The Fading Orange

Over here, we are weeping at the impending loss of the Democratic Unionist Party, which would lose its deposit in any seat in Great Britain. In fact, it is hard to imagine its securing the 10 nominations to put it on the ballot paper almost anywhere in England, Scotland or Wales. That has always been the case. The DUP would never have been remotely mainstream on “the Mainland”.

The DUP wants the rest of us to pay for it to have walled cities in which to teach Young Earth Creationism, using them as a base from which to stage what were guaranteed to be violent parades through neighbouring areas. Ulster Resistance has never even declared a ceasefire, so that party maintains a paramilitary organisation to bring about that state of affairs. Oh, well, it will soon be Dublin’s problem.

But things will still be in transition at the end of next year, and 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.