Know This

"Let all those who might seek to do us harm know this: if you harm an American, we will respond," says Joe Biden. That will come as news to the family and friends of Rachel Corrie, of Shireen Abu Akleh, of the barely grown Furkan Doğan, of the child Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, and of numerous others all the way back to the USS Liberty and beyond, including, since the Israelis are not the only offenders here, both Gonzalo Lira, and the victims of the Saudi attacks on and in the United States on 11th September 2001.

In defence of illegal bases in Syria and Iraq, the United States is now bombing those who are at war with al-Qaeda and IS. When Britain officially joins in, although no Briton has been attacked, then the Liberal Democrats and the SNP will um and ah, mostly calling for Commons votes as if the procedure were the point, while Labour and the Conservatives will beat their chests and howl their heads off. It will of course be other people's children who will literally be decapitated. We simply have to get George Galloway back into Parliament at the Rochdale by-election on 29th February.

And later this year, 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.