The Crest of a Wave?

Today's star turn at the National Conservatism conference was Michael Gove. A Cabinet Minister almost continuously since 2010, Gove is the father of the present state-funded education system in England. Who is falling for any of this rubbish?

I am told that Tim Stanley was good. "The Conservative Party is not a serious party. It considered Penny Mordaunt as its next Leader because she successfully carried a sword at the Coronation. As a Scout, we did that with flags all the time. The most I could hope for was a badge."

There would be no such conference, just as there would be no Conservative Democratic Organisation, unless it were taken as a given that the Conservative Party were going to lose the General Election. On Saturday, Priti Patel launched her campaign for Leader of the Opposition. Yesterday, it was Suella Braverman's turn. Those two despise each other, so let the games begin? They already have.

Stanley aside, today seems to have been the day of the Great Replacement Theory, as endorsed by Keir Starmer when articulated by callers to LBC. The money for this conference comes from the United States, which was built on a Great Replacement, and the intellectual inspiration comes from Israel, which is vigorously engaged in at least the attempt at one. Spanning three continents, some might call that "globalism". But it is quite happy with talk of "Cultural Marxism", of how the Germans had merely "mucked up twice in a century", and of "inducing fainting fits from Hampstead to Hackney". Imagine, just imagine that, well, you know where I am going with this one.

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.