The Cockroaches Will Survive

Even the World Bank has had to admit that Russia had overtaken Germany as the biggest economy in Europe. The small proportion of the world that is sanctioning Russia, is sanctioning only itself. Nor would it endear itself to the rest by associating itself with Alexei Navalny. He is not the "Russian Opposition Leader". There are really quite small demonstrations in support of Mr Cockroaches, his electoral unpopularity is mercifully well-established, and most people in Russia are lucky enough never to have heard of him. My local political enemies call me "The Cockroach", because I "would survive a nuclear war". Don't mess with us cockroaches.

Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso are openly talking about calling in the Wagner Group, so it is obviously already there. So much for the bad undergraduate smirking and giggling about "anti-imperialism", possibly expressing a genuine lack of understanding of the origins and meaning of the word. No, Wagner, or the Russian Federation, or both, will not be doing this as an act of charity. The same would be true of China. But Africa would rise, as never before, against any of its governments that went to war to force a uranium-rich African country to keep more than 80 per cent of its population without electricity so that its former colonial master, itself completely bereft of uranium, could continue to have the highest rate of nuclear energy in the world.

On either frontbench at Westminster, who is there who understands a word of this? But thankfully, Rishi 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.

By then, the few Labour MPs who had withdrawn their signatures from the Stop the War Coalition's statement on Ukraine will have been shown to have been right the first time; indeed, they already have been. 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.