Oliver Dowden Is A Number Two

Say what you like about Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, John Prescott or Nick Clegg, but Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair or David Cameron would never have offered him to the Greeks, to go and sit in the Parthenon and be gawped at by the tourists, in lieu of the Elgin Marbles. Than Oliver Dowden, we need a much better class of Deputy Prime Minister next year.

For 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.