Exposing The Weakness

Labour is polling much as it did in 2015. Even if the Conservatives win, then it will be by only 50 seats.

That will hardly have been worth holding a General Election only two years after the previous one.

The number of electors whose votes will have switched is going to be negligible.

The return of UKIP's Tories-in-Labour-areas to their historic and natural home will swing a certain number of seats. But not enough to justify this palaver.

Theresa May's openly expressed hope for no Opposition is not going to be delivered by this or any other Election.

She can dream on about the "united" Parliament that she terrifyingly imagines would be a good thing.

The main arguments being used against Jeremy Corbyn are signs of people who are hopelessly out of their depth, and significantly less informed than the public at large.

Corbyn's point is unanswerable as to the failure of "The War Against Terror" when we are holding the fourth General Election during the course of it.

As my old housemate Dr Tom Hamilton, who is now Tom Watson's Head of Policy and Research, used to say, "The War Against Terror ought to be known by its acronym."

The obscure Conservative Minister on last night's Question Time was nothing but a shill for Saudi Arabia, and he clearly assumed that that position was common sense.

Again I say that the future credibility of the couple of anti-war commentators who linger on while defining themselves as part of the Right now depends wholly on their endorsement of Corbyn against the lunacy of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Fallon.

Even accepting, for the sake of argument, the theory of nuclear deterrence, then does China or India have no nuclear deterrent, since each has a stated policy of no first use?

We are told that free school meals for all primary pupils, or the abolition of hospital car parking charges, would be an irresponsible and illiterate attempt to shake the Magic Money Tree.

In that case, what about war in Syria, or guaranteed above inflation increases in military spending? Where is that money supposed to come from?

The Conservatives have borrowed more than all previous Governments put together, and everybody knows it.

But then, doubling the National Debt has been very much their thing for decades.

The Royal Mail was not privatised until 2013, even the railways were not privatised by Thatcher, and she did not privatise electricity until the very end of her time in office.

So renationalisation would not be "Back to the Seventies".

Nor would it be "Forward to Venezuela", a country that hardly anyone in Britain could find on a map.

Consider that whatever problems Venezuela may have, the relentless emphasis on the place comes from the same people who banged on about Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

Those also had problems. But how much better are they now?

As, pretty much, Jeremy Corbyn asked Chatham House today. It is a question that answers itself.

All in all, there does turn out to be a justification for this General Election.

It is exposing the hitherto unchallenged weakness of the opponents of Corbyn's economic and foreign policies.