Indemnity and Oblivion?

Seven declared supporters of Boris Johnson. Seven. Although at the time of writing, even Parliament's own website lists only six.

It was the Labour Chief Whip, Sir Alan Campbell, who shouted "No! No! No! No!" to force a vote, and it was the Labour Whips who provided the tellers for the Noes. Those included neither Lia Nici, nor Jacob Rees-Mogg, nor Nadine Dorries, who is still an MP.

Meanwhile, Glastonbury has cancelled a film that is in fact quite critical of Jeremy Corbyn, but not in the right way. Like the entire DUP, which has no fond memory of Johnson, Corbyn abstained this evening. I think that that says a lot.

A brief but tumultuous era is being drawn to a close. It began with the emergence of Corbyn in the summer of 2015, and it will end, nearer in time to the present day than that was, when Britain re-joined the European Union. Not just Margaret Thatcher's Single Market and the Customs Union, but the eurozone and the Schengen Area. No referendum. A handful of votes against in the Commons. No division in the Lords. Royal Assent with one of those occasional Buckingham Palace statements which explicitly welcomed a political development. Thoroughly celebratory television coverage, largely of primary schools.

Both through his Ministers and in his own person, Charles III will then do as Charles II did, decreeing that the whole thing had never happened, thereby letting off everyone who had done it. Except, perhaps, the equivalents of the regicides of 1649. That means the last ditchers for Johnson. That means Johnson himself. That means those involved in Oh, Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie. That means Corbyn himself. And perhaps more than anyone else, that means those of us who broke with Corbyn over his indulgence of Remainerism, identity politics, and Greenery.

But I for one will continue to work to create a thinktank, a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually a fortnightly satirical magazine. In good, old-fashioned print, so that no one would be able to press a button and delete them. The thinktank and the weekly magazine need to be up and running at the start of the forthcoming General Election year.

You see, 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.