Lease of Life

To give it its due, tonight the BBC featured a discussion of leasehold. Try and explain leasehold to anyone from almost anywhere else in the world. Give three cheers for the three-term Labour Government that never abolished it. And note carefully how feudalism has morphed into global capitalism, so that nostalgia for the former does not ultimately provide the basis necessary for resistance to the latter. Leasehold should simply be abolished. People who wonder why I keep up the politics, no one else is saying things like this.

But the opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and even the Labour poll lead has halved since Rishi Sunak took over. Halved. The Labour vote has gone through the floor at all but one by-election since Keir Starmer became Leader, with one of those recording Labour’s lowest ever share of the vote. Council seats that were held or won under Jeremy Corbyn have fallen like sandcastles, taking control of major local authorities with them. That is the bread and butter of the party's right wing, who are not the most employable of people.

With nearly two years still to go until the next General Election, Starmer’s personal rating is negative not only nationally, but in every region apart from London, and it is still in decline. 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.