Labour Pains

In October, Labour's poll lead was 37 per cent. At the weekend, it hovered between 11 and 15, with an average of 12.5. Anyone would think that there were limited appeal in still thinking that Trussonomics had basically been a good idea, in proposing a minimum wage lower than that offered by the Conservatives, in opposing popular and successful strikes, in promising to freeze energy bills at a record high, and in openly wanting to privatise the NHS, although only in England.

Fresh from Labour attack ads that illegally used his signature, that darkened his skin, that conflated being a brown man with being a paedophile, and on which the relevant Shadow Cabinet Minister is pretending never to have signed off, Rishi Sunak has just confirmed what we all knew, that the General Election will be late next year. By then, any Labour lead would be well into hung Parliament territory. Not for the first time, I tried to tell you.

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 Keir 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.