Trotsky – The Myth. Ask a Western leftist which communist he admires, and you often get the same answer: Trotsky. The intellectual. The orator. The true revolutionary, betrayed by Stalin. If only he had won… Look at the young Trotsky in the picture: round glasses, wild hair, burning eyes. Many young leftists today would recognize themselves in him. The look hasn’t changed. Neither has the certainty. So let’s look at what he did when he had power. Born in 1879 in what is now southern Ukraine, Trotsky was a brilliant writer and a spellbinding speaker. In October 1917, he played a central role in organizing the Bolshevik seizure of power. Then Lenin made him Commissar for War, and he built the Red Army, directing it from an armoured train that rushed from front to front. Deserters were shot. Military discipline was enforced through executions. Blocking detachments were deployed to stop retreating soldiers, and former tsarist officers recruited into the Red Army were kept under surveillance by political commissars. Their families were sometimes held hostage to guarantee their loyalty. Cruelty knows no limits when you have no doubts. In 1920, the Red Army marched on Warsaw. It was stopped on the Vistula. That same year, Trotsky published an entire book, Terrorism and Communism, explaining why revolutionary terror was necessary. He wanted labour militarized too: workers organized like soldiers, subjected to military discipline and compelled to serve the needs of the state. In 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt – once hailed as the pride of the revolution – demanded free elections to the soviets. Trotsky supported the suppression of the revolt. Thousands were killed in the assault or executed afterwards. Then he lost the power struggle to Stalin. Expelled, exiled, forced abroad. From there, he wrote that the revolution had been betrayed – by Stalin, never by himself. He ended up in Mexico City, where he stayed for a time with Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. And so the Western romance took shape: the exiled prophet, the revolutionary betrayed, the road not taken. In August 1940, a Soviet agent who had gained his confidence entered his study and struck him with an ice axe. The machine Trotsky had helped build had come for him too. His killer later received the Soviet Union’s highest honour. Trotsky was not the alternative to Stalin. He was the same machine – only with better prose. He never rejected the terror. He rejected losing control of it. The "good communist" is always the one who lost. Next: Stalin.

Can someone explain this to me? Europeans settled the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Their descendants have been born there for more than 350 years, built a distinct language and culture on African soil, and know no other home. They are still routinely called colonisers and told they are not African. Move from Lahore, Lagos or Kingston to Britain, acquire a passport, and the same voices insist you are British at once and, increasingly, that your children may claim to be English. Either continuous presence, birth and cultural formation create a legitimate claim to a place, or they do not. The standard cannot be inverted solely according to the ancestry of the people involved. Jews maintained a continuous presence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years. The Romans renamed the province of Judea “Syria Palaestina” after crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE specifically to erase the Jewish connection to the land. Arab forces conquered the region in the 7th century. Significant Arab migration continued into the late Ottoman period and under the British Mandate, drawn by economic opportunities created in part by Jewish development. A distinct “Palestinian” national identity among local Arabs is a 20th-century development, solidifying mainly in the 1920s in opposition to Zionism and later consolidated by the PLO and the Soviet KGB. Afrikaners after 350+ years in South Africa: still colonisers, not African. Jews returning to (or remaining in) their ancestral homeland after millennia: colonisers and settlers. Arabs whose ancestors arrived via 7th-century conquest or later migration: indigenous Palestinians with an ancient claim. Someone who arrived in Britain from the Subcontinent or Africa in recent decades: British, and now eligible to be English. The standard for belonging keeps changing depending on who is making the claim. #DoubleStandardIdentity #350YearsStillColoniser #JewsNeverLeft, #BelongingIsSelective #WhoseHomeCounts #IndigeneityWhenConvenient #StopTheBoats #NetMigrationCrisis #EnglishIsAncestry #IntegrationFailed #BelongingIsSelective.

Aries: your forthright nature, blunt speech and hot temper mean people are scared to tell you you smell funny. But you do. Thursday is a good time to buy a towel rail or a gecko. Lucky cheese: Brie. Taurus: people call you lazy, but if you really want something you're more than capable of whining listlessly from your bed until someone fetches it for you. Taureans in relationships should count themselves lucky. Your ruler, Venus, is a bitch. Gemini: intellectually curious and easily bored, you'll have to engage in slow, tedious and repetitive work this week, but stick with it, because when you're busy you've got less time to be an arsehole. Lucky dog: dachshund. Cancer: always sensitive and emotional, you'll feel especially weepy on Sunday, when Uranus moves into your opposing sign. Try and stop clinging to people like a bloated tick. Tuesday is a good day to find your backbone. Leo: this week's Jupiter transit means your unshakeable conviction that you're the most gorgeous and charismatic person in existence will reach new and nauseating heights. You are likeliest to suffer death by erotic auto-asphyxiation on Monday. Virgo: this weekend sees Saturn square to your ruler, Mercury, causing your irritable bowel syndrome to flare up. Correct someone's grammar to restore your usual state of twitchy self-satisfaction. Lucky fraction: ⅔. Libra: indecisive and superficial, you're currently toying with the idea of a new venture, but will ultimately decide to pass. Wise. You'd have been crap. A chance encounter will leave you with elbow burns and a well-deserved sense of self-loathing. Scorpio: Machiavellian, vengeful and twisted, you're at constant risk of tipping over into full-blown psychopathy. Get someone to handcuff you to a radiator through Saturday night's Pluto-Venus sextile unless you want to make your first kill. Sagittarius: your hedonistic tendencies, total lack of tact and this week's retrograde Mars make it likely you will be beaten into unconsciousness in a bar on Friday. Lucky fish: pilchard. Capricorn: venal and calculating, you'll enjoy embezzling cash/sabotaging an office colleague this week. Warning: Shirley in accounts knows what you're up to. Capitalise on the upcoming moon-Saturn conjunction to falsify your expense report. Aquarius: you see yourself as a quirky individualist, but in fact you're an unpopular oddball whose acquaintances turn off the lights and lie on the floor if they suspect you're outside. Sunday's auspiciously placed Jupiter offers a fleeting chance to make a friend, but you won't. Pisces: unfocused, unrealistic, unreliable: these are your better qualities. With ruler Neptune moving into Virgo, Wednesday will see you either dropping your stash in front of your parole officer or waking up to find yourself participating in a porn shoot. Lucky condiment: Piccalilli.

I’ve blocked about 60 trolls already this morning They’re certainly very angry that my new book SECOND CLASS is now a bestseller You can get it here: amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HN8PKGVB/r…

Happy International Pronouns Day!

1/ We’ve written to the Secretary of State for Equalities concerning misinformation that appeared in an article she wrote over the weekend. It’s important that the debate around the draft conversion bill is accurate and the Minister should promote this. gaymensnetwork.co.uk/letters