Dark Forces

An Edinburgh man but born in Fife, my father was in the Black Watch, at the tip of the spear. And the heroes of D-Day bore no resemblance to today's Svoboda, Pravy Sektor, National Corps, C14, Azov Brigade, Aidar Battalion, Donbas Battalion, Dnipro-1 Battalion, Dnipro-2 Battalion, Kraken Regiment, Freedom of Russia Legion, Russian Volunteer Corps, or any of the rest of those. Quite the reverse, in fact.

A few, a very few, of us have been right about Ukraine from the very start. Tomorrow evening, only parties that were still wrong about it will be permitted to participate in a televised debate, just as only they are ever mentioned in opinion polls.

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 am standing for Parliament as an Independent here at North Durham. 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.