Left Standing

Even with only a 30 per cent approval rating, the venerable YouGov still has Jeremy Corbyn as Britain's most popular politician. On Peston, he has just pointed out that the poor did not have to vote at all, taken on the "very wealthy" Tony Blair's assertion that we already invested too much in public services (yes, Blair really had just said that), defied anyone to produce an argument against the renationalisation of water, refused to deny that he already had a campaign team as an Independent at Islington North, and refused to rule out standing for Mayor of London. A luta very much continua.

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 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.