Public Bodies, Overseas Matters

The United Arab Emirates is supporting South Africa's action against Israel before the International Court of Justice, so Abu Dhabi cannot buy the Telegraph Group too soon. The lack of any spooky kibosh on that acquisition should be seen alongside last night's vote against the Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill by Alicia Kearns, inheritor of Alan Duncan's seat, vetted-to-kingdom-come Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and scourge of a David Cameron who is still as slippery as ever. That said, this Bill would not have been initiated if Cameron had already been Foreign Secretary, and his answers to Kearns, evasive though they were, left no doubt that he had indeed been briefed that Israel was committing war crimes.

The Houthis quake before Lloyd Austin and Grant Shapps, who wants to mothball the Royal Marines. Notice that it takes 12 countries, including six of the G7 and two of the P5, to give the Houthis a bally good ticking orf, and to threaten a slap on the wrist next time, don't think we wouldn't. Bahrain is the only Arab country on the list, because it is an Anglo-American naval service station. But the Saudis and the Emiratis have recently spent nine years losing a war to the Houthis, and everyone else in the region has watched them do it, so there is little enthusiasm for tagging along with the West's repetition of its 20-year defeat at the hands of the Taliban. Each of those missiles costs at least one million dollars, and some of them cost twice that. Against a drone. A drone! The Americans hijacked the St Nikolas last year and sold the stolen oil, so the Iranians have only taken the ship back.

The eliminations of Saleh al-Arouri and Wissam Tawil make it clear how precise the IDF can be, so ignore any claim that what is happening in Gaza, and increasingly also in the West Bank and elsewhere, is sadly unavoidable. Listen to the accounts presented to the ICJ, and remember that this country's Official Opposition is in thrall to people who have lately moved from dismissing objectors as "chanting football slogans" while "not knowing which River and which Sea they were chanting about", to demanding that they be made personally liable for the cost of policing their lawful and peaceful protests. David Baddiel, who has never displayed the slightest depth of knowledge of any subject apart from football, is of the generation of British comedians that trivialised politics by setting themselves up as authorities on it. "Lord Walney" is one result. Keir Starmer is another.

Jeremy Corbyn did not vote on the Boycott Bill, because he was in The Hague as an invited and valued member of the South African-led, thoroughly intercontinental, and immensely distinguished delegation to the ICC. Neither main party has had another Leader in living memory, if ever, whose name has so echoed around Africa and Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific, Latin America and the internal colonies of the West. It has now been established beyond doubt that the worst candidate for Prime Minister that either main party has ever presented at a General Election was not Corbyn, but the man who beat him in 2019, although even he was not as bad a Prime Minister as his successor, nor would either of them be so outstandingly unsuitable against Starmer, who will not even debate against Rishi Sunak. Would Corbyn have refused to debate against Sunak? As an Independent incumbent facing a Conservative challenger at Islington North, he should challenge the Leader of the Conservative Party to such a debate.

And 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.