Planning and Skills?

Oddly enough, Nick Boles took over Quentin Davies's seat. But was Boles a successful Minister first for Planning and then for Skills? Thanks to him, are we living in a global centre of excellence in those areas? Yet Rachel Reeves expects us to be impressed that she is introduced by him. As with Dan Poulter, in the way that if you look at the key but largely unseen advisory positions, then the Biden Administration turns out to be the Bush Administration, so if you looked at the key but largely unseen advisory positions, then a Starmer Government would turn out to be the Coalition of the austerity programme and of the war in Libya, in a competitive field the worst neoconservative war of them all so far.

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 Keir 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.