The Nick of Time

If there had been anything in the allegation against Nick Brown, then it would have been a parliamentary and a Police matter. It has never been either, and Brown has pulled the plug on the Labour Party's farcical proceedings by leaving the party. He will remain an assiduous MP until the General Election, he may well be given a peerage in the Dissolution Honours List, he will certainly be granted a former MP's parliamentary pass, and he will not be arrested.

A Labour MP for 40 years, and Chief Whip three times under six Leaders including two Prime Ministers, Brown is as much of a Labour Party stalwart as there could possibly be. If this is how it treats its own, then how would it treat the rest of us? It is unfit for office.

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.