That Represents Them Wherever They Are?

Kate Garraway's Life Stories, you say? When is she going to do Peter Mandelson? I remember Derek Draper when he was known as Dolly, and his closeness to Mandy took him at least to the outer circle. It would be quite an interview.

Speaking of the House of Lords, Rishi Sunak could solve the Nadine Dorries problem on the spot by announcing her peerage. His difficulty is that at the moment, Mid Bedfordshire might be Nigel Farage's eighth time lucky. Only until the General Election. But even so.

Well, that's our two main parties dealt with. What a time to be alive. But Sunak has delivered a body blow to the Green-aligned SNP in the North East of Scotland. The Liberal Democrats are roaring back in the West County. Not even Keir Mather expects Labour to hold Selby and Ainsty. Net Zero is Keir Starmer's approval rating here on the Red Wall. ULEZ is dooming Labour in Metroland, with the suspicion of similar things poised to do it no end of damage in suburbia generally.

Interest rates and inflation may be a lot lower this time next year than they were now. The few Labour MPs who had withdrawn their signatures from the Stop the War Coalition's statement on Ukraine will have been shown to have been right the first time, as they already have been. Jeremy Corbyn is going to hold Islington North, if he had not decided to become Mayor of London instead, or even if he had. Diane Abbott is going to hold Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Emma Dent Coad is going to win back Kensington. And so on.

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.