Shouldering The Blame

Even Guido Fawkes gets it.

If ever there were a non-urgent military intervention that could have waited for the House of Commons, then it was bombing Yemen because it was non-fatally blockading someone else's shipping. Pull the other one, Rishi Sunak, that the Houthis have attacked the Royal Navy. With what? We would be hitting them a lot harder if they had.

But there were Commons votes on Iraq and Libya. So what? A Government with an overall majority and backed by the Official Opposition would be bound to win such a thing, so why hold it? It is a get-out clause for the Government, "This House voted for it." Although with the Speaker squared in advance, then who would even be called to ask the question? The Liberal Democrats and the SNP are just annoyed that they were not included in that process. They will be next time. The Lib Dems were in the Cabinet for Libya, and while one Conservative backbencher voted against it, no Lib Dem did. Not a single one.

Still, 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 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.