Beyond The Horizon

New Zealand is in Horizon Europe. It is not the EU. But it is being used to ease us back in. A lot of things are. We are now closer in time to reaccession than to the referendum, which was seven years ago. It is not going to be seven years before Britain re-joined the European Union. Not just Margaret Thatcher's Single Market and the Customs Union, but the eurozone and the Schengen Area. No referendum. A handful of votes against in the Commons. No division in the Lords. Royal Assent with one of those occasional Buckingham Palace statements which explicitly welcomed a political development. Thoroughly celebratory television coverage, largely of primary schools.

Hey, ho. Being in the EU was rubbish. Brexit is rubbish. Being back in the EU will be rubbish. 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.