Mid Bedfellows?

Nadine Dorries knows what she is doing. The longer that she keeps her seat, the longer that the Liberal Democrats have to organise in her constituency. Mid Bedfordshire has had Labour in an admittedly distant second place at the last three General Elections, as on most previous occasions. But whoever decides these things has decided them in the Lib Dems' interest. As they have at Selby and Ainsty, where Labour has always come second. And as they did at North Shropshire, again usually a seat with a Labour runner-up. Chesham and Amersham was different, but it is as if the next Coalition already existed. The Lib Dems were the more pro-austerity and pro-war party to the last one, so that would be what another Coalition with them would also be like. 

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.