Conviction Politics

A convict who refused to attend sentencing would already be in contempt of court if the judge so ruled, and the guidelines already allow for reasonable force, although of course the Prison Officers would need to be properly trained and resourced. That is not an argument against making this statutory; if anything, the reverse. It is merely the context for the Government's latest bandwagon-jumping and grandstanding.

Similarly, whole life orders already exist, and we do not have mandatory sentences in this country. There are a handful of minimum sentences, but the judge retains discretion above those, and there is the technically mandatory life sentence for murder, but even then the judge either sets a minimum term, thereby creating the high probability of release, or discretionally imposes a whole life order with extreme rarity. Anything beyond that would rightly never pass Parliament.

The death penalty for murder was not mandatory, there was no understanding that anyone not executed for murder would never be released from prison, such releases were not unknown, and no such commitment was ever made when capital punishment was abolished. If you doubt that last statement, then produce that commitment. No one in a position to give it ever did anything so un-British, and perhaps especially so un-English. In this country, we have judges.

No, the Conservatives are going nowhere with all of this. They would do much better to recognise that, after Rachel Reeves's ruling out of a wealth tax, the idea has captured at least the politically engaged public's imagination that unearned income should be taxed at the same rate as earnings, as it was under Margaret Thatcher. That strikes almost everyone as only fair, as only common sense. So it is. It would also raise £15 billion. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt should spring this one on Reeves and on Keir Starmer.

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.