Strategic Retreat?

There can be no comeback from having been passed over in favour of Ursula von der Leyen, so farewell to Ben Wallace. Like Bashar al-Assad before him, Vladimir Putin is merrily outlasting everyone who has said that he must fall. Boris Johnson is no longer a member of either House of Parliament, he never will be again, and a London Mayoral candidate's nomination papers have to be signed by 10 registered electors from each of the 32 London Boroughs and by 10 from the City, so Johnson would never even make it onto the ballot paper. By contrast, not only would Jeremy Corbyn secure that in half a working day, but he would then win the office of Mayor of London.

As it is, though, Corbyn is guaranteed to be the First Past the Post at Islington North. 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.