No Flight Risk

The news from the Bibby Stockholm should have brought James Cleverly to the Despatch Box to announce his resignation, but instead the Rwanda Bill was given a Second Reading by 313 votes to 269, a Government majority of 44. 37 Conservative abstentions and no Conservative votes against. None. Not even Robert Jenrick, who had resigned from the Government for the purpose.

It was all hot air. This rebellion, if it can be so described, is not going to double by Third Reading. As ever over the last 30 years, if the Conservative Right looked or sounded like normal people, then the media would ignore them. They are on television because they make good television, like those bizarrely attired X Factor contestants who could not sing a note and who were never going win.

In the spirit of the right-wing papers, which always swing behind whoever is the Conservative Leader at a General Election, the entire GB News roster of Lee Anderson, Philip Davies, Esther McVey and Jacob Rees-Mogg joined Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and Thérèse Coffey in voting with the Government. Scott Benton and Peter Bone were among the five MPs elected as Conservatives who did so despite no longer having the whip; Bone came in specially for the purpose.

Even Andrew Bridgen abstained, meaning that no one elected as a Conservative voted against this Bill. The DUP did, but they had already voted for the Labour amendment, so whatever their reasons, they would not have been those of any Conservative opponent. Had there been such a person. There was not. Since 313 is fewer than half of the House of Commons, then there would be no objection in principle to a fatal motion in the House of Lords. Fewer than half of MPs have voted for what is supposed to be this hugely popular measure, which is so urgent that it would not take effect in this Parliament.

Suella Braverman abstained, but the recent net migration figures were from when she was Home Secretary. Danny Kruger abstained, but he was Political Secretary to Boris Johnson, who abolished the requirement that vacancies in Britain be advertised first in Britain, and who wanted visa-free travel with India, the most populous country in the world. That wing of the Conservative Party supported Truss, who pretty much wanted to abolish immigration controls altogether, as is the logic of the political choice, such as all economic arrangements are, to have a "free" market. Such a market has to be in goods, services, capital, and labour, which means people. Until this is understood, then no serious debate on immigration can be conducted.

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.