Support Bonnie Craven for General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association. And now that the consultation on ticket office closures has itself closed, find me one person whose submission to it was in favour of one or more of those closures. Likewise, while you could no doubt find 70 economists to support the Government’s tax and spending plans, to match the 70 who had so far criticised the Labour Party’s adoption of them, find me one who would be voting Labour because of that adoption.
“The Labour Party moves to the right of the Tories on economics,” says the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal matter-of-factly, describing that as “The British Left’s Tax Progress”. As long as so much as one voter on the British Left remained attached to the Labour Party, then what could possibly be the answer to that? Senator Chuck Grassley tweets, or whatever it is called these days, “Senate Dems wake-up and take a cue fr British Labor Party. Read Shadow Chancellor of Exchequer Reeves interview in Telegraph No tax increases and no wealth tax. She is for wealth creation She feels u don’t tax ur way out economic prob. U grow ur way out. VERY REAGANESQUE”
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.
What do you think of Jo Bird's candidacy at Birkenhead?
ReplyDeleteIt takes an awful lot to make me say to vote Green, but this does look like a Cornel West moment. I regret that either of them has ended up there, but I accept that they have their reasons.
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