All In A Row

When Jacob Rees-Mogg did not announce even so much as a Dorries-like aspiration to resign in sympathy with Boris Johnson, then we knew that he wanted to return to office.

And now, Rees-Mogg says that his party needs to "row in behind Rishi Sunak", to prevent Labour from imposing exactly the "green taxes" that were already being imposed as perhaps the most enduring legacy of Johnson, the Prime Minister of Net Zero.

Johnson was a very big spender long before Covid-19. He even lifted the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him the most pro-immigration Prime Minister in living memory, if not ever, although admittedly only because Liz Truss never got into her stride. Johnson was closer to Stonewall than any Prime Minister before or since. The lockdowns were Johnson's. The Northern Ireland Protocol was Johnson's. The war in Ukraine was Johnson's. And that was Johnson, never mind Sunak.

Yet Rees-Mogg has the wit to realise that the Right has nowhere else to go. Reform UK managed only 1,332 votes even at Selby and Ainsty, where the Conservative vote went down by 21,700. It took 1,303 at Somerton and Frome, while Reclaim took 714 at Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Trivia. The stories were the Liberal Democrats' resurgence in the West Country, where they denied the Conservatives an overall majority in 2010, and the toxicity of ULEZ to Labour in Outer London, where it has to win if it wanted to win outright.

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 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.