In The Public Interest

The Post Office had to be hived off from the Royal Mail so that the Royal Mail could be privatised, because even in 2011 the whole of corporate London already knew about the subpostmasters. Prove to me that I am wrong. In fact, just tell me I'm wrong. You won't. You can't.

Does Kevan Jones still think that Keir Starmer ought to become Prime Minister? As Director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer took over several of the Post Office's private prosecutions and continued them "in the public interest", but he never took over any of them and discontinued it in that interest, as would also have been his right.

Between Starmer and Ed Davey, it really is Christmas for the Conservatives, all the way to Candlemas and well beyond. There is enough in this to cost both of them their positions, their knighthoods, their seats on the Privy Council, and then their parliamentary seats either by resignation or at the hands of the electorate, as well as to have Starmer disbarred. Anything less would not be trying, and scheduling the General Election for the second half of the year means that Rishi Sunak is trying very hard indeed.

There will be a lot to talk about. As we see from the return of the forced fitting of pre-payment meters, privatisation, including preliminary corporatisation in the form of wholly State-owned limited companies, means regulators who used to be employed by those whom they regulated, or who will be, or both. Even Ministers are better than that. At least, they are if they are not practically on the staff of things like Fujitsu, which itself subcontracts public works to Infosys and thus to the Prime Minister's father-in-law.

Starmer's predecessor as DPP, Ken Macdonald, told The World at One that, "We have a criminal standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt," but the judge at my trial specifically directed the jury to "disregard" the concept of conviction beyond reasonable doubt, and Peter Hitchens has assured me that I was not the only one. If Parliament can overturn a long list of criminal convictions and order compensation, then it can do that for all convictions and other adverse court decisions arising out of the three Miners' Strikes since 1970. North Durham refers to the county, not to the city, so what does its MP say about that? What will he say to me on the stump, since the boundary changes have moved Lanchester into North Durham?

And so on. 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 Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and 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.