Open Door Policy?

I ask this out of genuine interest, do the Conservatives not have Labour's ban on parties within the party? I mean, Labour's does not work very well, but factional Leaders and their temporarily controlling entourages can invoke it when they feel the need. One of Jeremy Corbyn's great failures was that, to the despair of many of those around him, he never did feel the need. Keir Starmer has no such soft spot. Yet Rishi Sunak tolerates the National Conservatives, the Conservative Democratic Organisation, and now also the New Conservatives.

No matter where you are on any political spectrum, more fool anyone who falls for the New Conservatives. Five years ago, at the age of 51, Lee Anderson was a Labour Councillor and the office manager for a Labour MP. Did he believe then anything that he says now? He is just a grifter. See also Jonathan Gullis, who had only previously been a teacher, yet who has come to be worth five million pounds in three and a half years as an MP. How? From where? From whom? For what?

The New Conservatives are primarily concerned with immigration. Presumably, then, they disavow Boris Johnson, who went so far as to abolish the requirement that jobs in Britain be advertised first in Britain, making him the most pro-immigration Prime Minister ever. They must curse the very name of Liz Truss, who wanted freedom of movement with India, the most populous country in the world.

Anderson has been doing what he does today, suggesting that people eat cat food. But a tin of that costs 75p, two and half times what he considers sufficient. Like a lot of the New Conservatives, he seems set to lose his seat. Yet to whom? The people for whom Labour nominations are being stitched up inspire no more confidence than he does. Still, at least Gullis will not be losing his seat back to Ruth Smeeth, Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent. There is that. In fact, since she does pop up from time to time, it is always worth mentioning that she lost her seat to him.

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 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.