Back To Basics

Proposed by Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman, and defended on Politics Live today by Tim Stanley, the Universal Basic Income is being trialled under a Conservative Government.

The simple existence of Universal Credit, and previously also of the furlough scheme, has already conceded the principle. It is going to happen, simply because it is cheaper. The key will be to do Modern Monetary Theory's Job Guarantee as well, both by means of mass reindustrialisation, and as the means to it.

Traditional conservatives, just imagine. Nothing to stop the BBC licence fee from being made voluntary. No more questions about whether or not jurors had a stake in society. No more conceivable excuse for prostitution or for low level drug-dealing. Only the Labour Party will hold out, to defend the basis of its members' and its core voters' spiteful power over the lower orders. But no one would try and repeal it once it were already in place.

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.