Security Centre?

In the form of the National Cyber Security Centre, the SNP has called in GCHQ to run its Leadership Election. Well, of course it has. In December, following the election of Stephen Flynn as Leader of the SNP at Westminster, Stewart McDonald resigned as the Spokesperson for Defence. Ferociously pro-NATO and so spooky that he was even allowed on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, on which Graham Stringer would seem to have been and to be the token non-spook, McDonald was and is a supporter of the discredited neoconservative propaganda site, Bellingcat. He is even a donor to it.

In September 2020, The National, which is for all practical purposes an official publication of the SNP, reported that McDonald had promised an independent Scotland a Navy larger than the Royal Navy. That would have been perfectly possible, at least in terms of manpower. At that time, there were 32,760 Regulars, 3870 people in the Maritime Reserve, and 7960 in the Royal Fleet Reserve. Scotland could easily have found more than 44,590 Naval personnel. It still could. If it conscripted them. Pointedly out of loyalty to Nicola Sturgeon and Ian Blackford, the man who had threatened that resigned his frontbench position last year. Sturgeon's husband, Peter Murrell, remains the Chief Executive Officer of the SNP. It is he who has sent for GCHQ.

At Holyrood, the SNP is dependent on the Greens, and when those are not approving a two billion pound PFI deal, one of the largest in Scotland's history, then they are as belligerent about Ukraine as their partisans in Germany, where their Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, declares that, "We are at war with Russia." This is what the Greens are. They are like the Liberal Democrats, who opposed the war in Iraq when they thought that they were always going to be in Opposition, but who waged the war in Libya once they had attained office. One Conservative MP voted against the war in Libya, but no Lib Dem did. As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we know that one day, and pretty soon, everyone will claim that they had always agreed with us about Ukraine. For now, though, not a single MP is opposed to this madness. Not one.

Farther afield, Sinn Féin, always riddled with British and other intelligence operatives, and long practised in the art of imposing austerity on the Six Counties, is making it clear from its attitude to Ukraine that it envisaged a 32 County Republic not only in the EU, to which it used to be opposed on something like Lexit grounds, but also in NATO. Bernie Sanders had a tactical disagreement with the war machine 20 years ago, but he had always been a reliable enough cog in it before, and he always has been since. On a recent visit to London, he charged £25 to see him being interviewed by Owen Jones, or £10 just to watch it online. Welcome to the Licensed Left.

But when I say 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 Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

The opinion polls bear no resemblance to real votes cast, and even the Labour poll lead has halved since Sunak took over. Halved. The Labour vote has gone through the floor at all but one by-election since 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 otherwise 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.