Lowering Our Horizon?

Tony Blair knew about Horizon in 1998, but Peter Mandelson made him go through with it. Tell me why Mandelson should be Deputy Prime Minister in all but name for a third time, or just plain Deputy Prime Minister, one or other of which he would be under Keir Starmer.

Still, we do have Mandelson to thank for the confirmation that a donation of one million pounds from the late Brian Davies bought Blair's commitment to the hunting ban, which it has always been common knowledge was eventually enacted to buy support for the Iraq War from scores of Labour MPs. Neither Blair nor his then Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, voted for the ban, but its work was done. That party and that internal faction are on the cusp of returning to office. Meanwhile, the never realised prospect of formally repealing the almost completely unenforced ban serves as a totem to wave at a Conservative base that therefore mirrors those Labour MPs, caring more about this than about numerous issues of vastly greater import.

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 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.