Angels of the North

On Wednesday evening, I was on the immensely heartening Zoom call with Jamie Driscoll about where to go after having achieved the second highest vote for an Independent in British electoral history. Last night, I was in Newcastle with Chris Williamson for the first public meeting to have been organised in the North East by the Workers Party of Britain. Again, it was all very optimistic; there was one other attendee at both events, and he was a lot more important than I was. Things are moving.

It is public knowledge that Jamie is looking to stand candidates at the General Election. The Workers Party has selected six candidates in the North East, four of them in the North East Metro area, and it has endorsed Yvonne Ridley at Newcastle Central and West. That has already happened, so the party should insist on those candidates, possibly in return for endorsing Jamie's Independents elsewhere in the North East Metro area, all the while reminding him that it had supported him for Mayor, notably unlike the Greens, who stood against him, and who will be contesting every seat at the General Election. Jamie may also endorse candidates of other parties that had supported him this year, such as TUSC and Transform, but the Workers Party needs to be clear that any deal with him would entail his support of all of its candidates even against any of those others', since it alone was an existing parliamentary party, with an MP elected under its banner.

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.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party, although nor would I expect to stand against it. If, however, it did not contest North Durham, then I would. 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.