In The Teeth?

No auditor in Scotland will touch the SNP, but it has found one in Manchester, with 20 employees to the previous contractor's 650. AMS's most recent confirmation statement was due on 11th April, but it was filed today. It mostly does doctors, dentists, pharmacists and opticians, which does call to mind the fact that Anas Sarwar is a dentist. Something for him to get his teeth into? Sorry, but I couldn't resist it. And AMS has given money to Nick Clegg, while one of its directors has given money to Chuka Umunna, which are reasonable reflections of where on any political spectrum the SNP really sat.

An authoritarian centrist party that is accordingly shot through with spooks, the SNP is continuing the British Establishment's long-established use of Scotland as a laboratory for experimentation. Take the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill. This kind of experiment has always been tried, so to speak, on Scotland. It is the stuff of the dreams of every Home Secretary since forever, and certainly both of the present one and of her Shadow. Making acquittal practically impossible would indeed tend to increase the conviction rate, and that is the stated aim of this legislation, which would therefore be declared a success and extended throughout the United Kingdom by either a neo-Blairite or a National Conservative Government.

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 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.