Immune Deficiency

While Donald Trump's claim about immunity is obviously ridiculous, no one would be going after him at all unless they expected him to win if they did not keep him off the ballot.

Meanwhile, Gabriel Attal has never lived, worked or even studied outside the richest parts of Paris. But if he made it to the second round against Marine Le Pen, then he would win, because anyone would. She is the candidate of a continuous tradition that regards the French Republic as illegitimate. No issue could ever give that victory in a straight fight across the whole country.

None of this is funny. Trump, Attal, Le Pen and Joe Biden are all bad for the world, and as for British politics, a recalled MP has just successfully insisted that his bit of skirt be the by-election candidate of his former party, or he would stand as an Independent. Imagine that Boris Johnson had so insisted on Carrie at Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

Meanwhile, Labour has imposed Damien Egan as its candidate at Kingswood, which is to be abolished at the General Election, for which Egan has already been selected to contest Bristol North East, all the while remaining the directly elected Mayor of Lewisham. Much of Kingswood, which was Labour from 1992 to 2010, will be transferred to the new seat of North East Somerset and Hanham. The MP for North East Somerset, Jacob Rees-Mogg, must be laughing his head off.

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.