No Such Thing As Society

Two in five adults have gross incomes from all sources that do not reach the income tax threshold of about one thousand pounds per month, but one in five of those who do will soon be paying the top rate. A country that fractured can hardly be called a society at all. What might that purported society's members be said to have in common?

That is before we mention that two and a half million people were signed off. It is extremely difficult to  be recognised as long-term sick. I have bad and worsening arthritis from head to toe, plus something related (although I did not know that they could be until I got them both) that is too gruesome for here. Even on appeal, I have repeatedly been denied any kind of benefit for them. Ignore anyone who told that getting signed off was anything other than very, very, very hard. Yet two and a half million people are now ill enough to be so.

And what are we offered instead? Keir Starmer. Rachel Reeves. Wes Streeting. Need I go on? Labour proposes a lower minimum wage than the Conservatives do. Keep saying that until it quite sinks in. Labour proposes a lower minimum wage than the Conservatives do.

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.