The King Over The Water

Of course, the water companies ought to be fined into oblivion and then renationalised for nothing. In the meantime, the King's Greenery, while wholly typical of his class-generational intersection, may be a cause for concern, but it may also be used to our advantage. The monarchy is supposedly good for tourism. Pumping millions of litres of raw sewage into Lake Windermere undeniably is not. The King might use his unrivalled platform to do something about that.

I used to think that the Attlee Government had missed a trick in not branding all of the nationalised industries "Royal", with crowns on them and so on. But that has not saved the Royal Mail, founded as such in 1516. Daniel Kretinsky does not want it for the universal service obligation. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives, though, will stop him from getting it, and it was the Liberal Democrats who privatised it in the first place, just as they all want to bail out the water companies instead of letting them go bust and then taking them back.

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. 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.