Begins At Home

The Government has found £680 million for a new high-speed electric railway. In Turkey. Meanwhile, homelessness in England is at a 25-year high, with 131,370 children living in temporary accommodation. Here in County Durham, and also on Teesside, four in 10 children are growing up in poverty, child poverty has increased by 12 per cent since 2015, and life expectancy has fallen in the last five years. But rejoice, for Keir Starmer is coming. And Rachel Reeves. And Kim McGuinness.

Elect Jamie Driscoll in County Durham, although even his expanded area will not include Tees Valley, the Conservative Mayor of which has just been raised to the peerage. 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 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.