Or Other Noxious Thing

Carla Foster's daughter had a name. Lily. Say her name. But why did the Crown Prosecution Service prosecute Foster? To secure the repeal of section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, of course. Know when you are being played.

In fact, one of Margaret Thatcher's last acts was to make it grounds for abortion, "that there is a substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped."

No such abnormality need be specified, there is no definition of a substantial risk, there is no definition of serious handicap, and this is strictly distinct from the grounds, "that the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman or any existing children of her family."

So Britain has had legal abortion up to birth, without any suggestion of risk to the life or health of the mother, for 33 years. Just claim that there was an undefined substantial risk that if the child were born, then it would suffer from such unspecified physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped in an undefined way. When there is not a lockdown, then this happens every day.

Thatcherites have approved of only two Prime Ministers since Thatcher, and one of those was in office for less than two months. The other legalised abortion by pills through the post, so that abortion up to birth could continue even during a lockdown, because all parties were once again committed, as most Labour MPs always had been, to an economic model that depended upon its mass administration.

No one believed that there was a 10-week limit. If Foster's was the only case of such deceit, then, well, it is not even worth considering anything so implausible. She did what this provision was intended for, but the CPS wanted an opportunity to launch the campaign to end even the most notional restrictions on abortion. Notice that there is now an absolute right to abortion in Northern Ireland, because otherwise the Republic would refuse to take the place. Think on.

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 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.