Seating Plan

Two former Labour MPs, one of them for Rochdale, are candidates at the Rochdale by-election, but neither of them is the Labour candidate. There no longer is one, for a seat that in 2019 returned a Labour MP with a majority of 9,668. Under those circumstances, Jeremy Corbyn would have resigned. Still, when Simon Danczuk fails to be elected, and that after his party's failure to win either of this week's by-elections, then stop talking about Reform UK, or treating the Loony Right as the economic policy norm. It is not populism if it is not popular.

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 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.