Cost, Benefit, Analysis

Imagine that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party had won only one of three by-elections on the same day, and had in another case come fifth with 2.6 per cent of the vote, having lost more than five sixths of its support from the previous General Election, when it had come third.

Now imagine that at the third contest, Labour had failed to capture the seat of a former Prime Minister who had been forced to leave Parliament in disgrace, a seat that had already been a target. The cries for Corbyn's resignation would have been deafening. But this is the age of Keir Starmer, so he is held up as the overall winner, just because.

Ignoring the fact that, for a start, reverting to Margaret Thatcher's taxation of unearned income at the same rate as earnings would raise £15 billion, Starmer claims to have seen off "uncosted" proposals at the National Policy Forum. But a policy is only uncosted if you do not cost it, and trade unions never propose anything like that. They have always done the sums. Nor was there anything uncosted in the last two Labour manifestos. Whatever else may be said of John McDonnell, that is not his style. Yet after him, even Rachel Reeves is eye candy, so that is why she is there, Barbie to his Oppenheimer.

Speaking of those whose advancement may not necessarily have wholly intellectual foundations, when Wes Streeting presented his protégé to take his seat, then opponents of NHS privatisation, of the two-child benefit cap, of the making permanent of the destruction of Sure Start, and of every other bad thing about the Starmer Leadership, should be out in force to protest, legally or otherwise these days. Keir Mather wants to play with the big boys, so here we are. Striking workers should form the picket line that he would be forbidden to join even if he wanted to. One would not wish to encourage Palestinians to greet him as his fellow supporters of Itamar Ben-Gvir greeted them, by throwing their own urine, faeces, and used menstrual products at him.

21,700 Conservative voters in Mather's constituency have not died since the 2019 General Election. Without another byelection victory somewhere else, he is going to be sitting out the 2024 Parliament, forcing him to begin his parliamentary career in earnest at the grand old age of 31. By then, he may have become less callous and cynical. We live in hope. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats are resurgent in the West Country, where they denied the Conservatives an overall majority in 2010, while ULEZ is toxic 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 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.