Raiding The Fridge

"The wonder weight-loss drug didn't work for me," writes Boris Johnson. I have not read the article, but it must be about cocaine. As for "He'll be back", when the hell is he going to go away? Mind you, Tony Blair has never gone away, and he lied to Parliament about a lot worse, so we should be so lucky ever to see the back of Johnson.

My entire adult life, since he himself was in his early thirties, the media have been screaming that Johnson ought to be Prime Minister. Thinking up fresh material would be too much like hard work. Irredentist Thatcherites kept the flame alive until the day she died, as did she, and as a few of them still do. Irredentist Blairites will keep the flame alive until the day he dies, as will he. And now, this.

It may all be true about Bernard Jenkin, but going on about it will always be a recognised mark of a nutter. Those marks often are examples of telling the truth. Jenkin was a Maastricht rebel and has been an MP continuously since 1992. He articulates the profound distaste of serious parliamentarians and committed Brexiteers for this clownish arriviste of questionable credentials.

That said, I know a lynch mob, a witch hunt, a kangaroo court or a show trial when I see one, and no one stages such a thing quite like the right wing of the Labour Party. That was also the faction responsible for the General Election of 2019. If the 2017 Parliament had run its course, then a General Election no later than June 2022 would have returned a hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party.

Terrified at that prospect, and having been publicly ordered by Blair to deliver "a rugby tackle" to bring down the Jeremy Corbyn who was leading in the polls and who was defeating the Government in the division lobbies, Keir Starmer announced the lethal policy of a second referendum on EU membership. Johnson seized his chance, and we all know what happened next. Having seen off that idea at the now forgotten Leadership Election of 2016, Corbyn should have sacked Starmer and said that the policy remained the 2017 manifesto commitment to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union. Even then, though, the damage would have been done.

Leaving it to Harriet Harman, Starmer has sat out the long downfall of Johnson in almost total silence, hoping to be a lucky bystander. 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 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.