Transition

The transgender issue was immensely divisive in and around the Corbyn Project. Jeremy Corbyn was and is especially close to the Counterfire and Morning Star circles that were and are as robustly material-realist on this as they were and are robustly pro-Brexit. But much of his fanbase took a very different view of both.

There is no such dilemma for the Labour Party now, though. It is back to being as obediently corporate-sponsored as the rest of them, and thus as uncomplicatedly committed to Thatcherism in excelsis, the literally self-made woman or self-made man, as it is to Margaret Thatcher's Single Market.

Like the rest of them. The concept of gender self-identification was unknown in this country, if it was known anywhere, until the Conservative Party won an overall majority on 2015, yet it now applies throughout the state-funded sector as if it were already the law, just as it does throughout the far from discrete corporate sector as a matter of vigorously enforced policy. And the Windsor Framework's case for Northern Ireland to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence, is the case for Great Britain to be in the Single Market, though conveniently without any danger of even the remotest popular influence. Give it five years. Under any party.

But when I tell you 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 Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in 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.