Seating Plans

Like Jeremy Corbyn next door, Diane Abbott is obviously going to stand as an Independent, and she is obviously going to be the First Past the Post. As Labour's fall guy at Hackney North and Stoke Newington, I propose and I dare the man whom the Forde Report found to have called Abbott an Angry Black Woman.

Pretending to act with the authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Dame Caroline Dinenage has been writing to American and Canadian companies, which of course are not subject to that authority, to command them to remove or demonetise Russell Brand, against whom the Police are investigating precisely one allegation, from 20 years ago, and unconnected to the efforts of Dispatches, The Times and the Sunday Times. If Brand has not been arrested by noon on Sunday, then his accusers do not exist. Prove me wrong. In any event, he should immediately announce his intention to contest the seat of Gosport.

And 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.