Macrotargeting

Jeremy Hunt was unable to name the extremist formations that had either organised or hijacked the Gaza ceasefire marches, vast weekly events that in nearly five months, and counting, have still seen fewer arrests than there were at last year's Glastonbury Festival.

The theatrical "protection" of a statue of Winston Churchill was comedy gold. There is now the first MP since Churchill to have sat for four entirely different constituencies. The line has changed from "he won by appealing to Muslims over Gaza" to "he won by uniting Muslims and the white working class", as if that were a bad thing. George Galloway's two leaflets were wholly compatible with each other, and if anything mutually dependent. This is now called microtargeting, and the Conservatives have been known to deploy it in support of Narendra Modi's position on Kashmir, but it was just called politics when I was starting out, never mind when George was. Whether you mean theology, or whether you mean sectarianism, religion is not remotely new to the politics of Great Britain.

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. We have made a start.

Beyond that, we need to re-learn structured daily prayer, setting aside one day in seven, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, the global community of faith as the primary focus of personal allegiance and locus of personal identity, the lesser outward and greater inward struggle, the need for a comprehensive and coherent critique of both capitalism and Marxism, the coherence between faith and reason, and a consequent integrated view of art and science. The answer to the challenge of the Sunna is Sacred Tradition. The answer to the challenge of the Imamate is the Petrine Office. The answer to the challenge of Sufism is our own tradition of mysticism and monasticism. Liberal Catholics will be the last to see the point. Buy the book here.