Finance and Premises

RAAC has not been used since before the last Labour Government came to office, so any that is still there has been there throughout that period as well as the period since. It is the fault of all three parties that the school estate is certainly riddled with it, and that very probably so are numerous other areas of the public realm. In what was then a Labour local authority area, I was on the Finance and Premises Committee of a primary school from 1999 to 2007, and I was on the Buildings Committee of a comprehensive school from 2000 to 2008. I have no memory of that as a Golden Age.

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.