Tuesday 21 November 2023

Talk Life, Not Death

And so to bed, I suppose, as Ukraine sacks two of its cybersecurity officials for corruption, as Itamar Ben-Gvir screams down hostages' families as allies of Hamas, and as David Miliband calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, thereby making even greater the shame of Keir Starmer and his motley crew at having been outflanked on the left by Jess Phillips, Liam Byrne, Conor McGinn, the SNP, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and the party that managed a full five years in Coalition under David Cameron, when no member of it voted against the war in Libya. One Conservative did, but no Liberal Democrat. Starmer has been exposed as more belligerent even than that.

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 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.

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