Hang The Lot

Hung Parliaments are neither new nor unusual in Britain. There was one when I was born, and I am 45. It was still in place when I first set foot in the Imperial Motherland, although I had always been subject to it in the Empire. There have been three since, including as the direct result of two of the last four General Elections. The one under which I lived but which I cannot remember did result in the Lib-Lab Pact, but the other three, all within my politically active lifetime, have seen deals between the supposedly anti-Coalition Conservative Party and no fewer than three other parties, including the only formal Coalition since 1945.

That Coalition lasted a full five-year Parliament, and it was the most effective Government since 2010. I am not saying that the things that it got done were good. But it got them done. Under precisely one Prime Minister the whole time. Precisely one Deputy Prime Minister. Precisely one Chancellor of the Exchequer. Precisely one Home Secretary. Precisely one Business Secretary. Precisely one Work and Pensions Secretary. Precisely one Communities Secretary. Several others held the same portfolios for far longer than had been normal, or than has been since. It was a Government of quite unimaginable stability. It was just a shame about the policies.

Keir Starmer says that he would never have anything to do with the SNP. He has been left in no doubt by the Scottish Labour Party, which would have to win seats if he were going to be in any position to cut a deal with any other party. That is a coalition, right there. The SNP would never have anything to do with Labour, either, but if Labour could never come to an arrangement with any party that opposed the continued existence of the United Kingdom within its present borders, then how could the SDLP take the Labour whip from next year, when things are going to be tight? How could it take that whip now?

What a load of rubbish is the "Progressive Alliance". Labour proposes a lower minimum wage than the Conservatives do. The Liberal Democrats were the more pro-austerity and pro-war party to the Coalition, as the record of subsequent Governments demonstrates. The Greens are shire and suburban NIMBYs elevated to an ideology of anti-industrial Malthusianism. In any case, Starmer, are they not in favour of Scottish independence and of a United Ireland? The SNP is the most uniformly authoritarian centrist party since the failure of Change UK, using Scotland as that tendency's laboratory for experiments such as trial by a single, salaried employee of the same State that brought the prosecution. In every way, Plaid Cymru is the SNP in Wales. The Alliance Party is the Lib Dems in Northern Ireland.

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 Rishi 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.