Unwise But Not Illegal?

ITV must answer to the higher moral authority of Members of Parliament. And why not? Boris Johnson has now done so. Subject to the passing on of his material by the Cabinet Office, which is in practice the Prime Minister. Over to Rishi Sunak, then. Fun and games.

Although Johnson is only the Prime Minister before last, this story is being commendably well-covered. He appears no longer quite to count as a journalist, or all the stops would be being pulled out to protect him. On what was once Fleet Street, only the Daily Telegraph has covered the story of Nick Cohen.

If the chance to stick it to The Observer, and thus to The Guardian, was the reason, then so be it. But beyond that, only The National, so essentially the SNP, and Novara Media, a very particular iteration of post-Corbynism, have thought this at all newsworthy.

So much for Guardian Media Group and #MeToo. Feminist opponents of gender self-identification have also accepted Cohen as what they must have known was a purely opportunistic ally, using them as cover. He even blames the other side of that debate for his predicament. Along with the Russians, of course. And the booze, as if that were an excuse. Ordinarily, such as in relation to motoring offences or breaches of health and safety at work, drunkenness is considered an aggravating rather than a mitigating factor.

Also, notice that at least one of Cohen's victims was his unpaid intern. At GMG. His rather good articles and book chapters on issues of economic inequality, sadly from rather a long time ago, do need to be seen in the light of such employment practices. Everything on such issues in The Guardian and The Observer needs to be so regarded.

Similarly, the resurgent right-wing Labour machine's capture of ITV, tellingly at what must be the insistence of the giant corporate advertisers that are its sole source of revenue, needs to be seen in the light of the Phillip Schofield carry on, of which what is already being said cannot be a tenth, or there would be no story. Although not even Schofield made his next wife pregnant while his then wife was being treated for cancer. And when Johnson was keeping a harem at public expense, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer was Sunak.

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 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.