Yellow Mist

Who told Ed Davey that anyone would want to be in coalition with him? Throughout my 30 or so years of political activism to date, Liberal Democrats have been telling me that they were "the conscience of the other two parties" and then wondering why I laughed.

Yes, I have voted for certain of their candidates in my time, but that is something else. I am talking about the party. I have voted for certain candidates of all parties and local formations in my time. I have worked, and I still do work, with people in all of them. I have friends in all of them. But I have no time for any of them, as such.

Nick Clegg said that the Lib Dems, "would add a heart to a Conservative Government, and a brain to a Labour one." He was not joking. He really was quite that self-regarding, and his party still is. Jo Swinson spat out the words "Boris Johnson" and "Jeremy Corbyn" as if her superior claim to the Premiership were self-evident. She was unmoved from that even when, unlike her, neither of them lost his seat.

I am convinced that there is going to be a hung Parliament next year, but I do not know why Davey assumes that that would bring him back into the Cabinet. In 2017, and having been out of office only two years, the Lib Dems had the same number of seats as the DUP. Theresa May could have picked either of them. Look which one she picked.

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. Never mind the Lib Dems.