Every Seat Will Be A Marginal Next Time

Hours from now, the Brexit Party's capture of Peterborough will set off the latest attempt at a coup against Jeremy Corbyn, this time by those who would emulate the success of Change UK. Their cry is that of the Conservatives under Gordon Brown, "We ought to be 20 points ahead." But Britain is not a country that puts one party 20 points ahead.

Corbyn will easily see off the coup, but he could aid himself in that task by making it clear that he disapproved of any attempt to remove Tom Watson, to whom there is in any case no serious alternative in the absence of Chris Williamson. But if the Leader is to come from the Left, then the Deputy Leader needs to come from the traditional Right, which is once again the only right wing of the Labour Party.

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats, those erstwhile opponents of the Iraq War and of Tony Blair's attacks on civil liberties, need to make it clear that they will never allow anyone from Change UK into what is now their thriving party. Funnily enough, liberal populism is popular while liberal elitism is not. Who would have guessed?

It is Philip Hammond who, in flatly denying the existence of this country's 14 million poor people, speaks for the one in eight voters who, divided between the Conservative Party and Change UK, continue to think that the Britain of the last 40 years has been an economic or a political success. Those parties ought to merge.

The next General Election was always going to result in a hung Parliament. Held across the three polities of England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, any other outcome was now impossible. It will remain so for decades to come, and quite possibly forever. But it is far less predictable what the composition of the next hung Parliament is going to be. Indeed, it is not predictable at all.

Just for a start, imagine that every Conservative candidate lost a mere one in 10 of the Conservative votes in that constituency in 2017 to the combined forces of the Brexit Party (or whatever it had become by then) and the Lib Dems, while every Labour candidate lost a mere one in 10 of the Labour votes in that constituency in 2017 to the combined forces of the Brexit Party, the Lib Dems, and the Greens. Never mind anything else at national or local level, the impact of that alone would be eye-watering under the First Past the Post electoral system.

Every seat will be a marginal next time. And not a two-way marginal, either. Anyone who put up would stand a reasonable chance of winning anywhere. Therefore, a new party will be registered before the House of Commons rises for the summer recess, even if I have to pay for it myself, ongoing lawfare or no ongoing lawfare.

And I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.