up and ridiculed – especially in the Establishment and Oligarch-owned British media – as a sign of division! It’s a difference of opinion, and what for goodness sake is wrong with that?