Vigilantia

Labour has just won Rutherglen and Hamilton West with fewer votes than it lost with in 2019, and with fewer votes than the SNP lost it with in 2017. Three quarters of the SNP voters from 2019 stayed at home, so Labour easily gained the seat with 17,845 votes. In 2017, also from the SNP, Labour narrowly gained the same seat with 19,101 votes. On both sides of the Border, an abysmal ruling party is collapsing, to the benefit by default of a politically identical Opposition (the SNP has not seriously pursued independence in nine years), with more and more people simply finding better things to do. Their votes are up for grabs.

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.