Daft Draft

In a supreme act of what would now be an unthinkable level of Tory realism, it was the Conservatives who abolished National Service, thereby both admitting explicitly that the Empire had gone, and admitting implicitly that the Soviet Union was not a military threat to Britain. It was all very Enoch Powell, who was a Minister, albeit for Health, when the last conscripted servicemen left the Armed Forces in May 1963, 60 years ago. Due to the manner of its phasing out from 1957 onwards, no one under the age of 84 has ever done a day of National Service in his life.

Still, it is useful for this debate to be revisited from time to time. Ignore anyone who advocated a military intervention unless you could imagine that person as an 18-year-old in battle. The call for war always comes primarily from the liberal bourgeoisie. That is the class least likely to join the Armed Forces voluntarily, or to see combat even in periods of conscription. Operationally, that is of course just as well. But if there is not a strong enough case for conscription, then there is not a strong enough case for war. Unless a country needed to mobilise its entire healthy and able-bodied male population of fighting age, then it is not under sufficient threat to justify going to war at all.

As for Lee Anderson, five years ago, at the age of 51 and well into the Corbyn Leadership, he was a Labour Councillor and the office manager for a Labour MP. Did he believe then anything that he says now? He is just a grifter. He seems set to lose his seat, yet to whom? The people for whom Labour nominations are being stitched up inspire no more confidence than he does.

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.