Frank and Constructive?

Kate Forbes was not an MSP when same-sex marriage was enacted, says that she would have voted against it if she had been, but adds that the matter is closed. There were close allies both of Gordon Brown and of Jeremy Corbyn who differed from that position only in that they had indeed been MPs when they had voted against that measure. Nor did several of them agree with Forbes and with Joe Biden about being personally opposed to abortion, but not so as to wish to change the law; Ronnie Campbell was once nearly deselected for his efforts to change the law. John Smith also voted consistently to do so. Even one of Tony Blair's most ferocious supporters, John Reid, whom the Hard Blairites wanted to stand for Leader in 2007, was of that persuasion.

No, the coronation of John Swinney is the canonisation of gender self-identification. That is why a 34-year-old woman has had to yield to a 60-year-old man, and it is not happening only in Scotland. The Cass Report may as well never have been published for all the difference that it is making to the popular culture in which these matters are decided. The soaps and the nine o'clock flagship dramas are of course filmed long in advance, but things that are broadcast much sooner after completion, or even live, are making it quite clear that that Report may as well be one of those Declarations which the anti-vaxxers used to issue and then assume that everyone had heard of when only they had. If today's local election results were bad for the Conservatives, then any replacement of Sunak would be with Penny Mordaunt.

George Galloway, with his entirely LGB parliamentary staff, is typical of those of us whose insistence on the reality of biological sex and on the normativity of the traditional family makes us the most uncompromising opponents of the economic, and therefore also foreign, policies that are most corrosive of the latter and of its foundation in the recognition of the former. Those who sincerely believe themselves to be on our side while supporting those policies need to examine themselves. It was Smith whose signature policy was that employment rights should begin with employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. While Corbyn revived that commitment, we have today witnessed its formal abandonment by Keir Starmer, who of course never had the slightest intention of giving effect to it, so that that abandonment has gone almost unnoticed.

But 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 Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

I have no plan to join the Workers Party of Britain, although nor would I expect to stand against it. But if 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. But there does need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.