The Fringe of The Fringe

Donald Trump is never going to pay one penny piece to E Jean Carroll or to anyone else, because one of his supporters would simply murder anyone who tried to make him, and everyone knows it. It is not that he would have any personal involvement. He would not need to.

Such people's British wannabes, however, cut an altogether less intimidating figure. Kemi Baddenoch will apparently be abroad when London hosted its second National Conservative conference, or else it would have howled its approval of the woman who had cancelled any "Brexit bonfire", as it will be howling its approval of the man who had designed the present state-funded education system in England, of the woman who was not stopping the boats, and of the Leader of the House of Commons throughout the lockdowns. Will there even be decent booze? I mean, who would sponsor this?

A week ago, Labour and the Liberal Democrats both made gains from the Conservatives, left-wingers who had been expelled from the Labour Party stormed home, the SDP doubled its municipal base, and the Greens ended the night with far more Councillors than UKIP had ever had, largely in what had been true blue areas. Meanwhile, no Reform candidate was elected this time, of around 400 who had been fielded, and UKIP lost its half a dozen remaining seats. Unlike Labour, the Conservatives know what poses a threat to them, and it is not the almost entirely unnoticed accession of Andrew Bridgen to Reclaim.

Too much even for the more respectable sort of anti-vaxxer opinion, an MP on the fringe of the fringe has joined a party on the fringe of the fringe. Bridgen was one of all of 23 MPs who had been elected as Conservatives and who voted against the Windsor Framework, although he had already lost the whip by then and he has since been kicked out of the party altogether.

The remaining 22 are the conventionally defined Right's absolute maximum, with a core that is no more than half that size, little or none of which will be permitted to contest the next General Election in the Conservative interest. Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless held theirs seats at by-elections, and Carswell even managed to hold on narrowly at the General Election of 2015, but no one else since the War has been elected to the House of Commons against the Conservative Party and explicitly from its right. It is possible that at a General Election, no one but Carswell ever has been.

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.