Red Benches?

Imagine, just imagine, that a Labour Leader with none of the personal popularity of the early Tony Blair really did deliver a victory beyond Blair's wildest dreams. I spent most of Blair's first term at university, constantly being told by the Tory Boys that they had won the argument, and that anyone who disputed that could take it up with the Leader of the Labour Party. They knew a week in advance what was going on in the Government, and that was only at Durham. The ones at Oxbridge must have been writing the legislation. Look over it, and that makes perfect sense. Keir Starmer would be like that, only very much more so.

Later on, when I was still hanging around the place on and off in one capacity or another, they were annoyed about the hunting ban, although not, in policy terms, about anything else. But they always knew that, having been enacted purely in order to buy support for the Iraq War, that ban was never going to be enforced. Even so, in 2005 and 2010, at least one third of Conservative activists were on the campaign trail only because of foxhunting.

What, did you think that they cared about things like hereditary peers? Only the ones who owned nothing but Edwardian clothes and whom you were never quite sure were joking when they said that women should not have the vote. Immediately after the 1997 General Election, the Leadership of their own party had passed to a man who had been advocating the removal of hereditary peers for 20 years. The complete abolition of the House of Lords has been the policy of all main parties ever since. But it will never happen, because the place is too useful.

Tonight, we learn that Starmer has tried to offer Diane Abbott a peerage. He got rid of Jeremy Corbyn, of whom few people had heard before 2015. But he had no idea what he was taking on in the double-crowned Queen of London and Queen of Black Britain, who had been all ready, willing and able to lead much of the former and most of the latter out of the Labour electoral coalition. Though not as severe as it might have been, the damage to the party's relations with both is already irreparable. Abbott has conceded absolutely nothing, and now Starmer's cackhanded attempt to ennoble her out of the way is attracting the derision that it deserves. If you come at the Queen, then you had better not miss. Starmer has missed by a country mile.

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.

The Workers Party of Britain is not contesting North Durham, so I am, and matters are now too far advanced for me to stand aside for that party, or for Laura Pidcock as is rumoured without a word from her, or for a Palestinian as is also being mooted, or for anyone else. Unless the Workers Party had come up with a candidate by last Sunday, then the fact that I was always going to contest this Election had been in the public domain for five years. I am not standing against Luke Akehurst. He is standing against me. The Workers Party would be standing against me. Laura would be standing against me. A Palestinian would be standing against me. Anyone would be standing against me. Please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, including if you might be able to help with money. But I will be on that ballot paper, come what may.

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.