Jobs, Pay, Conditions

Even these real terms pay cuts, paid for by cuts elsewhere, are far better than anything that had been offered by the Labour Party. Yesterday, NATO and Ben Wallace outflanked Keir Starmer on the left. Today, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have done so. This time, to settle with the strikers alongside whom Starmer had literally banned Labour MPs from standing. His own social media accounts report his speech today, but do not mention that it was delivered to a trade union conference. Had he given it before Unite's vote on disaffiliation, then that vote would have been a lot closer, with a very high abstention rate and with all bets off for next time.

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 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.