On The Money

George Osborne, Philip Hammond and Sajid Javid are all advising Jeremy Hunt, while Osborne's long-time Chief of Staff and then Evening Standard employee, Rupert Harrison, is on the Economic Advisory Council. We know what to expect.

Yet what is the alternative? Labour opportunistically pretended to oppose the abolition of the 45p rate of income tax, but it supported every other mini-Budget measure that even Hunt, of all people, has felt the need to reverse. Had the mini-Budget ever been put to a Commons Division, then Labour's whipped abstention would have saved Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng from Hunt, Rishi Sunak, and all the rest of them. While Truss and Kwarteng are unlikely to contest the next General Election, Labour is going into it as the only party that still thought that Trussonomics was broadly, and often very specifically, a good idea.

Keir Starmer versus Truss could have resulted in a Labour overall majority, but Starmer versus Sunak will result in a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.