Complete and Utter Disclosure

Only a Conservative MP, a Conservative Peer, and the decidedly non-Starmerite Michael Mansfield KC, who I am told has left the Labour Party, have called for a public inquiry into the case of Andrew Malkinson. From the former Director of Public Prosecutions who is now the Leader of the Opposition, and from his party, there is silence.

In wishing Mr Malkinson every success, consider that you would never be prosecuted for anything that had in the meantime ceased to be a criminal offence. Under the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, nothing that was done to him would be illegal now. Labour abstained on that Bill, and it would not repeal that Act, just as it would not repeal the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act that it also did not oppose. 

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 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.