Reserved Matters

I told you so. The Government's only complaint about the Gender Recognition Reform Bill is that it is not a piece of United Kingdom legislation. It very soon will be, and if the difference between Keir Starmer and Gillian Keegan is anything to go by, then Labour's only objection will be to the lowering of the age of transition to 16.

That would still pass, though, because the Government has a majority of 80. On Politics Live, the Conservative Party's spokesman for the day, Mark Garnier, made only the constitutional case, and it fell to the interestingly much younger Harry Lambert of the New Statesman, who had just spoken vigorously in support of the teachers' strike, to argue against the Bill's specific provisions.

But Starmer's dishonesty is becoming a story. He lied to his party members to get their votes, so he would lie to anyone else to get their votes. We are heading for a hung Parliament. 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.