Lead Balloon

The Labour poll lead is eye-wateringly lower than it was in the autumn, yet it is still double the margin by which Labour "won" this week's local elections. That in turn was five points lower than its result at the 2017 General Election, which it did not win. There is still a year and a half of this relentless decline to go until the next General Election.

So now, they are all catching up. I predicted both hung Parliaments this century, and I predicted another one on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister. 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 I say again that 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.