The Crock Over The Rainbow

I pointed out the existence of this electoral pact nearly a month ago. A hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party, leading to a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, is openly Keir Starmer's best case scenario. The Lib Dems, lest we forget, were the more pro-austerity and pro-war party to the Coalition, in which the Conservatives were the moderating force, as their record since 2015, appalling though it is in itself, makes abundantly clear. Labour is now frankly and formally fighting the Government from the right.

Who else is going to be included in this arrangement? The SNP, who have long been implementers of austerity, and who are now also cheerleaders for war? The Greens, whose Scottish sister party keeps the SNP in office, and who in England and Wales have today announced that they wished to leave NATO, but only once the war in Ukraine was over? Plaid Cymru, who would make the struggle for economic equality and for international peace impossible in Great Britain by breaking up the working class and the youth that, since they suffered most from economic inequality and from international conflict, had the leading role in the pursuit of a better order?

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party has governed for 12 years and counting thanks only to arrangements with no fewer than three other parties. The third has never won a seat in the House of Commons, and its predecessor did so only when a Conservative defected to it, resigned to bring about a by-election, and prevailed; he lost the seat back to the Conservatives at the subsequent General Election. The second would lose its deposit in any constituency in England, Scotland or Wales, where it could even find 10 people to sign its nomination papers. And the first was the Lib Dems. Think on.