Alter Egos

Yesterday at a book fair in Oxford got chatting with someone on the Communist Party of Britain/Morning Star stall who explained that the Scargill Labour Party had been prepared to join the petty nationalist No2EU list but that there was a last minute hitch. Scargill demanded that he be No 1 on the list in London. Unfortunately, this had already been reserved for his Alter Ego, Bob Crow. They offered King Arthur the No 1 place on the list in Yorkshire (where presumably he could be expected to be better known and more popular) but he refused -- perhaps he had got wind of the fact that a number of ex-miners were planning to switch to the BNP. So the deal fell through. Don't know if there's any truth in this bit of gossip but here seemed the best place to record it for posterity.

In the event Crow beat Scargill in London, but Scargill's list beat Crow's in 7 of the 9 other regions. At least they settled the argument through elections. Which wouldn't have been the case in the state-capitalist ex-USSR the both of them so admired.