Channel Tunnel Vision

No, the Home Secretary's being interviewed by a Deputy Chairman of her party is not journalism. But whatever disagreements we may have with Lisa McKenzie, Aaron Bastani, Paul Embery or James Schneider, we are not holding our breath for any of them to appear on the BBC or Sky. Between 60 and 80 per cent of the electorate, depending on the issue, supports an active industrial strategy, renationalisation of the rail service, renationalisation of the utilities, renationalisation of the Royal Mail, and much more besides. The domestic policy touchstone of centrism is NHS privatisation, public support for which is negligible. Yet try telling any of this to any broadcaster apart from GB News.

Left and Right should be united to demand the abolition of Ofcom along with all the other uniparty enforcement agencies such as the Equality and Human Rights Commission. "We have never had propaganda channels"? Is that supposed to be a joke? No, these people are so biased that their prejudices are invisible from within their utterly closed subculture. They really do think that everyone is like them. In reality, almost no one is. But here are a couple of thoughts for you.

First, Margaret Thatcher gave Britain the quirk of having two state broadcasting networks, and while one of them is at some remove from the Government on paper even if not in fact, the other is the last great nationalised trading company in an otherwise competitive market, a throwback to things like British Leyland. Remember that when Channel 4 promotes drug legalisation, or gender self-identification, or the sexualisation of children, or what have you. Even more than the BBC, it is the Government talking. Ofcom is also the State, so of course it does nothing about the lack of balance.

And secondly, the Murdoch media, the culture of which Sky News retains, always support the Government of the day until the moment that it is obviously going to lose the next General Election. Yet they have not come out for Labour. 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.