Look, Left

Jeremy Corbyn and Laura Pidcock are not planning to set up a new party. But people often are planning and even attempting to set up mirror images of Reform, obsessed with the Old Country and desperate to go home. Reform wants only to influence the Conservative Party, perhaps one day by being in coalition with it, and those would or do want only to influence the Labour Party, perhaps one day by being in coalition with it. That is not good enough.

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.