Rise Up

On Saturday, I turned the class system inside out by taking the first Pimm's of the season at the Durham Miners' Gala. The Blairites hate it because they could never stage anything like it. In their Kinnockite prehistory, they tried to hold a "rival" event at Beamish, of all places. It is almost completely forgotten now. As it should be.

Whereas, as ever, we had a crowd a good 200,000 strong. So many old friends, organising in workplaces and communities in every part of the country and on every continent. For the second year running, perfect strangers asked me by name for selfies with me, and for my autograph. These things never cease to amaze me.

Ah, the chanting of "Oh, Jeremy Corbyn" every time that he so much as breathed. The cheering of him and Ken Loach. The booing and jeering of the name of Keir Starmer. The excellent speeches, including an absolute barnstormer from Zarah Sultana, effectively declaring her the Left's candidate at the next Leadership Election if she could get onto the ballot paper, although it is no longer clear who would organise her campaign. The last person to leave the Labour Party, and all that.

If there were disappointments, then they were that Jeremy did not speak, and that nor did Jamie Driscoll, who was also on the platform. We had all been hoping for the announcement, but although it never came, the carefully phrased leaflets distributed by his supporters had only one credible meaning.

Like Ken Livingstone in London from March 1998 onwards, more than two years before the election, this whole contest, if it can be so described, is already entirely about Jamie. He is the point. Even most Conservatives, always a large minority in the North East, are going to give him either a first or a second preference vote. He will address next year's Gala as the Mayor of the North East, with the Labour Party's candidate having quite possibly come third.

That will be in the runup to a General Election, so one really does hope that Jeremy will also speak on the fortieth anniversary of the Strike, and thus of the legendary Big Meeting at which, as soon as Neil Kinnock came to the microphone and before he had said a word, the six figure crowd silently walked off the field. Jeremy's reception has always been quite different, and it would be again.

Imagine that the Government were facing the Corbyn frontbench. Would the Bank of England, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can still override, be behaving as it is if Jeremy Hunt had to face John McDonnell rather than Rachel Reeves? Would Disney characters be painted over at a children's detention centre, and would the Crown Prosecution Service be refusing to prosecute the Officers from the Stephen Lawrence case, if Suella Braverman had to face Diane Abbott rather than Yvette Cooper?

Labour has adopted the Conservatives' tax and spending plans. That would have rendered the next General Election pointless, except that 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.