Detector Test

Of course Rishi Sunak lied. His mendacity is far from unique. "This is the power of a Labour government," declares the Labour Party's latest campaign advertisement, in which, admittedly among some genuine achievements, it attempts to take credit for all sorts of things that either happened to happen when there happened to be Labour Governments, or, as in the case of the Butler Education Act, were simply done by other people. That or Sunak? What a choice.

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 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.