Digital Information

Reform UK tried to pay Lee Anderson to join it. A man who does not know that Orkney is in the United Kingdom. Yet the attempt to poach him will probably result in a promotion. Look out for him as a Minister in the Government that is arrogating to itself the power to spy on the bank accounts of 22.4 million people, half the adult population.

Having professed support for the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill, Labour abstained, because of course it did. The whole thing is entirely of a piece with the last Government to have been drawn from what was then Anderson's party. That remained his party until he was 51, a mere five years ago. Before anyone starts, I left the Labour Party long before it left office, and before I myself was 30. Not so, the historically, geographically and constitutionally challenged Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would 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.