To The Death?

Keir Starmer is a nasty piece of work. He should have said, "Of course I could afford to go private, but why should I have to, and what about people who can't?" Pushed to answer the question, "It would depend what the patient wanted." If there were a comeback to that, such as that the patient were already in a coma, "We live in the world as it is while trying to improve it, so yes, of course I would pay in that situation, rather than let another person die." But he did not say that. So would he let another person die?

Whether or not you agreed with Starmer about assisted suicide, and I do not, his support for it needs to be seen in this light. This is also the context of his willingness to use a nuclear weapon, and that willingness provides it with context. Is this who you want as Prime Minister?

Speaking of comas, the National Health Service must have been "beyond criticism" and "the National Religion", two things that it could not both have been in the Britain of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, when I was in the same comatose state that must have afflicted me when there was a taboo against discussing immigration. I approve of Commons votes so long as we could get the right MPs, but who would be on Rishi Sunak's "panel of experts" that would suggest a range of immigration targets on which the House might divide?

Still, 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 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.