The World Tonight

The latest spooky First Minister of Scotland may be a cheerleader for the overthrow of democracy in Pakistan, but the Minister of State for the Commonwealth is Lord (Zac) Goldsmith, two of whose nephews are two of Imran Khan's sons. Sometimes, the personal really is political. Meanwhile, none of the women and children who have been killed in Gaza had chosen to move there from Radlett.

But Syria is back in the Arab League. At peace with Iran thanks to China, Saudi Arabia is brokering peace in Sudan as it has made peace in Yemen, when it humiliated most of the British Labour Party's MPs and all of that party's staff. The world dedollarises, the BRICS expand, the Belt and Road carries all before it, and most people's governments refuse to starve them of food or fuel by sanctioning Russia.

Even things like the always known about, but officially secret, Anglo-Irish air defence treaty are now being challenged out loud as the question presents itself of why they would no longer wish to keep Victory Day in Ukraine, of why they would go so far as to launch a drone attack against it, of what Europe Day really was if the types who did that preferred to keep it instead, and of why Britain was supplying them with the weapon of mass destruction that is depleted uranium.

Not that such questions are being asked on the floor of the House of Commons. 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.